We change the world by using Utopia as a tool

Gert Tjoelker, teacher at DRH Lindersvold

“We change the world by using Utopia as a tool”

Duration: 1 hour

VENUE: Common Hall

CONTENT

‘You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one’ (Imagine, song by John Lennon)

In this workshop we will take inspiration from our broken world, a world where multiple crises loom. From here we dream about another world, a better world, a more just world, a world with peace, a world filled with truth, knowledge and understanding, a world filled with brother- and sisterhood, a world in which humanity takes care of mother nature. We dream, we imagine, we formulate and we acknowledge that any better world is to be found in the collective imagination of we, the people.

We, Human Beings have language. We communicate with each other extensively into the smallest details through for example talking. We can talk for hours to each other about anything, and we have done so for thousands of years.

We also communicate through writing and reading books. At least a million of books have been written and even more books have been read.

Humans are story tellers. Through story telling we give meaning to events and through story telling we create ideas about the why and the how of events happening in the world. For humans to take in the meaning of a story, we need to be able to imagine. Humans are able to learn from events happened in the past in such a way that we are able to make changes in the now that lead to a different future.

So, Humans have 2 superpowers that are closely related, the one is to imagine and the other is to make changes based on what we imagine that affect the future.

It is because of this, that we humans can use Utopia as a tool to change the world. We imagine another future, another society, based on the knowledge and understanding that we have about our world today – like Thomas More did in the year 1516 with his book Utopia. Imagining another society or other aspects of society, is a powerful tool that can help us to change the world.