Another World Is Possible: How to Reignite Social and Political Imagination

All my experience tells me that such a level of fatalism isn’t realistic; we can, up to a point, design and choose the society we wish to live in. Besides, there have been few moments in history when we have needed creativity more—to work out how to get to net zero carbon emissions and avert climate change; how to cope with ageing populations; how

‘We need to rewild our imagination. We must learn how to dream again, and we have to learn that together.’

Indeed, it is this ability to grasp and challenge at the same time, to sense directions of change while simultaneously trying to shift and shape them, that makes imagination both most useful and most exciting.

A sizeable majority of the world’s population (more than three in five) now believe the world is getting worse.

Countries that used to define themselves through creating bold new institutions no longer do so—there are no recent equivalents to the NHS or the BBC in Britain; no equivalents of NASA or DARPA in the US. In much of academic life, too, you are more likely to succeed by slightly tweaking an established idea than creating a novel one.18

lack of institutions working seriously on issues where technology and society intersect.

What changes the world in the end is the generative ideas, not the detailed blueprints. But the blueprints are useful tools for thinking with—they help to clarify ideas and can show unexpected consequences. Developing them is part of being positively engaged with the world. It’s easy to be against things and easy to be a critic; much harder to offe

we need to be safe enough to play with being unsafe, secure enough to leap into insecurity.

Inversion is a common theme in Christianity (‘the meek shall inherit the earth’) and has also prompted much radical innovation more recently. What if farmers became bankers (as happened with the microcredit provided by Grameen Bank); patients became doctors; or social care were provided by people who had themselves been recipients of care? What if

They, like the public, tended to overestimate how much could change in the short term while underestimating how much could change in the longer term.4