How to Fall in Love with the Future—Rob Hopkins #205

Interactive Transcript

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spk_0 I'm Scott Snibby and this is How to Train a Happy Mind.

spk_0 Rob Hopkins is one of the people doing the most to assure that humanity has a healthy, thriving,

spk_0 and yes, happy future.

spk_0 I was blown away by his new book How to Fallen Love with the Future,

spk_0 which describes a radical new type of climate activism he's invented,

spk_0 where instead of bemoaning the current state of the world,

spk_0 he invites us to imagine the world we want to live in that's just around the corner

spk_0 and then do everything we can to make it a reality.

spk_0 Join me now to find out how to fallen love with the future.

spk_0 Rob Hopkins, I am so thrilled to have you back on How to Train a Happy Mind.

spk_0 You were the love-ad guest in the past talking about the transition network

spk_0 and all the wonderful things you've done to help local communities gradually scale

spk_0 to help save the world and provide you with better upgrades.

spk_0 And now you're back, you sent me an advanced copy of your book How to Fallen Love with the Future.

spk_0 And I fell in love with the book, so welcome Rob.

spk_0 Thanks.

spk_0 Now just hearing that probably people may be scratching their heads,

spk_0 you described the future as something we can fall in love with.

spk_0 Why do you think love is the most powerful motivator for action today and not fear

spk_0 or urgency, which are probably the more dominant methods being employed?

spk_0 If Martin Luther King had said, I have a nightmare.

spk_0 History would have recorded that speech very differently.

spk_0 I feel like we're living in a time here in the middle of 2025 when we're recording this,

spk_0 where for many, many people it feels like the future is being cancelled,

spk_0 the future is being colonized, the future is disappearing for people.

spk_0 There's that line in 1984 George or was 1984, if you want to imagine the future,

spk_0 the picture a human boot stamping on the human face forever or whatever, that horrible quote is,

spk_0 and I feel like now it's basically we've just replaced that with Elon Musk doing Nazi salutes.

spk_0 And it's really dangerous because it means we kind of stop thinking and dreaming and planning

spk_0 and seeing the future as being something that we can in any way shape, have any kind of involvement

spk_0 in them. As anyone who listened to the first episode, well, well, no, my work is very much

spk_0 underpinned by trying to find creative responses to the climate and ecological emergency.

spk_0 And I feel like again, we're living in a time where what the far right are doing in the US,

spk_0 but also all around the world, increasingly terrifyingly, is that they point to the future and they

spk_0 say all the future looks terrifying, but we are strong and powerful and we will protect you from that.

spk_0 And if what's happening at the same time is the people who are the more progressive people,

spk_0 the people who understand climate science, the people whose politics and world view is actually

spk_0 rooted in compassion and care and goodness, I suppose, to some degree. If they also were just

spk_0 painting terrifying visions of the future, people have nowhere to run to, people are kind of trapped,

spk_0 like rabbits between two different sets of headlights. And so for me, I feel like what I'm trying

spk_0 to say is that for a while, that narrative that we saw in the climate movement that was about

spk_0 collapse and extinction was really important because we need to understand that that is, that's

spk_0 where we're headed, but that's a terrible motivator. And so really, the question that one of the

spk_0 questions that underpins the new book is what if we saw the purpose of our activism as being

spk_0 to help people cultivate longing for the future for a different future, a future that yeah,

spk_0 it's maybe on the outer edges of possibility, but it's still possible, it's there, and we could still

spk_0 do that. And so that's why I talk about falling in love with the future because longing is such an

spk_0 intense, powerful human emotion, but longing is somehow more than really strong desire.

