Now that I am a grandmother, the future is no longer theoretical to me—it’s here, it’s arrived in the form of a curious, loving little girl who has come into this world with the same expectation I did—to live a good long life. Born in 2021, she is likely to see the turn of the 22^nd century. What kind of world will she be living in by then?

For the past few months, I have been following a splendid online course led by author and podcast host Manda Scott, called “Thrutopia”—the term coined by philosopher Rupert Read to describe a visionary narrative that threads the needle through the poles of dystopia and utopia, offering us instead a practical way through the current conflicts and troubles to a better future world. 

The class has been so inspiring that I am planning to teach a version of it myself, for my college students next spring, and I wanted to share a bit about it here on Transition Times, since that has been my own vision from the beginning of this blog, to chart the transition we’re living through, and find pathways to a brighter future.

You can’t be what you can’t see, and you can’t create what you can’t imagine. 

There is a difference between utopian pie-in-the-sky thinking, and a thrutopian, solutionary approach. The first step of crafting a thrutopia is to take stock of all the problems we face. It is a moment for blunt honesty about the challenges and the very real possibility that we will not find a good way through. This honesty is necessary to galvanize us to the kind of intense, sustained innovation and industry that will be necessary to overcome the obstacles. 

Once having sufficiently alarmed ourselves at the urgency of the present moment, we can train our minds on solutions. Again, this is no time for rose-colored glasses. But it is necessary to give our creativity free rein to imagine what the bright future that could be, and the steps that would be required to get there from here. 

In a thrutopian narrative, we give ourselves permission to imagine a positive future. 

We start with the big vision: humans living in harmony with each other and with the rest of the Earth community, let’s say. 

Then we break that down and start to imagine all the components of such harmony. In my Thrutopia class, we’ll be using the current United Nations Sustainable Development Goals as a framework for the categories we need to address.

In my experience, people are quick to raise obstacles to creative new ideas that involve change. For example, in the wake of Hurricane Fiona, watching the power company crews straining to remove trees, untangle wires, replace snapped wooden poles, and restore electricity, I suggested to my local Facebook community board that it would make sense to find alternatives to stringing power lines on poles, which is such an archaic, 19^th century method of transmitting electricity.

A lively discussion ensued, with many people agreeing that it would make sense to bury the lines, and others quick to raise objections: How would we handle the rocky terrain? Buried lines can be hard to repair if flooded. And above all, how would we pay for such an expensive construction project?

I responded to these objections with solutions: On rocky ground or places likely to flood, use close-to-the-ground pipes or concrete bunkers. The federal government could impose a financial transactions tax dedicated to climate change adaptation projects like the all-important task of hardening our electricity, telecommunications and internet connectivity to withstand the ever-stronger storms we’ll face in the 21^st century.

Where there’s a will there’s a way.

I have great confidence in our young engineers, architects and urban planners to develop innovative ways to cope with current climate challenges. The question is whether we will find the will to come together and make the necessary investment in our shared future.

The COVID-19 crisis and the great storms of this century are showing us that unless you want to spend your days isolated in a concrete bunker (or flying away to Mars) you cannot escape the impact of the crises now upon us. You can’t build a wall high enough to keep out pestilence or block a wild storm. 

In these early years of the 21^st century, there is a prevalent dystopian vision of a return to medieval feudalism—hence the popularity of fantasies like Game of Thrones, which romanticize that period. For ordinary men and women, those were hard, terrible times, steeped in the brutal mindset of might makes right. 

I don’t want to see a social reset that undoes the progress of the slow development of the concepts of human rights (and now, rights of nature and animal rights) and participatory democracy, which are based on ancient religious creeds like love your neighbor, do unto others, we are all One. 

To find our way through the great transition time now upon us, we have to call upon the better angels of our nature: our moral intelligence and empathy as well as our sheer problem-solving human ingenuity.

While not turning a blind eye to the problems and challenges, we can take a can-do collaborative approach, knowing that we are all in the same great lifeboat, our planet Earth, and we cannot thrive individually if some of us are ailing. 

To those who continue to fret about how we will pay for necessary changes, I ask you to think about this: If we shifted even a small percentage of the funds currently used for weapons and military build-up to designing climate-safe infrastructure, including renewable energy, that would be a huge investment in our shared future. 

All the money for the military and infrastructure comes from taxes. Like Thoreau in the 19^th century, we can begin to assert some agency over how our taxes are used. 

I know it’s hard to imagine reducing the military in a time when a dangerous maniac with nuclear weapons is threatening the world. But in the long run, in my thrutopia, the fruits of our collective labor will be used to enhance life, not to compete over who has the more powerful means to destroy life.

Thrutopias are practical, so: Given the necessity of continuing to defend against Putin and other dangerous armed heads of state, how about that financial transactions tax that’s been talked about for years? Why should ordinary folks pay taxes on the blood, sweat and tears of their labor, while the rich who make money through financial transactions pay nothing on the millions they reap at the push of a finger on the keyboard?

To those who say it’s just too expensive to undertake big infrastructure projects (like burying the power lines), I say:

What if your ancestors had said that about building the highways and bridges you now take for granted? What if they had said it wasn’t worth the money or effort to string electric wires out into the country? What if they had refused to invest in the design and implementation of tunnels or airports? 

Our ancestors had a bright and shining vision of the future that could be—the future that we have been enjoying our whole lives. 

Now it’s time to soberly admit the shadow side of our ancestors’ vision: the reality that the Earth can’t support unlimited human consumption of resources, nor can she process unlimited chemical wastes, be they in the form of fossil fuel emissions, plastics or soluble toxins. 

We have had ample time to study the situation. We know what needs fixing. We have a good sense of the solutions. It’s time to stop wringing our hands and fretting about the cost or the effort. 

Instead of obsessing about the obstacles, it’s time to roll up our collective sleeves and focus on the urgent, energizing task at hand: working together to lay the groundwork for a thriving future for our grandchildren. 

It’s an all-hands-on-deck moment. Ready or not, here we go!