Dream the dream
Doomsday scenarios about the future. They dominate news and media. Fear sells. So me and a bunch of other folks in tech decided to think differently and dream the dream at the OMG Climate conference in London.
We started our discussion with the statement that we don’t yet have a positive narrative. No stories to tell each other of a future where everything’s fine. And that’s just the thing, isn’t it? Everything being “fine” will be redefined. Because we will change. Society will have to change. But what will our changed society look like?
One participant mentioned the paper on Deep Adaptation by Professor Jem Bendell and how he describes a future society built on:
- Resilience: Society surviving the climate crisis and emerging with valued norms and behaviours
- Relinquishment: People and communities letting go of certain assets, behaviours and beliefs which could otherwise make matters worse
- Restoration: Communities rediscovering attitudes and approaches to life that our civilisation eroded (like re-wilding landscapes, changing diets to match the seasons)
But while this paper offers an interesting view on how society could adapt, I wouldn’t really classify it as a dream future. Partially because it picks up the story after society collapses, while I would hope that we could avoid that in our dream future. But what could this dream future be? And how can we get there? And what needs to be there first?
Do we need the dream to figure out how to get there
OR do we need the solutions to define the dream?
It’s an interesting chicken and egg problem. Yet the eggs (aka. solutions) are already there… And so are the chickens (aka. dreams) as we discovered…
Solutions for a positive future
A few days back I watched a panel discussion titled The State of the Earth. And the two climate scientist on the panel surprised me. They were quite hopeful and talked about all the solutions are already there to combat the climate crisis. They are just waiting to be implemented to get to our dream future.
And there are people implementing changes already. One mentioned in our discussion was Peter Kalmus. He lives without fossil fuels and describes his dream of a low carbon future in his book Being the Change. And this leads me to the dreams out there.
Dreams to inspire change
Despite of our opening statement, we quickly discovered that positive narratives do exist! Dreams are out there — they’re just not necessarily in mainstream media. And most of those dreams come hand in hand with solutions, so the entire chicken and egg problem is not even a problem anymore. Hurray! 🎉
Peter Kalmus’ book describes one of those dreams and also covers tangible solutions. Another recommendation from a different participant was a YouTube video featuring Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez that depicts a wonderful vision of the future while also explaining how society got there. We watched it after our discussion and I think it’s well worth a watch. See for yourself.
Another participant mentioned a movie called 2040 that explores practical solutions that can lead us to a positive future. And if movies aren’t your thing, there’s also a book called The World We Made – which is one of the books we read in a climate crisis book club I’m part of. It’s a good one – it’s a fictional character looking back from the year 2050 and talking about how the world became what it is in this version of 2050. It keeps the solutions real and doesn’t shy away from mentioning what went wrong either.
So the dreams are there and solutions are only waiting to be implemented. And I think I couldn’t put what’s on my mind now any better than one of the participants in the discussion:
“Let’s build Wakanda together”
I think the one thing to keep in mind here is the word ‘together’. Collaboration is key. We need to empower the most vulnerable and implement the changes in a just and open way. Because if we don’t, society collapsing becomes more and more likely. We need to work together as a global society while also implementing changes as individuals.
And let’s not forget about the what we’re working towards. Let’s allow ourselves to dream the dream and believe in it. The dream is necessary. Because as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez puts it in the video:
“You can’t be what you can’t see.”