spk_0 Longing is like a sort of a soul ache, you know, like it's, it's your first love, it's a deep, deep

spk_0 yearning. And I feel like that's what we need to be trying to cultivate in terms of when we're

spk_0 talking about what a low carbon future would be like, how do we bring that alive for people? And one

spk_0 of the recognitions that comes with that is those of us who climate activists, the people who are

spk_0 climate scientists, we're not very good at that. And so we can't help people fall in love with the

spk_0 future without bringing in artists and poets and storytellers and people who are can advertising

spk_0 and people in our culture who are the people who are good at helping people fall in love with

spk_0 things. You know, when I read your distinction between desire and longing, it brought up something

spk_0 that people ask me a lot as someone who leads Buddhist meditations because when you say, oh,

spk_0 desires of delusion, people say, what really aren't there nice desires like desiring for a healthy

spk_0 planet. And in the Buddhist worldview, they very precisely articulate the mental factors and they

spk_0 say, no, desire is like this uncomfortable feeling like you can't be happy unless you get something,

spk_0 which you can feel as an activist like it's part of like that despair. But there's another

spk_0 mental factor called aspiration, which is that longing, like that's the healthy form of wanting

spk_0 something. Yeah, I mean, didn't the Buddha to say that desire was like uneasamed on the edge of a

spk_0 razor blade, which is always an image that needs to be with me. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

spk_0 That's part of the power of longing for me. One of the stories that I tell in the book is about

spk_0 the kind of human project to get to the moon, you know, that actually Jules Verne wrote a book in 1865

spk_0 called From the Earth to the Moon where he pulled together all the best evidence and research and

spk_0 engineering you could find at the time about how you might actually do that. And then wrote a

spk_0 really exciting thrilling story about how we went to the moon. And that book became so popular

spk_0 that it inspired loads of scientists and engineers to start figuring out how might we actually do

spk_0 this? How could this work? And then that then inspired other storytellers and musicians and

spk_0 filmmakers. The first feature film 1902 was called A Trip to the Moon. You have this whole genre of

spk_0 popular science people writing these magazines, but well, well, we eat on the moon. How will we

spk_0 play football on the moon? All this sort of stuff. The storytelling goes first. It creates the

spk_0 longing to get there. We don't have a hundred years when we're talking about climate and change

spk_0 and the ecological crisis. But the same principle applies, I think. You know, we need to be giving

spk_0 people, we need to be got so much better at giving people things to run towards rather than just

spk_0 things to run screaming in the opposite direction from. The famous quote by John F. Kennedy, right? Like

spk_0 we choose to go to the moon and do these other things not because it's easy, but because it's

spk_0 hard. And in that Boston accent, I quote that all the time. My daughter knows it by heart. But we

spk_0 don't have faltishes in saying those things so much anymore. Do we? No, we don't.

spk_0 I was very struck reading your book. How what you do as an activist has changed. You know, in many

spk_0 ways since the last time we spoke that now you show up as a time traveler from the future and tell

spk_0 this story of coming back from a world that's working. What does this metaphor unlock for you that

spk_0 other forms of activism don't of being a time traveler? You know, I turned 57 this year. I've been

spk_0 involved in in activism in some shape or form since I was about 14 probably. And I kind of

spk_0 I kind of feel like right now we're losing this at quite an epic scale. And I don't know what will

spk_0 work. But I know that it needs to look different from all the things that we've been doing up until

spk_0 now because they haven't words. They aren't working. They work bits. Some things work a bit. But I feel

spk_0 like since the Paris Agreement in 2015 we have seen a massive pushback from oil and gas companies

spk_0 from the meat industry from plastics, all these from agrochemical companies. And we're slipping and

spk_0 slipping and slipping and slipping. But actually for me this idea of time travel came about in about

spk_0 2021. I saw a t-shirt a young woman was wearing at a Black Lives Matter protest in Washington and

spk_0 it said I've been to the future we won. And it gave me goose bumps. Maybe it might be giving some

spk_0 of your listeners goose bumps right now. And it made me think that's brilliant. What if that was how

spk_0 we communicated and talked about the change that we need to make? I read recently my friend Sarah

spk_0 Corbet who does what she calls craftivism. She said we need to move from furious to curious.

spk_0 Which I thought was really really lovely. And so about three weeks after I saw this t-shirt and it had

spk_0 just set my mind racing, well what would that actually look like? I've been to the future we won.

spk_0 Like how would you actually communicate that? What would activism look like if it grew out of that?

spk_0 And I was invited up to London by extinction rebellion to speak at a big event they were

spk_0 organizing called the big one. 100,000 people surrounding parliament calling for more action on climate.

