{"id":62787,"date":"2022-05-31T18:39:30","date_gmt":"2022-05-31T23:39:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=62787"},"modified":"2022-05-31T18:39:30","modified_gmt":"2022-05-31T23:39:30","slug":"the-failure-of-imagination-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=62787","title":{"rendered":"The Failure of Imagination \u2014 Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Failure of Imagination \u2014 Part 1<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
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Image credit: Gerd Altmann via\u00a0Pixabay<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Up until a warm sunny afternoon in May 2019 I had what I would call a rather ordinary concept of the future. I was 37 back then with two little devils \u2014 masquerading as my sons \u2014 a wife and decent job. I didn\u2019t give too much thought to the fate of this civilization, but when I did, I thought that by the time I grow old I would still be living under the same government structure, behind the same borders, would have a car (most probably with a petrol engine), and the usual digital gimmickry\u2014 all under the same climate, or maximum a couple of tenths of centigrade warmer than today. In other words: everything would be just like it were in 2019.<\/em><\/p>\n

Knowing what I know today<\/em><\/a>\u00a0about this civilization\u2019s trajectory, its resources, overshoot, the climate, the state of our ecosystem and the many other predicaments, I had to realize that the future will be a whole lot different than the present or the recent past.<\/em><\/p>\n

I had to realize that I was a victim of a failed collective imagination.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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T<\/span>he current state of affairs starts to remind more and more scholars to the terminal stage of empires long lost. One of the recurring themes in such ages is the \u2018failure of imagination\u2019, not only on the side of the elites, but in the case of commoners too. This civilization too, just like the ones preceding it, seems to have lost the capability to imagine any other future for itself other than the continuation of the present, only \u2018greener\u2019. The future we are sold would be only slightly different, but certainly better and a whole lot more sustainable than the past (sic!). The alternatives vary around \u2018much more<\/em>\u2019 and \u2018helluva lot more<\/em>\u2019 technology, capitalism and growth.<\/p>\n

Less is not an option.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Failure of Imagination \u2014 Part 1 Image credit: Gerd Altmann via\u00a0Pixabay Up until a warm sunny afternoon in May 2019 I had what I would call a rather ordinary concept of the future. I was 37 back then with two little devils \u2014 masquerading as my sons \u2014 a wife and decent job. I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[138,139,150,22093,32807],"class_list":["post-62787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-survival-2","tag-civilisation","tag-civilization","tag-collapse","tag-ecological-overshoot","tag-honest-sorcerer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=62787"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62787\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62788,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62787\/revisions\/62788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=62787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=62787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=62787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}