possibility studies

The present is reality’s workshop. It is where scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, teachers, artists, activists, farmers, journalists, and policymakers collectively construct the world we inhabit. The present is where things happen. We live at the crest of the breaking wave of time.

imagination is an extremely powerful force for change and humanity can build bridges and empower us to create worlds that are more in line with our values. Imagining allows us not just to see a different future but to explore the impacts of it happening

Becoming aware of what is possible and comparatively assessing various possibilities goes beyond cognitive – or, for that matter, neurological – processes. The possible is not merely a mental representation or way of processing information; it involves the entire being and it especially has a strong motivational and emotional dynamic.

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

Imagining and articulating possibilities is how all flourishing futures begin. Stories are the origination point of world-building.

(3) Historically and ontologically, modernity is characterized by the separation between humans and nature (anthropocentrism), mind and body (rationalism and mechanicism), observer and observed (representationalism), us and them (colonialism, supremacy ideologies), and so forth. This dualist ontology was fundamental for the development of

I’m convinced that we’re suffering from an ‘imaginary crisis’. By this, I don’t mean that the various crises around us aren’t real, but rather that there’s a deep malaise affecting our capacity for imagination, whether social or political.

That we are more at home among familiar ideas is very apparent, though these ideas are so normalised that we often fail to see them as products of human imagination at all. Much of daily life depends on our ability to believe in things that are, essentially, fictions.

Every viewpoint is useful and it takes a wide diversity of views for any group to navigate this universe, let alone to act as custodians for it.