The future I'm dreaming of: there's hope in imagination

I've been thinking a lot recently about hope. About how radical and nourishing it can be, but also how we can be conditioned to be hopeless by the poerful. I look at our cultural landscape right now... Have you ever tried to watch something on Netflix-only to find that you can't find anything that does NOT have a narrative of dystopia, of corruption and despair? Ever noticed how difficult it is to find media that shows us a future of hope? One of growth and nourishment? It feels like the age we're in is so bleak, so barren, that we've lost our imagination for an alternative future.

Trust me, I get it. Billionaire vermin are ruling the world. They're dodging tax and sucking our economies dry. They're buying up our assets and leaving us without housing, healthcare and entrenching the cost of living crisis. The climate is collapsing at the hands of these people too. Our towns and cities have been turned into car dependent hellscapes, our precious community spaces ripped away by the rich for their "property portfolios". We get home from our understaffed workplace, exhausted and scarcely able to put food on the table. All while your bosses celebrate their year on year profit growth. I'm barely even scratching the surface.

BUT- as real as all this is... The people setting fire to our communities, siphening the value of our labour for profit, dodging taxes, and ruining the housing market- all they want for us is to be so hopeless that we can't imagine an alternative. They want us locked into fight or flight 24/7, away from community (why else would our towns and cities be designed to keep us so apart from each other?), and in poverty. That way, the act of even imagining a better future seems fanciful, frivolous and overly idealistic. They're relying on you giving up, they desperately hope that you'll disengage all together and keep suffering at worst, or to turn against your neighbours and minority groups at best... All while they continue to get richer and make your lives a living hell.

Just imagine if we had a shared vision of hope? A shared vision of better institutions. A vision of climate justice, one not of car centered hellscapes that drive us apart, but walkable, green and beautiful cities that bring us together. Policies and institutions that put people before profit: better wages, lower rent and cost of living. Being able to live in places where there are thriving, accessible high streets- buzzing with local businesses, where money goes back to the local economy, not to a billionaires fit to bursting pocket. Infrastructure to provide free public transport. Reliable busses, trains and trams with regular services throughout our neighbourhoods. Imagine being able to find a seat on a train, where you can sit in comfort knowing that you're not being charged extortionate fares that fund another countries public transport system?