Imagining the Impossible: An Act of Radical Hope

future imagination involves two distinct steps, each of which is difficult. The first step involves questioning or rejecting the present, resisting its claim to be natural. The second step means constructing a plausible alternative, moving between an awareness of limits and a search for transcendence of those same limits.

The thought that keeps me awake at night is that the further we get into the big challenges of Now – economic inequality, climate change, the very real risk of the collapse of many of the key aspects of the economy we depend on, mass migration and so on – the less able we are to imagine a way out of them.

it takes real effort to wean people off the dystopian visions,