“Positivity” is a weird thing. You can be rich and sad because your neighbor is more rich. You can be working yourself ragged and happy because it’s a competition on a topic that you love.
You can be Caribbean pirates dancing with death fighting for life and liberty against cartoonishly evil empires and you can be suffering from depression in safety with people you love.
You can live in the shadow of a toxic chemical plant treasuring every moment you spend with your family or you can have a private island and prosperous family and feel hollow.
Climate change will almost certainly lead to violent clashes between groups and states unwilling to give up unsustainable wealth and privilege and also between them and people just trying to survive, on a scale never before seen on Earth. Nuclear, biological, and mass autonomous weapons may be used. Over a billion violent deaths next century seems likely, and over seven billion violent deaths is very possible.
But that doesn’t mean we have to feel negative all the time while living through that. That depends on what we do and what we’re working for. Building anarchist spaces, I haven’t felt this alive since I was a child. People are facing the risk of permanent injury, prison, and worse, but they look more alive than 99% of wage workers.
We have a chance to build a better world with our own hands as the old one burns, for however many millions of people will be alive in the 22nd century if not for ourselves. Every thing we do matters to us, to our friends, to our comrades, and to the world. Maybe we’ll end up in a place where despair is appropriate, but it is not now.
I don’t know if this counts as a “positive imagined future”, but it is the one we are heading towards and I am happy.
“Positivity” is a weird thing. You can be rich and sad because your neighbor is more rich. You can be working yourself ragged and happy because it’s a competition on a topic that you love.
You can be Caribbean pirates dancing with death fighting for life and liberty against cartoonishly evil empires and you can be suffering from depression in safety with people you love.
You can live in the shadow of a toxic chemical plant treasuring every moment you spend with your family or you can have a private island and prosperous family and feel hollow.
Climate change will almost certainly lead to violent clashes between groups and states unwilling to give up unsustainable wealth and privilege and also between them and people just trying to survive, on a scale never before seen on Earth. Nuclear, biological, and mass autonomous weapons may be used. Over a billion violent deaths next century seems likely, and over seven billion violent deaths is very possible.
But that doesn’t mean we have to feel negative all the time while living through that. That depends on what we do and what we’re working for. Building anarchist spaces, I haven’t felt this alive since I was a child. People are facing the risk of permanent injury, prison, and worse, but they look more alive than 99% of wage workers.
We have a chance to build a better world with our own hands as the old one burns, for however many millions of people will be alive in the 22nd century if not for ourselves. Every thing we do matters to us, to our friends, to our comrades, and to the world. Maybe we’ll end up in a place where despair is appropriate, but it is not now.
I don’t know if this counts as a “positive imagined future”, but it is the one we are heading towards and I am happy.