The Good Future Project

If you have been around two year old children you have probably experienced them screaming out words in joy. They mischievously delight, especially at words they are not supposed to say. They play with words. Words have not yet become loaded with connotations and associations — especially not too many painful ones. Once we have had our heart broken, “love” for example has suddenly many new connotations it did not have before.

Words allow us to grasp the persistence of objects.

Kids learn this around the age of two. With persistence of objects now also develops a sense of time, the past and future become possibilities. We become “time-binders” as Count Korzybski called it.

Through words we can imagine what could be.

All creativity requires imagination. We have to allow ourselves to suspend our current reality and imagine what could be in the world in order to create it.

Humans have always done that. From the first cave paintings still using crude pictorial language to imagine the successful hunt — and consequently create it — , all the way to imagining and realizing space travel.

Throughout time we have created and told stories of possible futures.

Especially, when they are desirable futures, we call them utopias.

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