What happened to the future?

And why is it so hard to imagine a positive one?

It seems like the only thing we can all agree on these days is that we live in extremely disorienting times. 

There are years when it seems like entire decades pass. The pace of events is dizzying–wars, fires, floods, pandemics, inflation, banking meltdowns. Against our will, we have become participants in an endless nightmare of doom-scrolling, where images of battlefields and wildfires co-exist with messages of self-care and wellness. The word ‘unprecedented’ has become an overused truism, along with new terms like ‘polycrisis’. Across the political spectrum, everybody is joining calls for some kind of renewal or rebirth, whether it is the pandemic call to ‘build back better’, or the World Economic Forum’s ‘Great Reset’ agenda that has spawned a universe of conspiracies. 

But it is also true that history has seen worse periods–far worse, in fact, than anything we can imagine today. The 20th century was the bloodiest and most violent in human history. In every decade, newspapers are littered with headlines of cataclysm and decline. Every age has its catastrophes–and here we still are. 

So what’s different this time? 

The most distinctive feature of the time we are living in is that the stories we tell ourselves about the future have fundamentally changed–and become more sinister. Our faith in the grand narrative of infinite progress has been fundamentally shaken, with little to replace it. On the Left, apocalyptic visions of collapse and breakdown limit our ability to imagine alternatives. On the Right, disenchantment with the status quo has led to a surge of authoritarian populism, as millions yearn for a return to the glory of the past. Today, it seems many of us have given up on the idea of a collective future altogether.

We used to have an idea of where we were headed. The post-1945 era was defined above all by a belief that time and history itself were pointed toward noble goals, the evidence of which we could see all around us–endless growth, advancement, technological innovation, human development. Widespread euphoria after the collapse of the Soviet Union led some observers to proclaim the “end of history,” and the eternal victory of liberal, capitalist democracy. The world itself was becoming more integrated, a grand process of inevitable unification. All political and economic projects pointed towards a cosmopolitan ideal of open markets and open borders, a world of liquid capital and mobile labour. 

Today, this cheerful story has begun to unravel, unable to withstand the overwhelming evidence of ecological collapse, democratic breakdown, widening inequality, or superpower conflict. We can see the cracks in the old narrative, but it’s unclear what vision will emerge in its place. 

There are those who still cling to the utopianism of elites, but it is an increasingly lonely group. Officially, we are supposed to believe the techno-optimistic narratives of liberation from work through the power of artificial intelligence, the growth of the sharing economy (leading to the WEF’s misunderstood claim that “in the future, you will own nothing”), the green growth fantasy of billions of autonomous electric vehicles communicating with each other through the ‘Internet of Things’. If all goes well, Elon Musk and other intergalactic titans, with their Mars colonies and Dyson spheres, will escort us into the stars and put computer chips in our brains that allow us to live forever. 

The people, however, have other ideas. All across the world, mass movements are invoking nostalgic visions of a past Golden Age, moving away from a shared future in order to turn back the clock on history itself. This is the playbook of fascism everywhere–take the rise of white Christian theocracy in the US, fanatical Hindutva nationalism in India, and other exclusionary, anti-democratic movements all over the world. The political Right has never been more globally powerful, not since the 1930s, and this is no accident. They are responding to the anger of rural and post-industrial communities which feel left behind by the rise of prosperous, urban creative and financial classes–the so-called ‘globalists’. The political elite of the Western world are slow to react to this unfolding reality.

On the Left, meanwhile, the situation is one of paralysis, caused by a mood of anxiety and despair that occludes our imagination. Visions of apocalypse or collapse abound–books with titles like ‘End Times,’ ‘Learning to Die in the Anthropocene,’ and ‘The Sixth Extinction’. Movements like collapsology or deep adaptation tell us that all hope is lost and nothing can be transformed–implying that neoliberal capitalism is essentially triumphant. With all the signs of ecological tipping points being hit, apocalyptic visions are becoming more seductive; there are movements like anti-natalism or the ‘voluntary extinction’ movement which seek to abolish humanity altogether. For some, collapse is even turned into a pseudo-ideal, something to be accelerated for the possibilities of dramatic renewal that it might engender. 

