Everything Good Was Once Imagined

A rebuttal to a world of "We can't"

"How will you make buses free?"

Well, how do we make any public service free?

Libraries, the last I checked have been free for some time.

And not many people complain about that.

The internet has reshaped behavior. Not always in a good way. But now it wants to disrupt how we govern. And this could actually be a good thing. Why? People are asking for more than representative democracy. They want more involvement. "Hey if the billionaires can give money to an elected official, why can't we do the same as a collective?" This is leading to a movement where many are asking that their taxes be directed to the things they want more of. Not what some representative thinks they want more of. What scares those in power is that what they think we want, maybe we don't want at all.

This leads us to the current situation of efficiency over progress. Because big corporations have a huge monopoly and stranglehold on the world economy, we are seeing moves for them to become bigger, more consolidated, to have more oversight where they have an ultimate stranglehold on power. They are becoming nation states unto themselves. This is causing many to finally wake up and question old institutions and outdated systems. If you're an old fashioned politician on either side of the aisle peddling a bunch of propaganda and spouting canned talking points, good luck. Authenticity which wins on social media has now seeped into the political waters. And it seems to be reaching a boiling point.

We aren't asking for a cult of personality anymore to represent us. We don't want cult leaders. We see what happens with the current digital Jonestown we have in place. We want leaders who remove obstacles so that the collective can rise. Who tackle economic inequality and push hard for opportunity. We are tired of assuming someone will represent us when we feel like we can represent ourselves better as a unified force. We don't assume everyone who can't feed themselves is lazy or incompetent. We are starting to realize more and more that society and the sum of the parts is greater than a few wealthy individuals who use corporate welfare and special interests in the form of lobbying to enrich themselves at the expense of everybody else.

This is a huge shift over the past 40 years where we were told communal thinking was bad, individualism was the only way. Where we were told government was bad, that privatization and the logic of the markets was the only way. Where we were told anybody could be anything they wanted to be, even if the system isn't really designed to help them be that. We seem to be complacent with the fact we reward people who move pixels around on a screen more than people who move physical bodies from a bed to a chair. We seem to be quick to label ourselves as if that is enough for us to get into the pearly gates of an afterlife, while ignoring the plights of our fellow humans in the here and now.

When people say things are not possible, that we've tried that and it doesn't work, that things are going to go to shit we've given up on the most crucial skill for the 21st Century.

Imagination.

We're no longer in the knowledge or information economy. Knowledge is all around us. The powers that used big data to enrich themselves don't want you to get this memo. They don't want you to imagine an alternative. They want you to stay on the straight and narrow path. Because doing anything different prevents their growth. And these powers want us to simply choose from two very narrow options. Both not that very different from each other. Both dressed up in two colors. Do you want the red pill or do you want the blue pill? Those with imagination are questioning where the green, yellow, purple, pink, black, white, grey, turquoise, orange options are?

We are fully in the imagination era now. This is why big corporations are trying to dig in their heels, laying people off to enrich what shareholders remain holding the stock and seeing the end of a financial system that seems to have run its course.

What if this layoff collapse going on around us is actually an opening? Is it a signal of the emergence of smaller indie creator DIY systems as the next infrastructure of work and a shift from managers to makers? What if we have a barter economy take the place of the current system of financial services that dominates? In the design world, we have always focused on human needs. I sense many are finally catching up to this after a hard lesson that big systems will care about you for life (they won't) and now realizing there's nobody coming to save us. Only we can help save each other. Only we can use our imagination to imagine what's next.

Why are we so fixated to not imagine any alternatives from what exists on the left vs. right spectrum? Why do we only believe the logic of the markets is the only way? Geoffrey Colon asks and answers questions in this weekly newsletter about the power shift from the information age to the imagination age.

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