More Positive Possibilities

These days I am working on writing solarpunk and positive speculative fiction. Solarpunk and speculative fiction point us toward ways of being and living together that many folks may not have even thought of.  The goal isn’t to depict the “correct” way we could be living in the future, the goal is to show that there are many possible ways and there should be many possibilities, that what the future looks like may vary from place to place.

In her book, Emergent Strategy, adrienne maree brown talks about “Creating More Possibilities” as an essential part of her strategy:  “… where we shape tomorrow towards abundance.”  She says, “…in order to create a world that works for more people, for more life, we have to collaborate on the process of dreaming and visioning and implementing that world.  We have to recognize that a multitude of realities have, do, and will exist. … The more people who cocreate the future, the more people whose concerns will be addressed from the foundational level in this world.”

My only problem with “creating more possibilities” is that there are folks (Trump, Putin, Netanyahu, Erdoğan, Modi, etc) who are busy trying to create possibilities that I fear are very hurtful to people.  I want to see us “producing more positive possibilities”–ones that support people and the planet and I think we need to produce lots and lots of them.

In adrienne maree brown’s book Loving Corrections, she quotes Ursula Leguin as saying: “I create alternatives. I show that alternatives exist. Probably the sum total of my messages to the world is that you do not have to do it one way.” 

I also like what Octavia Butler says in A Few Rules for Predicting the Future: “…there’s no single answer that will solve all our future problems.  There’s no magic bullet.  Instead there are thousands of answers–at least.”  

And what Mariame Kaba says in her book, We Do This ‘Til We Free Us: “I’ve been talking to folks about the importance of us building a million different little experiments, just building and trying and taking risks…  And the issue is to figure out which alternative works for what situation.” 

So that’s what I hope solarpunk and utopian works show: that “alternatives exist,” that there are many positive possibilities, “thousands of answers,” “a million different little experiments,” “in order to create a world that works for more people.”