Imagining a world we can live in

Science Fiction is how our post-modern society envisions the future for humanity. From early Utopian dreams of a technologically liberated humanity, the trend has been downward into a spiral of apocalypse as we become faced with an accumulation of seemingly intractable problems such as the global ecological crisis and all that entails. If technology destroys us rather than liberates us, then isn't the natural impulse to long for hit reset? At least the survivors of an apocalypse carry the seed of rebirth for us all, imbuing their lives with meaning that a gradual descent into misery does not.

The boundaries of our collective imaginations are then bounded by two asymptotes, one driven towards the stars and the other diving into the dust, and both determined exclusively by our technology and not by ourselves.

Is it really so hard for us to change? Is it now impossible to envision social, political, and economic change other then through the narrow focus of a neoliberal, Hobbesian, socially conservative looking glass? Are there kinder, gentler, more collaborative possibilities now that the dog-eat-dog narrative has reached the physical limit of dog-eat-planet? Can we afford now to give one another the benefit of the doubt?

Ten Directions is an attempt to dream of an alternative, while at the same time avoiding the illusion that our myriad environmental sins will be forgiven, or that changing our habits of mind is ever easy. It would be wonderful to hear your feedback as to whether the story managed to stimulate your thinking in this way, our whether my attempt has fallen short of this aim.

Regardless, we all need to be working on this problem together, and the conversation will have some meaning for each of us.

All the best,

Samuel