Building Power For A More Beautiful Future
Picture yourself ten years in the future. This is not just any future—it’s a special version of the future that you may not believe is possible. This is the the best-case-scenario future.
Over the last ten years, the world has united and come together to solve some of our biggest crises. Huge amounts of resources are being poured into addressing climate change, biodiversity loss, and global wealth inequality, to name a few. Better late than never, these changes have been met with open minds around the world and widespread enthusiasm as people have hope that humanity can turn things around. Take a few deep breaths and give yourself a minute to close your eyes imagine that version of the future.
How did we get here, to this best case scenario? What does it feel like to be in this world, where humanity’s better nature has come into power? And who are the people who are in power in this magical future?
And now, I’d like you to ask whether our collective imagination is strong enough to get us to that future.
Soul Fire Farm, a wonderful educational farm and social justice organizing space in upstate New York, has a 4-part model for social change work that’s represented in as four wing segments of a butterfly. The four wings are: resist, reform, heal, and build. Each wing segment is equally necessary for that butterfly to fly.
Resisting, reforming, and healing are so necessary in our world. They are also the three wings that focus on responding to the past. The “build” wing is the wing that’s primarily future-facing. Builders are the people and organizations who imagine and create that best-case-scenario future. When we look at the nonprofit sector, this is what it’s really about from a big-picture perspective: creating a network of organizations that work in tandem to build power so that we might work towards that best-case scenario.
Our “build” wing is in trouble though. The collective imagination of our society is so atrophied right now. Mainstream culture pushes us to accept Silicon Valley’s narratives that the inevitable future it involves the rich getting richer as energy-gobbling AI supercomputers run the world. And for what? To create smarter software that more easily convinces you to buy stuff you don’t need online? Where is a vision for a future that serves the communities of human and more-than-human life that make life so wonderful?
When I give talks to high school and college groups about imagining shifts to culture, I always ask them what they imagine when they picture a sustainable future. Every time, the most concrete thing they imagine collectively is a world full of electric cars. Our youth don’t imagine a world with fewer cars. The boldest vision for our future is a vision of engine swaps. Our imaginations have stalled out and we’re stuck envisioning car-based life—the most expensive, socially disconnected, energy-intensive social structure in the history of humanity. This is not imagination—it’s a lack of imagination.
Neuroscientists tell us that the process of imagining the future uses the same mental pathways as remembering the past. The muscle of our imagination relies on our past experiences. To build our capacity to envision a more beautiful future, people need to experience glimpses of a future that’s not yet built.
This is what Groundwork does—we create spaces and learning opportunities outside of the ordinary that build our society’s capacity to imagine and work toward a future that lives up to our values, where care for the world and for humanity is prioritized.
What’s holding us back from the best-case-scenario future? So much of it is lack of imagination. “Well, that would be nice, but we couldn’t…” It’s time to dream that we can take big actions.
Today, I’m asking for your support in this work. I am asking for funding for two big projects:
- Our Food Systems Fellowship on our Western Colorado Campus is an 8-month program that brings young environmental leaders together to run an organic farm, live communally, eat locally, and study the policies and economics of our food systems. The program is a radical space that pushes fellows outside of their comfort zones physically, socially, and intellectually. The result is hopeful, inspired, skilled young leaders who move into positions of power across the country.
- We are developing a new class series: “Falling In Love With The Future”. These are classroom-based workshops focused on positive futurism. Based on the work of Rob Hopkins and other visionary educators, these workshops are creative, interactive spaces that combine theatrical techniques, contemplative exercises, and creative expression to build participants capacity to imagine and work towards a better future.
If you’re having trouble holding onto hope that humanity can enact that best-case-scenario future, please join us. We are a small organization, and your donations go a long ways. Thanks for your support!