Nicole Woods

“[...] The distinctive feature of the societies to which this historical process [i.e. capitalism and industrialist mass production] gave rise is that productive activity is mostly governed by a logic that tends to strip it of things like meaning, playfulness and sociability.”

caretaking is a kind of liberation

Building alternatives to extractive economics isn’t just about critiquing the system from afar/behind our screens. It’s about actively rewriting the story at the local level, where change feels personal and immediate. When those benefits are visible to the people we care about, they have the power to inspire more systemic change over time.

Why are we futuring to find solutions to the problems created by extrapolative, exponential, and extractive systems, when we should be futuring to imagine emerging novelty and construct transformative realities that would allow us to elevate our human, planetary, and universal experience above and beyond those systems?

Yes. At the root of my work is joy—and at the root of that is hope. I believe that if we give up hope on all who make up “humanity” not only are we allowing the oppressors, colonizers, bigots, and others to win, but we are also not acknowledging all the work marginalized communities have put into experiencing life euphorically.

Contribute your skills to an existing effort – make it possible. Build the website, raise the funds, recruit the talent, plan the events. As Bill McKibben puts it, “Faced with the kind of crises that we face, the most important thing that an individual can do is to not always be an individual.” Move from I to we .

As author and philosopher Bonnitta Roy would say, we must “dream ourselves awake.”

We are wired to seek and sustain relationships and cannot survive without them. The future of the human race won’t turn on space travel or climate tech, but on our ability to attach to others. A sense that we matter, that we can call on and be called upon by others to ease burdens and celebrate joy.