From What Is to What If: Unleashing the Power of Imagination to Create the Future We Want, reviewed

Review of From What Is to What If: Unleashing the Power of Imagination to Create the Future We Want, by Rob Hopkins. Published by Chelsea Green books, available here.

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 Unleashing the Power of Imagination to Create the Future We Want, reviewed

We have been fans of Rob Hopkins and his work since he was at The Hollies in West Cork, many years ago. He then returned to the UK and launched the impressive and influential Transition Towns movement. He has remained someone to watch and be inspired by ever since then. This book, published in 2019 is another valuable addition to the growing literature of those aiming to help us to reimagine the world in a better, more positive, more sustainable light.

Hopkins has not taken a plane since 2006, and in many ways was ahead of his time in terms of recognising that a book like this could still be written easily and powerfully by using the internet to make all the relevant calls he needed to make. The book is packed with interesting and relevant examples from all over the world. The inspiration is out there, we just have to look for it, and learn from it too.

Written prior to a whole world of lockdowns and pandemics his ideas and thinking however remain deeply relevant, and ask the important questions we need to be asking ourselves. How can we reimagine how we life, to do so in a more holistic and sustainable way. There is no reason not to engage with the ideas in a book like this, and, if we can get enough people inspired, humanity still has a chance to plot a path to a more liveable and sustainable future. One to read asap.

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