Imagining the Impossible: An Act of Radical Hope

To truly find new narratives (and therefore new ways of being, doing, thinking) it is not a question of simply imagining these narratives per se, since that is almost an impossible task on its own. Instead we need to understand what is keeping us from taking a look at the impossible in the first place. What are the blind spots or voices of reason t

These might trigger a new sense of agency, finding a balance between “doing and not-doing” (Damhof, 2021) through grasping emergence as it happens and taking advantage of changes in the conditions of change (Miller, 2015a).

After all: who gets to decide what is impossible anyway? If the future only exists in our imagination, then who gets to say what belongs between or outside the boundaries of the Futures cone?

The impossible we can imagine also serves as a mirror, confronting ourselves with our responses to the wide range of (im)possible scenarios. Why do we assume they are impossible to begin with? What is it about these boundaries that might make us feel uncomfortable? Can we see beyond that and expand our imagination even more?

Consequently, when we think about possibilities it’s not as much about what we do in the present that shapes the future, but more about how we use the future to shape the present (Damhof, 2022).

What if imagining and even engaging with the impossible has actually become a necessity? In the current landscape of geopolitical events, climate change, and other accumulating societal challenges, it seems that we are stuck in our inability to perceive and respond to emergence. The call for urgency, the awareness that technology is changing expone

In order to see more diverse possibilities in the world around us, one needs to widen the lens of perception, and imagining multiple futures attribute to that. When we imagine more, when we explore multiple futures, we perceive more in the present.

Dominant narratives are keeping us hostage. By freeing up our imagination to what is impossible, we can break ourselves free as well. Just as much as we should not colonize the possible future, we should not colonize the so-called impossible future either.

as Akomolafe (2022) puts it: the way we respond to a problem might become part of the problem. To escape this pattern, we need new ways of doing, being, thinking. Stretching our imagination beyond the boundaries of what is possible might turn out to be crucial to get unstuck from dominant narratives