How we shifted so quickly between two doctrines of inevitability–one positive and utopian, the other catastrophic and apocalyptic–is a question only future historians will be able to answer. For many years, we were transfixed by a vision that we were told not to question. The ‘end of history’ narrative was further entrenched by politicians whose pro-market agenda of deregulation and privatization occurred under the mantra “There Is No Alternative,” Margaret Thatcher’s famous phrase that quickly became orthodoxy. 

Strangely, although this neoliberal consensus has now broken down, we still seem to be trapped by this deterministic way of thinking. Prominent sociologists like Wolfgang Streeck claim that “capitalism can neither be reborn nor replaced,” a paradox that Mark Fisher referred to as ‘capitalist realism’. Another scholar, Nancy Fraser, wrote a book on this theme borrowing from a quote by Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci: “The old is dying and the new cannot be born, and in the interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.”

In other words, we are at a moment of both crisis and stasis. Things are shifting faster than we can react, and yet the status quo has never seemed more entrenched. We are living in a liminal, transitory state, as old dogmas are questioned and traditional authorities no longer carry the same respect. But where we are headed, no one can confidently say. 

The Need for New Stories

Many on the Left gesture towards new visions of the future, with posters saying “Systems change, not climate change.” However, although this slogan works well as a rallying cry, what it refers to can remain quite nebulous. What is ‘the System,’ exactly? What are its boundaries, and how must it be changed? Which institutions should remain and which must be dismantled, and most importantly, who will decide? 

The purpose of this publication is to start to collectively think about answers to these questions. We want to ask: how can we bring the concept of ‘systems change’ down to earth? We created this newsletter as a space to explore those questions–to ask ourselves how this world was made, and how it might be made differently. 

We do not intend to offer panaceas or create new, all-encompassing explanations of reality. Instead, what we hope to do is tell stories–stories of both reform and resistance, of hope and failure, of empowerment and dispossession, in order to show all the ways the world is not something fixed but is rather being continuously made and remade every day. 

None of us can predict the future, but by imagining the future we are also writing it. In this way we hope to embark on a project of ‘world-building’, recognizing that the worlds we live in are constantly being constructed. It is only by understanding how the present situation evolved that we might arrive at an idea of how systemic alternatives could be intentionally designed. 

The stories we tell shape our sense of the future. When solutions are framed with a sense of dread, urgency, and apocalypse, this doomsday culture limits our sense of possibility. However, when solutions are framed purely through the lens of technological innovation, this constrains our ability to have conversations about power, politics, rights, and equity. 

We refuse to believe that human life is an inexorable march towards ever greater power over the Earth–that a handful of ‘moonshot’ innovations like geoengineering or carbon capture will be enough to avoid fundamentally rethinking our values, power structures, and worldviews. At the same time, we refuse to believe that humanity is destined for self-annihilation, or that human nature is inescapably greedy and exploitative. 

Between these two deterministic poles–one in which we are Gods, the other in which we are monsters–lies a whole universe of possibilities, each with its own conception of what human nature is and what a good society can look like. It is up to us to choose which one of those futures we want for ourselves, and then commit to the difficult, painstaking work of actually building it–together. 

We aim to explore the space between pessimistic fatalism and unalloyed optimism to understand what paths are truly available to us. Both are valuable in small doses; pessimism is required to maintain a sober appreciation for the greatest threats or avoid cowering from the most inhumane injustices. Conversely, optimism is needed to propel us towards action, knowing that nothing is inevitable and that no social change is possible without deep reservoirs of hope. As Gramsci also once said, we must retain the “pessimism of the intellect, and the optimism of the will.” 

At the deepest level, our newsletter aims to explore humanity’s relationship to the Earth, with the goal of re-embedding markets back within social and natural limits determined by the capacity for human well-being within planetary boundaries. This central task, of finding a better way to live both with the Earth and with each other, is the great transformation that lies ahead of us. 

By joining us in this space, you’ll join us in exploring topics like:

• Is there a future beyond neoliberal capitalism? 

• What is the role of technology in addressing the crises we’re facing? 

• Is the concept of utopia a useful one? 

• What does meaningful work look like in the 21st century?

• Why is nihilism so tempting in our current culture (and how can we avoid it)? 

• Which vested interests are the biggest obstacles to social change, and how can we counter them? 

If this sounds exciting to you, we hope that you’ll join us as we explore these questions, together. 

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This post was written by Gareth Gransaull and edited by Thea Walmsley