Comments on: Charlie Stross: Let a Thousand Utopia’s Bloom https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/charlie-stross-let-a-thousand-utopias-bloom/2010/12/25 Researching, documenting and promoting peer to peer practices Sat, 25 Dec 2010 16:52:17 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.5.15 By: james william gibson https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/charlie-stross-let-a-thousand-utopias-bloom/2010/12/25/comment-page-1#comment-458238 Sat, 25 Dec 2010 16:52:17 +0000 http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=12571#comment-458238 Part of our inability to imagine alternative, “utopian” visions comes from left-liberal rhetorical conventions that permeate much of the alternative media. The thinking seems to be that people do not know how terrible advanced capitalism and empire are, and that therefore we need to hear more and more about their atrocities. In this discursive model, there is an assumption that once people finally grasp the corruption of the system, then they will revolt.

If a writer describes or analyzes positive, creative tendencies in the present that might open up utopian possibilities, then he or she is dismissed as a pansy, as someone who does not grasp just how bad things are. (I think my own work on the cultural reenchantment of nature, “A Reenchanted World” falls into this category.)

But the “Favela” future advocates fail to grasp that few people are motivated by images and stories of impending apocalypse. Instead, people need to see the contours of a better world emerging in the present (a pre-figurative society and culture); they need to feel hope and connection, not fear.

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