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I am so over dystopia!!!! It is ugly and disgusting!! Thank you Kathi Weeks for teaching me that utopian thinking is a powerful revolutionary act! Fuck the last of us! Fuck imagining the end of the world before the end of capitalism! Fuck zombies!
Related Recs
During these times that can feel so hopeless and disempowering, Milstein encourages us to collectively dream of the futures we can build together.
So much of what keeps us stuck is a lack of imagination: there is only a two-party system, only a patriarchy, only capitalism. Anything other than what already exists is discredited as utopian at best and dangerous at worst. But what if there was an alternative to our current atomized way of living? What if, instead, we (re)build rich and vibrant communities where we could not only survive but thrive? Try Anarchism for Life helps us to ask those very questions, so we can see where they may lead us.
Another world is possible
Nov 30, 2024
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With the current political climate, there are a multitude of comparisons to written speculative futures, such as Octavia Butler's Parables of the Sower, which depict dystopian society from tyranny. While there is much to compare with today and Butler's vision of the future, we all still have the power to resist through changing the past and present for better futures. Imagination is a powerful tool that we all can harness. While we often think of large scale imagination, we can also imagine in smaller, tangible ways where we can make things a reality in the near future. Utopian thinking is one way to bring back the idea of imagining small worlds for ourself into reality. Harkening back to the time when you put posters on a bedroom wall to represent a reality, what would exist on that wall today? What words or images would you collage together for imagining a small utopia that you want to exist in reality? How can you, yourself, make that happen?
Jan 23, 2025
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i read The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas recently on recommendation from a fantastic YouTuber named Shaun who has made many video essays from a leftist perspective criticizing right-wing ideology, thoroughly analyzing historic events using dialectical materialism, and recently put out an informative and heartfelt video about Palestine.
TOWWAFO is a short read (only five pages) but i have not been able to stop thinking about the questions it raises and the way it relates to being American in the modern age, with all the knowledge we have of the horrors of imperialism and American intervention in the name of capitalism. i highly recommend reading it and meditating on its implications.
βThe trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. If you can't lick 'em, join 'em. If it hurts, repeat it. But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else.β - Ursula K. LeGuin, The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas
Feb 29, 2024
