changing the world....again

Many people talk about changing the world.

What they mean, of course, is making a future that is different to the present.

There are things about the present they don't like and want to change. And they imagine a certain trajectory of the present that DOESN'T include what they hope for and desire. So they try and change what will happen.

So really we don't change the world, we try to change what the world will become.

So all along we have an idea about the future, what the world will be like.

The important thing, then, is how we imagine the future.

And what we change is other people's ideas about the future. We can change it by force or by persuasion.

Tim Smit, who was the force behind the Eden Project, calls it the Tinkerbell theory- if enough people believe it will happen it does.

So the real task of changers is making a different kind of future believable.

Science fiction anyone?