Ultimately what future do we want for our world?

Ultimately what future do we want for our world?

Research participant, Wimmera PCP, August 2016

I am hoping to submit the thesis tomorrow, finally. For some time I have been meaning to finish the post I started on this theme, and now seems a good time to do it.

I took this photo some weeks ago while waiting for the tram

This is Kings Way, South Melbourne, in peak hour morning traffic. It's in the inner south east of Melbourne, where this project started.

In the words of the research participant above, I asked whether this is the future we want for our world. This is the society which has got us to where we are - basically facing an ecological crisis. As I've discussed on the blog before, it sometimes seems to me as if many policy makers in our society think we can just go on pretty much like this, only with renewable technologies and smart cars. 

Whereas I, and others in this project, have a different vision - a society that is much greener, and fairer and healthier - one where cars would be less dominant, an inclusive and healthy society where everyone could walk or ride in safety, where there were plants, including food plants, and other species could also flourish.

So I tried to envisage this, and I did it in an embodied way - drew it.

That's Kings Way as it might be, in the future I want. It's not the greatest drawing, but it was interesting to draw it, to use the body as well as the mind, after writing all the thousands of words in the thesis.

Others might envisage it differently - sing it, write in imaginative poetry or prose, act it out in (in the street maybe) - but it is an interesting exercise.

I encourage everyone to imagine what the future might be.