Our present moment is saturated in dystopian, apocalyptic fantasies of the future.
As the late Mark Fisher said, "It's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.” We can envision a thousand ways that humanity might destroy itself and the rest of the world, but positive visions of the future remain severely lacking in comparison. Why is that?
The Dark Ages led to the Renaissance. Feudalism led to capitalism. No era remains stagnant forever. But there's an invisible meme in our culture today that says capitalism is the greatest economic idea humanity has ever invented and it will never be surpassed. That's why a thousand dystopian visions of the future all imagined that capitalism stayed the same, our economic paradigm never evolved... and then the world was eventually destroyed. Could the two be connected? Is our failure to imagine something better than capitalism going to be what actually leads to "the bad ending" for humanity?
What this points to, in our view, is a crisis of imagination.
Humans at heart are storytellers, and we enact the stories we tell ourselves. As we've written before, our culture is enacting a story that's destroying the world. If humanity is going to unlock "the good ending," we've got to imagine it first. We've got to imagine ten thousand localized versions of it. That's how things change.
Fortunately, visions of a more beautiful, compassionate, regenerative future already exist. But since they're not being broadcast daily on the evening news, we've got to dedicate a little more energy towards broadcasting them ourselves. This is what this list of films is for. These films decided that the apocalypse is canceled. Climate change is canceled. Biodiversity loss is canceled. A comeback of this scale has never been attempted before, but that's why it's going to work. Ya dig? The people in these films aren't listening to the folks that say it's too late. They're imagining the future they want, not the future they're afraid of, and they're bringing that future into being.
Whether we're ultimately successful is not the point, and beyond anyone's ability to truly know. The point is that our true nature calls us to choose determination over defeat, and resilience over despair.
We hope these films inspire the former - that place in your heart that knows a better world *is* possible, and is ready to make it happen.
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What films would you add to this list? Let us know.
So far here's what you've recommended:
PS. What are these bad and good endings we mentioned? Here's a snapshot:
The bad ending: globalized, unfettered capitalism powered by fossil fuels triggers a series of climate change feedback loops that destabilizes civilization and leads to 10,000 generations living in a permanently impoverished world, where most of the world's biodiversity went extinct, and humanity's worst impulses were magnified by scarcity, war, disease, and famine.
The good ending: humanity takes back control of their governments and enacts measures to prevent the corporate capture of "the people's house" forever, rapidly transitions to 100% renewable energy, stabilizes capitalism before it descends into totalitarian fascism by advancing a raft of democratic socialist programs, then transitions further towards an ecosocialist, cooperative degrowth economy, with thousands of localized variations supported by myriad experiments in liquid democracy and dynamic governance. The worst climate change tipping points are averted, and humanity becomes a regenerative, healing presence on the Earth. Measurements for freedom, happiness, health, equality and creativity are higher than ever thought possible during previous eras.
- Note: we could have written the "good ending" in 100 different ways because we don't think there's one good ending. The good endings are infinite. It's up to each of us to present our vision of what that looks like. Work it into being. Refine it. Synthesize it with other great endings. And then we'll see what happens! The future is unwritten, and we can all make a contribution, in collaboration with others.