Unimaginable

Years ago I read an old science fiction book. The main character has set his rocket ship down on an alien planet and needed to chart a course to his next destination. He pulled out his slide-rule, made the calculations and left.

It struck me as so weird until I realised that this story predated the idea of a computer that didn’t fill a whole room.

On the Jetsons, the family has a robot maid and George’s car collapses into a suitcase. Judy doesn’t have a job though and no woman in that show seems to work. It simply seemed unimaginable at that time that married women would hold down a job.

We humans have a hard time imagining radical change. In discussions about reducing our dependence on cars I’ll often hear people argue that they need a car to drive their kids to school. The idea of their kids being able to safely walk or bike to school seems unimaginable.

A lot of push back to improvement comes from people fearing to lose the few tools that allow them to survive in today’s world, simply because they cannot picture a better world. They see the immediate loss and not the bigger gain.

The more I learn the more I realise that much of what I used to think were fixtures of the world are just choices. Other societies at other times made different choices. This means that we can make different choices as well, we just need to realise that there are in fact different options to choose from.

I miss the big stories. The bold dreams. I want to imagine a radically different world than the one we have now. A world where true equality exists, a world built on cooperation instead of competition. A world where we make choices that make sense for the good of mankind, not just for maximising shareholder value.

I don’t have any answers, just hopes and dreams. But dreams are where it starts. Knowing there are different ways of living. Making choices. If enough of us decide things should be different, they will.