On the face of it humans aren’t very equipped for survival. We have no claws to defend ourselves, no fur to protect us from the cold and the sun. But what we have is one unique trait that allowed us to thrive: imagining the future.
Through predictive modelling, long term planning and a fair bit of wishful thinking, we didn’t just hope a better world was possible, we were able to execute on our plans and mould the world into the shape of our fantasies.
We imagined a world where a mother didn’t have to watch her child die of smallpox… and then we made that world real. Our ancestors looked at the sky and imagined touching it. And their grandchildren left footprints on the moon.
Most of our problems are a failure of imagination. If we only believe in shitty futures. How can we plan for utopia? We have a moral duty to use our powers to imagine futures that should exist.
Tonight, on this darkest day, we do what our ancestors did: we gather, we speculate, and we steal warmth from the future. May the worlds we conjure tonight be the ones we build tomorrow.
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