Upstream

If you look around at the state of the world—and the despair that comes with the reality of climate change, fascism spreading its tentacles around the world, the ethnic cleansing of Gaza—it’s very difficult to feel hope. It begins to feel like the forces of destruction and death have colonized our futures, limiting our dreams and stifling our imaginations.  It’s in these times specifically that it’s essential we remember that the future, our dreams, our imagination—that these things are political. And that exercising our hope for a just and beautiful future is an important, in fact, crucial political act. Not on its own, of course, but imagining and dreaming fuels our actions and gives soul and spirit to our revolutionary movements. And as the poet Rainer Maria Rilke once wrote, "The future must enter into you long before it happens."  Rob Hopkins is the co-founder of Transition Network and of Transition Town Totnes, and the author of several books including The Transition Handbook, From What is to What if, a