Fully agree with Cal that telling "it's a mess but here's why we should care about this world and do something about it" narratives are more impactful than "we're screwed because rich people/big orgs suck" stories - and actually getting people to do something is the whole battle right now. Hopelessness as a self-fulfilling prophecy, and all that. And hopelessness as a privilege, because it hasn't washed up on our (ie. "us" = as-yet-cushioned relatively well-off folk) actual doorsteps yet like it's doing elsewhere, forcing people into action...
Also, the power of pessimism without fatalism. I've learnt that pessimists are more likely to envisage things going wrong and more likely to prep to prevent them, rather than optimists like me that lean much too heavily into "oh, it'll be fine somehow" and fail to consider actual solutions, ie. skip the actual thinking and questioning. Kim Stanley Robinson's "Ministry of the Future" is one of the few works of recent fiction that actually refuses to wave its hands of the upcoming mess in the service of telling a good future-history story, and we definitely need more of that...
Thanks for this, as always!
The topic of optimism vs pessimism/fatalism is really fascinating, and so damn important. Not sure if you saw it previously but this is a great read:
https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/climate-change-writing-cop26-uk-cal-flyn-islands-of-abandonment-life-post-human-landscape
Fully agree with Cal that telling "it's a mess but here's why we should care about this world and do something about it" narratives are more impactful than "we're screwed because rich people/big orgs suck" stories - and actually getting people to do something is the whole battle right now. Hopelessness as a self-fulfilling prophecy, and all that. And hopelessness as a privilege, because it hasn't washed up on our (ie. "us" = as-yet-cushioned relatively well-off folk) actual doorsteps yet like it's doing elsewhere, forcing people into action...
Also, the power of pessimism without fatalism. I've learnt that pessimists are more likely to envisage things going wrong and more likely to prep to prevent them, rather than optimists like me that lean much too heavily into "oh, it'll be fine somehow" and fail to consider actual solutions, ie. skip the actual thinking and questioning. Kim Stanley Robinson's "Ministry of the Future" is one of the few works of recent fiction that actually refuses to wave its hands of the upcoming mess in the service of telling a good future-history story, and we definitely need more of that...
Anyway. Rambling now. I'll stop. Thanks again.