Imagination: keys to a quantum leap
We got it wrong. Collectively, we are entangled together far more than survival of the fittest — Festina LentÍvaldi*
Imagining beautiful, possible futures we create together is hard, delightful and imperative.
What might a quantum positive change for climate and society look like?
Our entangled future
It is surprisingly hard to find well-imagined stories for our future. Stories where we are weaving new narratives answering today’s emergencies. Today’s issues have collaborative solutions and we need to describe our dreams for these to come to life.
It’s technically possible—in fact well within human capabilities and our resources—to reverse global warming, ensure everyone can live well and care for those who can’t. Yet, at least based on stories about the future I and others can find, we don’t actually believe we can make such changes.
As I write this, I’m confronted by how crazy this is. Wait a minute. We can fix many problems of injustice and unfairness, secure lives, create much beauty for ourselves and all sentient species. Yet, we don’t seem to think we can?
Maybe we’re creating our own limits. What happens when we write such stories? Read on…
Extract from Our entangled future: The witness
I crouched in the corner of a tiny, cramped room, mud under my bare feet, a tin wall rattling at my back. A woman and four children huddled with me, terror shining in their eyes, their bright clothing soaked through and blotched with filth. The noise was visceral, a howling wind and pounding rain that shook our cramped shelter. The tin roof jumped and clanged back into place, then, with a great tearing sound, it lifted away. The din intensified and rain pounded my skin. I crawled through the mud toward the door but before I could get there it burst open and a torrent of brown debris-filled water rushed in. The force knocked me into a corner. I tried to get to my feet but could make no headway against the powerful flow. I reached for the others and clung to them as the room filled and my vision blurred. I pounded the wall with desperation once, twice but it made no impression. Distorted by the water now filling the room, I looked into the face of a little girl as she opened her mouth in search of air and gulped filthy water instead. I opened my own mouth to scream, the world tilted as the wall behind me collapsed and my vision faded into black.
Part 2
I tore off my set and light flooded back in, illuminating the familiar surroundings of my room.
“What the hell was that? It felt so real,” I said.
“It was real. You just died, mate.” Jed’s voice floated over my shoulder from behind me.
“What do you mean?” I said, turning to face him.
“It’s the latest thing,” he said. “It’s called a scene. They pay some poor schmuck in Bangladesh or somewhere a few bucks to have a V-cam implanted that uploads the footage.”
“Seriously? Who’d agree to something like that?” I thought maybe he was winding me up.
The scenes
“It’s called a scene”: The scenes become a base from which Chris Riedy, author of The witness, describes people coming together to create and re-story the world. “So, then there were four of us. We were a great team. Cassie knew how to reach people and what would speak to different tribes…” To avoid spoilers here, read the whole story in Our entangled future.
Light waves by © Tone Bjordam, tonebjordam.com
The book
Our entangled future is a set of short stories. Stories of the future where the lead characters have rewritten today’s failed models. These stories are markedly different drawing life, vitality, viable societies and future in a grounded reality.
They are stories where we answered our common biases—it’s obvious people know and feel uncertain facing enhanced risks, from climate, drought, flooding, endemic corruption, injustice, inequity and many more directions. Somehow we need to connect that, the problems, with what we can do about them right here and now. Knowing how we changed it—emotionally and imaginatively in ways that feel real and possible—seems vital.
On one level that seems really obvious. However, when we start to look for such engaging stories there’s little around. There was little that plays with holistic large scale systems change across all human societies and our world. It’s time to fix that!
Our Entangled Future: stories of quantum social change is a free book illustrated by art such as Light waves. Highly recommended!
The ephemeral marvels perfume store
The mouse ran along a bridge that angled sharply to the left and onto another group of floating houses. This was the merchant district. The little mouse passed buildings where people sold fish, sea vegetables, and air-grown plants and flowers, before running straight into a dull-looking wooden structure at the edge of the city. Near the windows were bottles made of colored glass and filled with translucent liquid, which gave an interesting contrast to the building’s gray color. The mouse paused behind a shelf and fell asleep.
Our little mouse had entered the residence and workshop of the city’s perfumer…
Emilia, the city’s perfumer… sat at a long mahogany table at the far end with large distillation flasks, a metal weighing scale, measuring tools, and other equipment set out neatly before her. One could smell roses that shifted to hints of saffron, jasmine, and eucalyptus when moving from one end of the table to the other. A nearby shelf held large amber jars full of different essential oils. The shop was dark except for the desk lamp casting a bright yellow glow on the glassware. Emilia was carefully mixing a simple perfume for an important client. That’s it, one more drop, she thought.
Catherine Sarah Young’s full, ephemeral marvels story is in Our Entangled Future.
Resources
Background
Informing this story is a radical idea—that human beings may really be quantum systems. As Alexander Wendt puts it:
the hypothesis that the mind is quantum solves a number of long-standing philosophical problems in one stroke, which I argue makes it “too elegant not to be true”.
However, before you switch off and stop reading, it’s enough to say this would mean there’s a physical base for connections between us. That is many subjective and social structures we believe to exist, but can’t measure with instruments or see with our eyes, are real.
That’s important as we privilege the physical world. Moreover, we tend to believe we compete for the survival of the fittest (Festina’s quote at the start of this post).
However, that simple explanation has lots of anomalies. Start looking and humans don’t only behave this way. We cooperate. We love. We’re altruistic. We succeed better in groups than individually. We go mad, usually, if we’re totally isolated.
This challenges commonly held beliefs. That’s not unusual and does not mean it is wrong. It used to be a common belief that the world was flat, that the earth was at the centre of the universe. Galileo championed changing the centre of the universe one.
Similarly, quantum mechanics changed physics as there were multiple anomalies that simply could not be explained. Alexander Wendt (and others) argue a similar step shift is appropriate now for understanding ourselves and our society. See Alexander here>, Brent Cooper’s medium post here> and Karen O’Brien on Climate quantum leaps here>.
You’ll find a practical explanation of the importance of such quantum changes, and imagination, in the introduction to Our entangled future here>
For background on the importance of such shifts see Lights action synergy here> and Transformation posts here>
See Elegant attraction: our emerging universe here> for a wonderfully coherent talk (video and transcript) on what emerges from such connective, attractive forces.
Links
Our Entangled Future is edited by Karen O’Brien, Ann El Khoury, Nicole Schafenacker and Jordan Rosenfeld. More information on it is here> and/or directly download the pdf here>.
Summer rain
I believe in songs and poems and stories
Because they can pierce my heart
And the hearts of my heroes
And the hearts of their enemies
Feature video and photo is from Summer rain (full video above) by Malcolm King Fontana & Sebastian Marbury. Light waves is © Tone Bjordam tonebjordam.com see Our entangled future. The quote above is from Earl King’s poem, read by Greg Brown, on Summer Rain. Below is from Our entangled future.
Stories have to offer us more than hope. They have to help us to imagine and actualize alternative “not-yet-here” realities that enable people and our planet to thrive. They can encourage us to question dominant modes of thinking, relating, acting, and governing, and they can inspire new understandings of the patterns and relationships that are shaping our future. Speculative fiction offers the opportunity to activate thought patterns that empower us with agency and leave us knowing that we can collectively create a better future. They can help us perceive, feel, and activate the possibilities for social change.
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