fri 10 nov

Fri 10 Nov

Two emails pop into my inbox in quick succession.

The Green Party. Subject line: “How do we fast track the energy transition.” Tell me more.

Keir Starmer. Subject line: “Labour will deliver a Britain built to last.” Huh?

The first is an invitation to a series of events discussing practical steps to take towards an energy transition that benefits people and planet. I open the second and am greeted by a Union Jack with the new motto “let’s get Britain’s future back.”  

When did this future go missing?  In the prioritising of focus group slogans over bold policies that engage with and find routes through the crises we face? Half remembered poetry drifts to mind ‘Some enchanted evening the future is called the past….’  - it becomes a song playing from a gramophone at a tea dance….golden oldies from the playlist ‘Make Britain Great Again.’ B side: ‘Make America Great.’ Violent nostalgia for fictional times.

There is bravery required in both facing the future and learning from the past. Ally in hope, Rob Hopkins (website tagline – ‘imagination takes power’) is a time traveller extraordinaire donning a space suit to take people on a journey into the near future of 2030. He stands with a placard that proclaims ‘I’ve been to the future and we won.’  

Reading his speech notes for recent Extinction Rebellion events, seeing him on his soap box, arms in the air, he is describing the impossible possible – a ‘What if?’ that can happen. The policies and shifts he describes aren’t even that dramatic or revolutionary – many are already happening, somewhere or other if not everywhere all at once. Universal basic income, every city with a civic imagination office…..his words are an exercise in rehearsing freedoms and futures, drawing on the demonstrations of the possible future already happening. It is an imagining that recognises space for the question ‘What if it’s too late?’ but keeps asking ‘What if it isn’t?’

There is an optimism that cannot and will not be dismissed as wishful thinking. It is, as Gramsci states, ‘pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will’. Hope as an action.  

It is a solar punk that builds a future of repair and reparations.

It is in knowing that other worlds and times are possible.

It is being ambidextrous in living with the chaos.

It is remaining open to learning what is not yet there.

It is about joining the struggle and the call of ‘I believe we will win’ even though not always, totally, believing and never knowing.

It is daring to imagine.

And, it is embracing the dystopian imagination - rehearsing the deep adaption and resilience required to build this future on uncertainty.

Perhaps Kier Starmer could look for the future lost not somewhere in the piles of yesterday’s newspapers but in the words of the poet Rilke quoted by Rob Hopkins - “the future must enter into you a long time before it happens’ - learning from the demonstrations of a liveable, abundant, just future already here, now. A ‘Ministry of the Future’ worth having.