Pattern languages for possibility.

Believable universes stimulate curiosity, creativity, and imagination.

Science fiction and fantasy worlds are useful pattern languages because they are believable, familiar to many, and spark a feeling of surprise and adventure. They have an added benefit of being decoupled from the real world, and so not tainted by the pains and wounds of old grudges and conflicts.

And yet they are heroic stories, rich with adventure, trials and tests, good and evil, people coming together despite differences to create a world that they want to live in together, and life-affirming cultures and people and teams, blossoming with purpose and meaning. I want people to believe we can create these kinds of worlds for ourselves, and we don’t need money to do it any more than ants need money to build anthills.

Examples that come to mind:

World of Warcraft

The Walking Dead

Star Wars

Foundation trilogy

Dune

Star Trek

Avatar.

I’m sure you could add a ton of other universes, and please do in the comments, and you can probably also see that you could adopt scarcity patterns, fear patterns, conflict patterns, and so on, depending on whether you were trying to hurt or heal, control or connect, and depending on what kinds of situations and purposes that are moving you at the time. So we would be wise to tune ourselves to #notice and #wonder about who is programming who, and for what purposes, and who will reap the benefits if they get their way.