What is radical imagination? (and why our future depends on it)
What if the futures we take for granted aren’t the only ones possible? What if the world doesn’t have to follow the path set by headlines, policies or algorithms? Radical imagination is about opening that question up - noticing the possibilities around us and daring to picture something different, something more expansive and freer than the world we know.
Imagining as resistance
First, let’s be clear, the act of imagining isn’t radical at all. It’s a deeply human, and necessary act - a way to welcome in new futures and tend to our creative souls. In a world where being overwhelmed by constant information and obligations limits our time and energy, where passive acceptance of futures made by a small subset of people is encouraged and where playing, imagining, and storytelling is often dismissed as ‘something for kids,’ choosing to imagine becomes an act of resistance.
I’ve begun to notice how apocalyptic futures are presented within news headlines and daily conversation - futures filled with despair, floating around the collective psyche. Apocalypse rhetoric is seductive. It promises closure. A clean ending to a messy story. It gives us the illusion of control when uncertainty feels unbearable. ‘If it’s all ending,’ we think, ‘at least I know what happens next.’ As a result, the future has become something we brace for, not something we belong to. Something that’s declared to us, not something we contribute toward.
Choosing to imagine new worlds is a radical choice. It’s a refusal to surrender to apathy and to futures that aren’t made for us. It’s a way to co-create futures together rather than wait for someone else to define them. It’s easy to say we wish things were better, but if we aren’t actively imagining what those freer futures could look like, it becomes highly unlikely that they will ever materialise. We can’t build what we can’t imagine.
People in positions of power and authority project futures into our world all the time. They decide how governance will function, how social media platforms are designed, how housing, healthcare, and laws are shaped. These futures are clear, well-communicated, and largely unquestioned - and they limit the freedom of millions of people. If we aren’t consciously imagining alternatives, we default to the paths others have mapped for us.
Imagination that sustains
This is not about imagining vague, idealistic utopias just to escape the despair of modern life. I’ve personally found that imagining these sweet, perfect futures can feel like a quick release, a high from the pain of the world - but it almost always leads to a sharp crash back into reality. That comedown is not sustaining. Radical imagination isn’t about chasing temporary relief. It’s about developing a practice that provides lasting hope and momentum toward futures that feel real and achievable. It’s about expanding our capacity to imagine and giving ourselves permission to question what is possible, both in the present day and for generations to come.
To imagine in apocalyptic times is not to deny collapse, it’s to metabolise it. It’s to feel the grief, the rage, the exhaustion of witnessing a dying world, and then to listen for what still wants to live. Imagination is not an escape from reality. It’s a deeper form of contact with it. It’s a survival technology. The tool our ancestors used to dream themselves through famine, war, and empire.
Imagination in practise
Radical imagination can be practiced in small, concrete ways in daily life. You might imagine a new way your street could be designed to encourage gathering and connection, or picture neighbours interacting in ways that foster care and shared responsibility. In a workplace or community office, you could experiment with new ways of collaborating, communicating, or sharing resources that break from conventional hierarchies. These exercises don’t require big resources or grand visions, they are about noticing the possibilities in the systems and spaces we already inhabit and allowing ourselves to think differently about them.
When the future feels unreachable, start small. Begin with awe in the everyday. Notice the sounds of the children playing in the park, that corner filled with morning sunlight in the kitchen or the graceful movement of clouds floating across our sky. Awe re-sensitises us to aliveness. It rebuilds our connection to the everyday and the people we share it with.
Next, practice micro-imaginations. Picture what thriving could look like in the next week, not the next century. Imagine one street where people share food again. One community garden blooming where there used to be concrete. One conversation that makes someone feel less alone. Futures start small, fractal, embodied.
And don’t do it alone. The myth of the lone visionary is another product of capitalism. Collective imagination is how worlds are built. Gather with others - around dinner tables, under trees, in community halls, and ask: what does a just future feel like in the body? Then build practices that help you stay in relationship with that feeling.
The word apocalypse comes from the Greek apokálypsis - ‘to uncover, to reveal.’ What if what’s ending isn’t the world, but the illusion that the old one was ever sustainable? Maybe what’s being revealed is the truth of our interdependence, our fragility, and our need for each other.
We don’t have to believe in infinite progress to believe in the future. We just have to keep relating to it - tenderly, and as if it still matters. Because it does. The future is not waiting for us. It’s already here, quietly imagining us into it.
