I read this really nice post from the Prisons, Prose, & Protest blog about how important it is to practice imagining a better future.
It reminds me a bit of the “Reading Weird Fiction in An Age of Fascism” article I linked to a while back, in that both are about combining a particular, progressive mindset with creative speculation. Whereas the weird fiction article was more about identifying problems that currently exist, the PPP post is about dreaming out way past those problems. I think the latter is more important, if for no other reason than it’s done less often and so we need more of it.
I’ve been thinking recently on how I’m calmer about all the political shit currently happening than some people around me. What Trump et al. are doing is very, very bad, but it doesn’t have a huge impact on my day to day mental health. A TON of that can be chalked up to my privilege, but some is probably due to the fact that I run “cool” in general.
I want to bottle my equanimity and give it to others. I’ve thought about trying to write about my point of view, but I’m exactly the wrong person to do that. My cool emotional temperature is involuntary, which means I don’t have great insight into how to cultivate it.
But my engagement with imagination and hope is much more deliberate. I’ve noticed that utopian thinking can move me from feeling washed out or glum to feeling fired up. Maybe that’s something I can explore further, and potentially offer to others who are looking for help changing their mood.
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