spk_0 And I thought okay I'm going to try something different for this. So I went and bought like this

spk_0 sort of white bodysuit thing from a shop. I bought this sort of space helmet thing and I went

spk_0 along and I just gave this tool where I've said I've just parked my time machine around the corner

spk_0 and I've just come back from 2030 and I've just rushed around here to tell you oh my god it's

spk_0 amazing and we saw this and we saw that. The bicycle rush hours of 2030 were amazing and the

spk_0 regenerative farming and the this and the that you know it was quite theatrical. I kind of imagined

spk_0 I was like finniest fog just come back from some amazing adventure talking about this.

spk_0 And there was a moment about two thirds of the way in where I said something like

spk_0 having been there and having seen how it turned out.

spk_0 Just standing here in front of you all and telling you about it makes me feel really emotional.

spk_0 And I looked round at the faces of the people around me. There were lots of people also

spk_0 stood around like very close in like sort of like in the 1950s sort of political speeches you know.

spk_0 And there were tears on people's faces and I thought this is really interesting. What's going on here?

spk_0 And so that's really was the inquiry that started me on writing the book. What's going on in

spk_0 people's minds? And that's why now I have this sort of character have been the time travel and

spk_0 and build this whole narrative that you know here in Tornés we built this time machine and it

spk_0 works like this and we bring back artifacts from the future. We bring back photos from the future.

spk_0 We bring back different things. We take people there. We're developing a comic book which tells

spk_0 the story about how we built the time machine to travel to collect recordings in the future.

spk_0 We've made a music project called Field Recordings from the Future based on the idea that

spk_0 I go to record places in 2025 that already found like the future needs to sound like

spk_0 and then work with this ambient electronic music artist who then makes these beautiful pieces of

spk_0 music and we've developed this live music and video performance which takes people into

spk_0 experience that future. And last night for the first time I've been working with this young

spk_0 engineer who's just built us a predict your future machine where you press the button and

spk_0 prints you out futures from 2030. One of the people I talk about in the book quite a lot is Sun

spk_0 Ra, the jazz musician and he always told the story that he wasn't actually a human being at all.

spk_0 He was actually an angel from Sutton and I read an article about him that described him as being

spk_0 that he did what he did with an unshakable certainty and a deadpan humor and that's kind of

spk_0 the quality that I try and do this stuff with. What you do is like it's like a kind of climate

spk_0 improv, right? One of the things you learn in improv comedy is you're never allowed to say no.

spk_0 You have to say yes and yes and yes and that comes early in your book too. You say time travel

spk_0 or training forbids sayings like that's never going to work. I think a lot of people are grumbling

spk_0 hearing that right now. Can you explain why pessimism is forbidden and then what's the role of

spk_0 criticism analysis in making a better future? So the book starts with a like a report back on a

spk_0 recent trip that we took to 2030. So it's like it gives people an experience of walking down the

spk_0 streets and across the rooftops of 2030. So we always say that we wear the time travel suits that

spk_0 we wear not to protect us but to protect people in the future. They have a kind of anti-synicism

spk_0 coating on them. That means that if we happen to bring any residual despondency and despair with us

spk_0 from 2025 into that 2030 it's not going to impact what's happening and we use this term where we

spk_0 say you know one of the things we're forbidden from doing is any past explaining because in this

spk_0 2030 there is this sense of excitement and exhilaration that people can see the world around them

spk_0 changing really quickly and they're really excited about it and it's a really thrilling thing.

spk_0 And so if we rock up from 2025 and say well that's never going to work it's not actually really

spk_0 very helpful you know it's like even in the present we wouldn't really want that when we're

spk_0 trying to change things. So this work and this that the ideas that are pulled together and how to

spk_0 fall in love with the future is not something what I'm saying this has to replace all other forms

spk_0 of activism. This is now the way everybody has to do everything absolutely not and there is also

spk_0 of course a huge and very important role for work around grief. So grief tending work you know all

spk_0 of this at the work of Dr. Macy all of these sorts of things still are very very important.

spk_0 What I'm doing is I'm not saying the future will turn out like this what I'm doing is saying

spk_0 but it could it could and if we shoot down the possibility that it could then we're done for.

spk_0 I'm also recognizing that this anti-despair coding is also for you right that you do feel

spk_0 that despair and you're finding ways to antidote it in yourself. You know I always say in my talks if

spk_0 you're not regularly terrified about climate and ecological crisis you're not paying attention.

