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A time traveller’s guide to changing the world
A time traveller’s guide to changing the world
Photo credit - Alice Carfrae
What would the world look like if we all got to work imagining – and then building – a positive future?
An infinite number of possible futures lie ahead of us but if we can’t imagine a positive future, how can we understand what needs to be done to create one?
In 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted every aspect of daily life, climate activist and Transition Network co-founder Rob Hopkins responded the way a lot of people did: by starting a podcast. But it wasn’t any ordinary podcast. In each episode, Hopkins and his guests would ‘time travel’ together to the year 2030 – walking down imagined future streets, visiting imagined future businesses, and enjoying imagined future encounters with nature. While Hopkins’s guests came from all walks of life – economists, politicians, bakers, comedians, novelists and more – they all shared a willingness to suspend their worries about the future long enough to mentally inhabit and then describe a world they were thrilled to be a part of. The remarkable results of this simple exercise forced Hopkins to rethink the work he’d been doing as a climate activist for decades.
https://youtu.be/d959h4Be8lQ?si=G8DcXSxV4k6aYFP5
In his galvanising new book, Hopkins invites us to travel to future worlds with him, using as our guides the people and movements whose unique visions of the future have inspired positive, hopeful change. From the life and writings of the musician Sun Ra and the history of Black utopian movements, to the latest neuroscience on what goes on in our minds when we ‘time travel’ into a positive future, Hopkins brings a fresh and empowering perspective.
Photo credit - Alice Carfrae
With keen insights and the clarity of great storytelling, Hopkins asks us to consider: what would the world look like if we all imagined, and started building towards, a positive future, rather than a future in which climate crisis and strife are inevitable. While this future would be no utopia, it could be a place of shared purpose, and one in which we had done everything we could to map out a route to positive outcomes. ‘I don’t claim to have all the answers’, Hopkins writes, but his inspiring book offers a tantalising glimpse of the exhilarating possibilities that the future could hold.
Rob Hopkins (www.robhopkins.net\) is a pioneer in sustainability and community-driven change. The co-founder of Transition Network and Transition Town Totnes, and a renowned public speaker, his books include What Is to What If: Unleashing the Power of Imagination to Create the Future We Want.