Imagine if we acted now? It’s not easy, but we have to try
Last week marked two anniversaries that, rather than making us reflect on times past, should be considered to help reimagine times present and future. The first anniversary was on 9 September 2021, which marked the 50th anniversary of the release of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s anthem, Imagine. Written in 1971, Imagine
has become an anti-war cry that has captured humanity’s imagination because of its simple elucidation of a set of values and ideals based on love, solidarity and mutuality.
The second anniversary, 11 September 2021, marked 20 years since the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York, known as 9/11.
Lennon wrote Imagine at a time when the world was in transition. It is in transition again.
Imagine charts a road away from hate, asking people to imagine a world with “nothing to kill or die for”. It ended with the refrain that: “You may think I’m a dreamer,
But I’m not the only one,
I hope some day you’ll join us,
And the world will live as one.”
Lennon was far from being the only one. However, much as Imagine may have taken root in our minds, it did little to change the values of our politics. Despite the growing recognition of human rights in law and politics, we could not imagine a political economy of love. In fact, the opposite – within a decade that transition had given birth to a new era celebrating unbridled consumption, and inventing excuses and blame for poverty – at enormous cost to society and the planet.
Imagining the future
Today, we are in a time of social transition again, which has been accelerated by Covid-19.
In a recent article in London’s Financial Times, A Climate Plan for a World in Flames, the award-winning novelist Kim Stanley Robinson taunts us with the question and answer:
“What does it feel like to live on the brink of a vast historical change? It feels like now.”
Robinson’s article goes through the factors that are propelling us eyes-wide-open into an unprecedented catastrophe, but warns that, unlike Afghanistan and previous wars, “we can’t just gather our diplomats and call it off, declare peace with the biosphere”.
Coincidentally, the anniversaries of Imagine and 9/11 occur the week before the International Day of Democracy, which the United Nations punts as “an opportunity to review the state of democracy in the world”.
Now is indeed a crucial time to review the state of our democracy, because the choices our governments make in the next decade, particularly in mitigating climate change, will determine the future of humanity.
In the face of 2021’s searing heat-induced fires and floods, more and more people have become aware of the scale of the climate crisis. But fewer people are aware that we will not be able to mitigate global heating successfully without simultaneously tackling the crisis of inequality and social injustice.
In fact, the climate crisis is an embodiment of the world’s wrong priorities: consumption rather than compassion. That’s why we need to heed Lennon’s plea to reimagine.
Can we imagine a world with “nothing to kill or die for”, one where there is “no need for greed and hunger?” Or is that impossible?
But imagination and change need to start at home. If we imagined a different approach to economy and democracy in SA, we would find that the barriers to the wellbeing of all are largely to do with rules we have imposed on ourselves, rather than material obstacles: Despite widespread hunger we produce enough food for all in South Africa. Despite austerity there is enough money to provide for the constitutional rights of all people.
Despite unemployment there is enough work to be done by all who want to work in constructing a fair and safe society. Last week, in the course of a discussion about Imagine, a friend suggested that I use my imagination to think about how the world might look on the 100th anniversary of Imagine.
As things stand right now, based on a global scientific consensus described in the sixth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2071 will be a very different world from 2021 or 1971. It will be a world that has overheated; where hundreds of millions of people will have died owing to the climate crisis; where more species have become extinct; where democracy, as we know it today, is confined to history books.
If we are to avoid this future it’s time to listen to our artists and poets, it’s time to imagine again – and it’s time to act.