spk_0 This is not an approach that somehow emerges from some sort of clappy happy clappy sort of

spk_0 hopian sort of somehow skirting around the around the crisis. For me when I was writing this book

spk_0 one of the most important bits of it comes quite early on when I interview Peter Calmas

spk_0 who is a climate scientist who is one of for me one of the one the most important people working

spk_0 in climate science because he's somebody who is not prepared any longer to sit in a kind of academic

spk_0 ivory tower writing papers. He needs to be out in the world doing something about it. He's been

spk_0 arrested once for you chaining himself to the front of the chase bank who was still outrageously

spk_0 funding on and gas projects and also for block aiding a private jet airport. And so I had a long

spk_0 conversation with him where I said as a climate scientist you know you are presenting these

spk_0 reports which show like all the sort of the different trends and you know where we're headed if

spk_0 we don't do anything and that's what your work is focused on is that line there. But what's the line

spk_0 that we don't hear so much about which is the line of well what would it look like if we did

spk_0 everything we possibly could have done draw that line for me. What does that line look like because

spk_0 we never talk about that line. And he said well that's what I call going into emergency mode.

spk_0 And that means phasing out fossil fuels very quickly, phasing out industrial meat production very

spk_0 quickly. If we did that we could still stay below two degrees and then we could start out scale

spk_0 doing all the natural things that draw down the carbon, the seaweed forest, the soils etc etc etc.

spk_0 And I said well that's fantastic but emergency mode is a rubbish name for it like no one's going to go

spk_0 oh let's go into emergency mode you know that actually we need to be calling it like you know

spk_0 delicious possibility mode or something like that you know we we've left this little sole

spk_0 procrastinated sole that if we'd started 20 years ago it would have been quite a gentle curve we'd

spk_0 have had to navigate now it's like almost a perpendicular drop that we need to make. But we have

spk_0 to make it because if we don't make it we're toast and so for me it's like how do we tell the stories

spk_0 about that that it feels like we're moving towards something that it feels like something that

spk_0 we're excited to take part in and that's only done if we can conjure the magic of longing in the

spk_0 way that we talk about that. I mean this is your bread and butter of your life and you fill the book

spk_0 with some of these stories of vivid sensory examples of actual transformation right now like

spk_0 depaving streets rooftop gardens. I was particularly struck by the story of the German city of

spk_0 Oban. Could you just tell it briefly how the people of the city took charge of a better future

spk_0 because the couple stories like this in your book really made me feel more probably that this

spk_0 is possible. This is in Freiburg in Germany it's a district and it's called Val-Bale and it was

spk_0 an old French military barracks I think and then when the French Army decommissioned that and

spk_0 moved out then there was a like a public consultation process about what should happen there and

spk_0 the public got very very involved with it and said we want this to be like a really radically low

spk_0 carbon sustainable neighborhood and one of the elements of that was they wanted it to be as

spk_0 car free as possible and what often happens with those things is that yeah you start out with that

spk_0 and then over time it gets worn down and worn down and we'll have some cars and but we'll just have

spk_0 less you know the Val-Bale is like it's like 3,000 people live in this neighborhood and in the

spk_0 whole heart of this thing there's no cars if you live on a street you can if you have a car you can

spk_0 bring it into drop stuff off but there's nowhere for you to leave it on the street there's like a

spk_0 shared community car parking multi-story thing just on the edge with solar panels all over the roof

spk_0 but there's no parking within the main development and so I went there for this project I'm doing

spk_0 where we're making recordings of the future thinking well I know what it'll sound like it'll sound

spk_0 like children playing and bicycles going past I spent like three days there making field recordings

spk_0 and after a while I started to notice there were things that I could hear because the background

spk_0 growl of the internal combustion engine had gone away I could hear things like people having

spk_0 piano lessons in their houses which I could never remember having heard that before hearing

spk_0 lives and forks on people's plates inside their houses so you began to be able to hear human life

spk_0 in more granular sort of detail it's amazing there's a couple of places in the book which is like

spk_0 when you arrived there you literally feel like you've stepped into the future it looks similar to

spk_0 things you know and it takes you a little while to figure out what is it that's different you know

spk_0 so one is Valleban and the other one is the cycling infrastructure in in Newtract in Holland in

