possibility studies

These might trigger a new sense of agency, finding a balance between “doing and not-doing” (Damhof, 2021) through grasping emergence as it happens and taking advantage of changes in the conditions of change (Miller, 2015a).

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

Curiosity, we argue, is a capacity to connect—to build knowledge networks. Curiosity builds relationships between pieces of knowledge as much as between the people who want to know them. For this reason, we characterize curiosity as “edgework”—constantly laying down relationships between ideas, experiences, concepts, and objects in the world.

Our assumptions of the future are being challenged: even what we took for granted now seems uncertain. And instead of asking: how did we get here? We are left with the question: what made us think we would never get here? If the unimaginable suddenly becomes a reality, then what is left to imagine? Is it still worth being hopeful? It appears that

Curiosity and possibility are typically subject to a novelty bias. People commonly conceptualize possibility as a harbinger of the new. What is old is already actualized; what is new is merely possible. Similarly, curiosity is thought, among scholars and lay people alike, to be piqued by and to produce the new. Repeatedly, across multiple fields

It is designed to be an antidote to fatalism—to remind us that other worlds are possible.

the struggle against the rejection of possibility is also a political act, one that can lead to resistance, resilience, and the generation of new societal alternatives.

The possible emerges in human experience whenever there is a multitude of perspectives available for individual, groups and societies to draw upon in understanding themselves and their environment.