There's a terrible power in controlling how we collectively imagine the future. Right now the options seem to be a plutocrat-led Metaverse+pod lifestyle, or gathering apocalyptic collapse. Some want to return to 2019, but is this desirable?

What about a different imagining?

What about a renaissance of domestic manufacturing, of a mass rejection of the administrative culture for a return to trades? To make cities and small towns hum again, not with throwaway culture, but with the art of making lasting beauty?

What about a return to seasonality and animal husbandry, golf courses with sheep and chickens in every yard? An end to CFOs and a restoration of family farms to the many who yearn to work with their hands? Attention to the needs of the body rather than the algorithm

A dwindling work week, an end to instant gratification culture. Yes, less travel. Yes, less restaurants. Sorry. But: more fruit trees. More time off work. Local goods you know, less time spent shopping and maintaining throwaway plastic culture.

Herbalists in walking distance, doctors who know your name, neighborhood co-ops rather than factory schooling, an end to putting our elderly in institutions to die alone, an end to advertising blight, a restoration of canals lit at every lock by a Marian grotto