spk_0 the Netherlands the Dutch government spends half a billion euros every year building really great

spk_0 cycling infrastructure because they recognize that that saves them 19 billion euros a year off

spk_0 the national health bill so it's an investment in health and in well-being and when we go somewhere

spk_0 like U-Track or Amsterdam and we see the amazing cycling we think oh wait it must have always been

spk_0 like this you know but actually up until the early 70s the Netherlands was as much a kind of car

spk_0 culture as anywhere else you know they loved that whole model and then they had one year where

spk_0 3,000 people were killed on the roads in Holland 400 of them were children and one of them was a

spk_0 child of a journalist who wrote an article called Stop the Child Murder in one of the main newspapers

spk_0 and this phrase Stop the Child Murder then was picked up and became a national movement all across

spk_0 the country and groups of children would just go out and close streets and play in them and go out

spk_0 at night and paint cycle lanes and it became like a really big movement by the 80s a lot of the people

spk_0 who had started that had got into politics and pushed a lot of that stuff through so in both of those

spk_0 places when you arrive in Newtract in the in the city centre if you trek there's a particular area

spk_0 which is just Framza and bicycles and 40,000 bicycles cycle through the centre of Newtract every

spk_0 morning and if you get there 8 o'clock in the morning and you sit in this particular place and

spk_0 you watch it it's just like it kind of blows my mind every time I go there and last time I was there

spk_0 I met the woman who was the head of transport planning for the municipality there and she said yeah

spk_0 all those problems we used to have 10 years ago with cars we now have with bicycles because we

spk_0 have so many bicycles why is that with a lot of cities would give their right arm to have that

spk_0 particular problem yeah and these are very wealthy technologically advanced not particularly socialist

spk_0 countries where where this is working so it could work everywhere um so you reference storytelling

spk_0 art even street fashion as tools of your time traveling revolution and you say that maybe even

spk_0 artists of the world are those who are best ready to tell a positive stories of our future

spk_0 can you talk a little more about the role of creative people in helping to solve the climate crisis

spk_0 if we ask that question what would our activism look like if its primary objective was the

spk_0 cultivation of longing then we have to recognise the climate scientists are rubbish at cultivating

spk_0 longing that's not what they're trained for climate activists are generally not very good at

spk_0 cultivating longing they're very good at identifying the problem and focusing on the problem and

spk_0 mobilising around the problem not so good at really bringing alive where we might go as a result

spk_0 the people in our culture who are good at doing that are street artists musicians writers poets

spk_0 the creative people we can't do this without those people the book is kind of a plea to people in

spk_0 the creative world to bring their skills to this this is this is when we need them in this

spk_0 time where we have this remaining tiny window of possibility to pull away from the abyss

spk_0 why would you make art or culture or music about anything else really but also we know we we have

spk_0 so many of those people who dedicate their expertise to producing dystopian stuff we know we are

spk_0 awash with dystopias right now whether human beings are wiped out by zombies or viruses or aliens or

spk_0 gremlins or whatever on earth it is we don't need any more dystopian stories we don't really need

spk_0 utopian stories because they're always so far away as to be not really very helpful

spk_0 I think what we need is what my friend Manda Scott writes about and calls through toapian stories

spk_0 which are the stories about how we got through from now how did this how did the shift on the scale

spk_0 that we need start now and how did it build there was a film that was made a few years ago called 2040

spk_0 by an Australian guy where he tried to show what would 2040 look like if we had done everything we

spk_0 could have done and then used lots of CGI and lots of different things like that and he called that

spk_0 film an exercise in evidence-based dreaming which I love that I think that's just so beautiful and

spk_0 so that's really what I try and do in the work that I do you know there was a tiny scene and I

spk_0 remember it vividly because it stuck out in the new cosmos with that Neil deGrasse Tyson there's

spk_0 a tiny scene in one of the episodes where they say oh you know we could have a future where

spk_0 have the planets green and we live in good relation and they had a beautiful visual of it too they

spk_0 had a 3D graphic and I do remember my heart just swelling like wow I never see this like we need

spk_0 to see more images like that in popular shows you know as a as a Buddhist I know you have a

spk_0 Buddhist background also I couldn't help but see a relationship to Vajrayana Buddhism because in

