When the improbable happens, another future comes into play
Source: Yannick ROUDAUT / Editions LA MER SALEE
Collapse is not assured. Another future is trying to impose itself. As always in history, the unexpected can change the game.
In the spring of 2020, the improbable happened. The unthinkable also happened: the world economy, which seemed to be unstoppable, came to a halt. Who would have imagined this economic fast: planes grounded, matches without an audience, major construction sites suspended, polluting industries at a standstill? Who would have imagined more than 4.5 billion people confined to an imposed universal communion? We now know that the machine can stop, the switch exists. The predicted collapse is not a fatality, it is a choice.
This unlikely shock, the first of many, reminds us that predictions are regularly contradicted. History is not a straight line on which humanity walks. It is written between several possible and competing scenarios, according to the improbabilities that follow one another and intertwine to give birth to a future that was unimaginable a few months earlier. The best futurists could not anticipate the invention of electricity or the internet, so we could not imagine what life would be like, totally different from the scenario we had planned. The discovery of the Americas in the 15th century, the end of the Eastern bloc, these political events changed the trajectory of the future. A discovery, a philosophical leap, a civic event, a personality, many improbables can still change our trajectory.
The Renaissance changed our relationship to territorial space. In the 21st century, we could access new knowledge about time and matter. The Renaissance led to the emergence of humanist philosophy, with man at the centre. Today, we could discover a new spirituality, reconnect with our animality and adopt a modern animism. The Renaissance gave life to the myth of infinite growth, we could regain our footing with relowcalisation.
For some months now, another sustainable future has been coming into play. New events and unexpected decisions are emerging in the world. This book explores these other futures, what can make them happen and our capacity to give them substance at every second. Anything can happen in the decade 2020-2030. Anything must happen. It is the decade of all dangers and hopes, tragic and sublime, agonising and exciting, a clear dark decade that takes us down other unlikely paths. Resignation would be a mistake, let us welcome the improbable, let us be attentive and let us give the extra impetus to these other possibilities that are trying to impose themselves.
For more information on the author.
BUY this book = Editions LA MER SALEE
His previous books: Zero Pollution 2016, The New Controversy 2013.
Photo by author David Ken, Lol project.
ISBN Paper book ISBN 979-10-92636-36-9 - 230 pages - In bookstores October 15, 2020