The world becomes more beautiful with each day. / One doesn't know what might happen next... / Now everything, everything must change.
Ludwig Uhland
Anyone who proclaims "The future is full of light" these days is met with derisive ridicule. Or accused of mockery. We live in a twilight full of dark forebodings, and the future itself can no longer be taken for granted. No wonder, since the apocalypse is streaming into every household via a flat rate, making optimists seem like an endangered species.
Our future seems to be built on shaky ground. Until yesterday, everything was fine; today, much is no longer so good, and tomorrow—we mostly agree on this—nothing will be good anymore. We are so afraid of impending losses that we forget what we have and what we could be. Our reaction: paralysis. Fearing the real challenges, we flee into imagined horrors, not least to avoid the essential and necessary struggles, such as those against ecological crises. We abandon hope before the great test.
However, this description applies especially to the wealthy countries, such as Survey by the European Council on Foreign Relations recently discovered. Almost 60% of respondents in Central Europe are pessimistic about the future. In India, by contrast, the number is just six percent! (No exception: In Indonesia, it's seven percent.) How can that be?
Anyone who has spent some time in a refugee camp or a slum knows that those who have lost (almost) everything look to the future with courageous confidence. Giving up is not an option for them, for the simple reason that otherwise they would be doomed. In other words: pessimism is something you have to be able to afford. Those who laboriously support their families under the most difficult conditions and without support from a government agency or a rich uncle motivate themselves through their belief in a better future. People cannot survive in the struggle for existence otherwise. Pessimism requires a comfortable sofa and a cold beer.
Every historical upheaval is preceded by a general sense of uncertainty. On the one hand, utopian ideas are formulated (e.g., the abolition of slavery, women's suffrage, human rights), while on the other, people bury their heads in the sand (or marble, or concrete). There is always a quantum leap between the whining rhetoric of the end of the world and the luminous beauty of the new. And the choice between stagnation and new beginnings.
It is obvious that human progress first germinates in ideas, in the "unworldly," "abstruse," "naive" fantasies of thinkers and philosophers, activists and artists, before evolving into transformations. At the beginning there is a utopian ambition, and at the end, after countless struggles, a proud piece of positive human history. And because this is the case, in order to reclaim our confidence from the cloakroom of history, we must dust off bold, visionary thinking and channel it into the lifelines and bloodstreams of our daily thoughts and actions.
Depression can be cured with either pills or utopias. Not as political manifestos that claim to be know-it-alls. Not as ultimate truths. Not as dogmas. Rather, they can be narratives, visions capable of freeing the future from the shackles of present impositions. Such thoughts ventilate the stuffy chamber of our despondency.
Ilija Trojanov
To illustrate this dynamic, I would like to point to a wonderful, visionary project: the "Days of Utopia" in Vorarlberg (to be precise, at Arbogast Castle near Götzis). Every two years, people gather at this place to reflect on what will be and what could be. With a heightened sense of possibility and an open ear, they present ideas for a better future, for all people on earth and for our damaged planet. They present designs, concepts, and even projects that delve into the unknown and uncertain, alternatives to the present, which, as we all know, claims to have no alternative. Contrary to all dogmatic prophecies of doom in the media and digital spheres, such visions of a different design of society are by no means scarce or even nonexistent. On the contrary: they are diverse and abundant, but unfortunately, at the same time, mostly invisible and therefore little known.
On the first evening, I was invited to give a lecture, and the next day, there was an extensive and leisurely discussion. Among those present were interested participants from the regional business community. In my case, these were employees of an innovative and globally successful company that has introduced "flat" hierarchies (a rotation system for management positions is part of this) and practices innovation rather than preaching it. Over the course of an intensive, hour-long conversation, we discovered that in everyday professional life—as well as in society as a whole—the search for a solution to an acute problem dominates and thus restricts thinking, so that the intellectual horizon is limited by one's own four office walls. What would it be like, we continued to consider, if we reversed this restrictive approach and instead started from a vision of what is desired and hoped for. Since this vision would have to be formulated and discussed, more daring proposals and solutions would emerge in such a process. What would it be like if, starting from such a vision, we moved back to the current problem? What if, to continue with the image, we expanded the horizon so that we could sail back to that island that initially appeared to us to be the only continent?
Several months later, I met a professor in Mannheim who is dedicated to speculative design with students from five universities on four continents. In their projects, the young designers create alternative visions of the future with innovative potential for the present. I was invited to participate in one of the seminar sessions. The euphoria was palpable (slightly exaggerated) with all the senses. The invigorating and inspiring opportunity to think concretely and tangibly into the unknown. The projects presented were captivating, less because they demonstrated an immediate application, but because they opened windows and doors. The conceivable becomes the possible, and the possible one day becomes lived.
Unfortunately, the utopian has shrunk into a misunderstanding in our latitudes. The connection between the striving to improve oneself as a human being and social change has been severed. The individual is expected to perfect themselves, to achieve the best in themselves. Every person – so it is demanded – should respond flexibly and dynamically to stress and demands. Society, on the other hand, does not demand this. This is the crux of our era. Egomania has transformed the individual into a laboratory of self-experimental adaptation – in modern terms, resilience. We can more easily imagine turning humans into cyborgs or replacing them with robots and AI than changing the current framework of economic activity and work.
Egomania has transformed the individual into a laboratory of self-experimental adaptation—resilience, in modern German. We can more easily imagine turning humans into cyborgs or replacing them with robots and AI than changing the current framework of economic activity and work.
Ilija Trojanov
Depression can be cured with either pills or utopias. Not as political manifestos that claim to be know-it-alls. Not as ultimate truths. Not as dogmas. Rather, they can be narratives, visions capable of freeing the future from the shackles of present impositions. Such thoughts ventilate the stuffy chamber of our despondency.
Utopias are often criticized for being vague. True, but this is their strength: the diversity of approaches, the connection of numbers, figures, and symbols with dreams. The subversion of the quantifiable by imagination. Not a fruitless art of the impossible, but the positive reason of the necessary. A world of becoming. If we assume that each and every one of us is blind in one eye due to our individual cognitive limitations, we would also have to distrust the zeitgeist and direct our closed gaze toward the visionary. In this sense, utopia promises the healing of our partial or intentional blindness.
Shortly after the Second World War, the Swedish author Stig Dagerman wrote: "For times without hope, there is no greater prison than the future. Utopias have collapsed; it is autumn. In the rain on the main square of the future, active hopelessness is building a new Bastille." Yet there are good reasons to be optimistic. Despite a system that rewards self-interest and greed, we witness daily acts of solidarity, mutual aid, and collaborative solutions. These small and large acts of assistance contribute more to the balance of society than those profitable, quantifiable processes that serve to secure power and wealth for an ever-smaller segment of society. Without utopias, we are threatened by hopelessness, and this is "preemptive defeat" (as Karl Jaspers put it). Should these mental journeys produce little concrete results, "a life in dreamland makes one happy" (as Mahatma Gandhi put it). The occasional lingering in daydreamland immunizes against the rampant fear of the future. I highly recommend it. And we should not wait until we are invited to a round table, but open a visionary round table ourselves.
Ilija Trojanow, writer, editor, and translator, is a cosmopolitan, a public intellectual, and a great storyteller. In 2006, he published the novel "The Collector of Worlds," which became a worldwide success. In his 2023 novel "A Thousand and One Tomorrows," he envisions a peaceful future in which man-made crises have already been overcome.