spk_0 Vajrayana Buddhism you're imagining the very best possible future for yourself as an enlightened

spk_0 you know you tried actually picture what would it be like if I was the very best version of what

spk_0 any human being can be has that crossed your mind at all in terms of your activism I remember when

spk_0 I was researching the last book from what is to what if I interviewed Mathew Ricard to French

spk_0 monk and incredible teacher and and I was kind of that was kind of where I was trying to take

spk_0 him was you know actually it's kind of like Vajrayana Buddhism you know we're we're trying to get

spk_0 society to imagine the best world that it could create and then to imagine its own role in that

spk_0 world and then to to meditate on that in whatever way that takes and to and to become that you know

spk_0 and it was very interesting conversation somehow because he's very like analytical very scholarly

spk_0 he he's some he kicked against the word imagination because for him imagination represented like

spk_0 I kind of an unruly mind like the imagination is like we could and we could it's like they dreamy

spk_0 and it's a bit it's a bit like wild elephant mind you know the monkey mind or whatever you know and

spk_0 but I felt like he kind of missed a point the the thing that I did love there he said was I I asked

spk_0 him what did he feel was the impact that social media was having on people's ability to do that

spk_0 and as our attention spans get worse how does that impact our ability to think about the world and

spk_0 build it and you and I love that he said he said I think if the Buddha had Twitter he never would

spk_0 have left the palace you know if if if Van Gogh had had tick tock he never would have painted

spk_0 the sunflowers he just would have taken a picture of them and stuck it online you know but also

spk_0 just there was one thing I wanted to come back to when you were talking before about films that

spk_0 have those kind of moments in one of the things that I think that I've started to notice a lot

spk_0 is how we do the opposite of that I don't know if you watched a handmaid's tale or read the handmaid's tale

spk_0 one of the things that she does and they do it very very powerful in the TV series is that they take

spk_0 places in the US that people know really really well like famous landmarks and then set scenes in

spk_0 this hideous dystopia in those places so there's a scene that happens by the Lincoln Memorial which

spk_0 has been changed in this new world to reflect that you know so we're very good at

spk_0 using places that we know to create horrible dystopias like the White House being blown up by aliens

spk_0 in Independence Day we don't very often do the same thing where we take places that people know

spk_0 and we present them in a in a better way and that's something that I'd love to see us doing a lot

spk_0 more of because I think that that can work really really beautifully one of your stories from

spk_0 the future is that wealth began to seem deeply unattractive what changes culturally to shift

spk_0 those values unfortunately that does seem one of the harmful trends right now is disgusting overblown

spk_0 wealth you know not necessarily serving humanity do you see signs of that happening how does

spk_0 wealth become deeply unattractive and are there signs of that I think there are some signs of

spk_0 that in terms of a lot of young people's politics around taxing the rich I I feel like

spk_0 what we're seeing at the moment particularly in the US I guess with this sort of worshipping of

spk_0 billionaires and that all we have to do is create the perfect conditions for billionaires and

spk_0 somehow everything else will be all right is creating such revolting outcomes and such

spk_0 abhorrent things that I think we will see a massive sort of move away from that and it will kind

spk_0 of trigger a sort of cultural shift I think you know we're just on the cusp of it I think you know

spk_0 we've just seen Jeff that's not getting married in Venice 35 million dollars on a wedding

spk_0 which involved basically taking over somebody else's city on their behalf and because you know we

spk_0 and we're here in the UK until recently we had when Rishi Sunak was the prime minister one of the

spk_0 worst prime ministers we've ever had whose wife was was richer than the queen and so you had

spk_0 somebody in the highest office in the land in a country in which one in four single mothers

spk_0 is going hungry because they can't afford to feed their children and you had a prime minister

spk_0 whose wife could have eradicated food poverty in the country and put it on her credit card basically

spk_0 so it wouldn't have made any difference to her and it just didn't happen in the Victorian times

spk_0 you know you had this culture of course there were many things that were awful about it but there

spk_0 was this culture among lots of wealthy people where they saw their prestige among each other

spk_0 as being the things that they had endowed the libraries the art galleries the schools the

spk_0 universities the public buildings the public luxury that they that they made possible we don't have

