Big ideas that just might save the world--The Guardian

The founder of the international Transition Towns movement asks why true creative, positive thinking is in decline, asserts that it's more important now than ever, and suggests ways our communities can revive and reclaim it.

In these times of deep division and deeper despair, if there is a consensus about anything in the world, it is that the future is going to be awful. There is an epidemic of loneliness, an epidemic of anxiety, a mental health crisis of vast proportions, especially among young people. There's a rise in extremist movements and governments. Catastrophic climate change. Biodiversity loss. Food insecurity. The fracturing of ecosystems and communities beyond, it seems, repair. The future--to say nothing of the present--looks grim.

But as Transition movement cofounder Rob Hopkins tells us, there is plenty of evidence that things can change, and cultures can change, rapidly, dramatically, and unexpectedly--for the better. He has seen it happen around the world and in his own town of Totnes, England, where the community is becoming its own housing developer, energy company, enterprise incubator, and local food network--with cascading benefits to the community that extend far beyond the projects themselves.

We do have the capability to effect dramatic change, Hopkins argues, but we're failing because we've largely allowed our most critical tool to languish: human imagination. As defined by social reformer John Dewey, imagination is the ability to look at things as if they could be otherwise. The ability, that is, to ask What if? And if there was ever a time when we needed that ability, it is now.

Imagination is central to empathy, to creating better lives, to envisioning and then enacting a positive future. Yet imagination is also demonstrably in decline at precisely the moment when we need it most. In this passionate exploration, Hopkins asks why imagination is in decline, and what we must do to revive and reclaim it. Once we do, there is no end to what we might accomplish.

From What Is to What If is a call to action to reclaim and unleash our collective imagination, told through the stories of individuals and communities around the world who are doing it now, as we speak, and witnessing often rapid and dramatic change for the better.

There are an infinite number of possible futures that lie ahead of us--like threads stretching out into the distance. Rob Hopkins, cofounder of the international Transition Network movement, invites us to travel to future worlds we would actually want to live in.

In 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted every aspect of daily life, climate activist and Transition Network cofounder Rob Hopkins responded the way a lot of people did: by starting a podcast. But it wasn't any ordinary podcast. In each episode, Hopkins and his guests would time travel together to the year 2030--walking down imagined future streets, talking with imagined future neighbors, visiting imagined future local businesses. While Hopkins's guests came from all walks of life--economists, politicians, bakers, comedians, novelists and more--they all shared a willingness to suspend their worries about the future long enough to mentally inhabit and then describe a world they were thrilled to be a part of.

What Hopkins discovered was no less profound: this simple exercise of visiting a positive future forced him to rethink the work he'd been doing as a climate activist for decades.

How to Fall in Love with the Future is the result of that radical disruption--and Hopkins's deep dive into the people and movements throughout history who have used visions of the future to inspire positive change on a large and dramatic scale. From the life and writings of musician Sun Ra and the history of Black utopian movements to the latest neuroscience on what goes on in our minds--and hearts--when we time travel, Hopkins brings essential new thinking to anyone overwhelmed with dread and anxiety for the future. He asks us to consider: what would the world look like if we all got to work imagining--and then building--a world we were deeply in love with?

Rob Hopkins puts imagination back at the heart of future-dreaming, offering us an irresistible invitation to dream bigger and then make those dreams a reality.--Kate Raworth, author of Doughnut Economics