To Build a Beautiful World, You First Have to Imagine It – Climate Generation

I’ve been thinking a lot about futurism these past few weeks. And wondering what it is that makes dreaming without bounds so dang difficult. I participated in a strategic planning session for an org that I love recently. We were invited to imagine the organization 20 years in the future and folks struggled to actually think beyond the current ecosystems. I recalled another brainstorming session I found myself in a few years ago where the facilitator asked us to dream our greatest wishes for the neighborhood. My colleague and I drew an image of beloved community with collectively owned businesses, cooperative child care, and locally grown food. The state government representative at the table’s deepest desire for the neighborhood was an additional 100 section 8 vouchers. Why is it so hard for us to creatively imagine the future in expansive ways?

I care about this because I know that we need to creatively and collectively imagine, in detail, the world we want to see post climate crisis in order to build the path to that future. As Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, author of What If We Get It Right?, reminds us, “Addressing the climate crisis requires… a rethinking of the fundamental systems that we rely on.” 

We live in a state of collective shock these days, full of grief and anger as we navigate from one unimaginable or unthinkable current event to the next. I know I am often just thinking about how to survive the day and the week. No wonder it is a challenge to imagine the future with optimism and creativity. I began to wonder what might be the scaffolding of conversation and thinking prompts that could open up our minds to possibility, to dreaming.

Futurist and game designer Jane McGonigal talks about mental time travel as a useful experiment and practice. She starts by asking us to imagine walking up tomorrow morning in vivid detail: where will you be, what will you be wearing, what will the temperature and the light be like, how will you be awakened, how will you feel physically and emotionally, what will be the first thing you do? Then imagine yourself walking up on a morning 10 years from tomorrow. Fill in all the same vivid details like you did before.

In the future scenarios we have to choose the details, choose what to imagine. And as we project ourselves into that future, we carry with us our hopes, our values, and all that we care about. This scenario building is exactly what we must do to build a just and abundant world beyond the climate crisis. As we build out the details of the world we want, we get to ask ourselves, ‘Is this the world I want to wake up in?’, ‘What do I need to be ready for this world?’, and ‘Should I try to change what I am doing today to make this future more or less likely?’.

We can only build what we can imagine. We can decide how the future will be different.

McGonigal invites us to engage in social mental time travel, to do this together, with the challenge to open our calendars and scroll 10 years ahead to the future. Put something in that calendar in 2035 — an event, a celebration, something. Then invite 4 or 5 others to that event, begin imagining together what that future day might hold. Invite me, I would love to be part of imagining the future with you.

Friends, life out here for climate justice non-profits is hard. Unlike during the first time the chief climate change denier was in office, support for our important work is shrinking. We are in the midst of an End of Fiscal Year fundraising campaign. Your gift enables us to continue inspiring educators and young people to dream about the future and co-create the solutions that bring us there. Thanks.

Illustration: João Queiroz