spk_0 that there is no Elon Musk hospital there's no Elon Musk art gallery there's no Elon Musk schools

spk_0 so I think yeah I think we could well be on the cusp of seeing a real shift in culture around that

spk_0 looking back to that era too it brings back the point of the power of artists because

spk_0 you know in many ways Charles Dickens created the welfare state the power of his books influenced

spk_0 the wealthy who are reading them to care about in the plight of poor people in society the story that

spk_0 hit me the most in your book that I was unfamiliar with is that of the surrealist Robert Desnos

spk_0 who literally saved a truckload of concentration camp inmates from death by imagining a different

spk_0 future for them I'd just like you to tell that story for people at its extraordinary so Robert Desnos

spk_0 was a surrealist poet living in France he was arrested he was part of the French resistance he

spk_0 was arrested by the Gestapo and sent to a succession of different refugee camps and the story

spk_0 goes that he was he was in a he was in this camp and the guards came around and loaded all the

spk_0 men in the barracks that he was in into the back of a truck and he knew they were all being

spk_0 taken off to be to be killed somewhere so they were all driven off and then as they arrived and

spk_0 they opened the back of the truck Robert was the first person off and he stood by the by the gate

spk_0 and read people's palms as they came past and he would say things like oh I see you have a very

spk_0 long life line and I can see you're going to live you're going to have many many children and

spk_0 live a very happy long long life you know and that after a while the guards just something changed

spk_0 in the space and they couldn't do it and they put everybody back on the truck and took them back

spk_0 again and there's something about even in those darkest darkest of spaces the imagination is

spk_0 really important that sense of possibility is really important and the other story that I have

spk_0 in there is about when I did a talk in a place in France and it was a few weeks after

spk_0 there had been a talk there by a woman who was one of the last surviving members of the French

spk_0 resistance who was 95 and there was in the French resistance as a teenager and someone asked her

spk_0 all the people you knew when you were in the French resistance was there anything they had in common

spk_0 he thought about it for a while and she said they were all optimists you know I feel like

spk_0 when you need optimists you really really need them and we really need them now and so I guess

spk_0 what I see a lot of my work is about kind of building optimist generating machines like how do

spk_0 we how do we produce optimists who are out in the world and I think Robert Desnoss is what

spk_0 is a lovely story about how you can do that even in the darkest of times that we find ourselves in

spk_0 you know I am I am an optimist but it's not a kind of polyena attitude you know I always try

spk_0 to explain to people like you know a pessimist is wrong because they're so sure

spk_0 something right they're like oh no it's definitely going that's it the world's over that's it you

spk_0 know the oceans are going to rise three feet we're going to burn up all our cities um

spk_0 of course the future is not here yet now it might be 80% possibility like like you could get to

spk_0 probabilities and say okay we only have a 20% chance um but still then great we have 20% chance

spk_0 let's do that then Kim Stanley Robinson he knows almost more than anybody on the planet about

spk_0 this problem and you know I asked him that question too how how do you manage to stay optimist he says

spk_0 I'm a functional optimist it's because I want to make a difference you know like I recognize

spk_0 that the probabilities may be more in favor of disaster than salvation but I'm going to do everything

spk_0 I possibly can to make that smaller probability of coming out of this and there are so many

spk_0 nipples through human history of things that changed very very fast and we forget that we

spk_0 you know we we don't often hear those stories we just hear the everything's very slow very

spk_0 incremental I remember reading this one when I was really young that gave me that kind of

spk_0 optimism you talk about which is that the the level of horse poop in on New York streets was

spk_0 exponentially increasing you know literally before the automobile engineers made the projections

spk_0 they're like we're going to be three feet deep in horse poop in three years you know they said

spk_0 there's no way this is an unsolvable problem and then you know life changed the automobile came along

spk_0 which is then introduced another problem I wanted you to talk about the what if exercise you do in

spk_0 some of your workshops I found that really powerful and it maybe it's a nice way to end this too

spk_0 is more the practical things yeah I feel like those two words what if are two of the most important

spk_0 words that we have in our language and a good what if question is like for me it's like that

spk_0 bit in Alice in Wonderland where she's too big to get into the garden but she can see through the

spk_0 door into the garden and she really really wants to be in there you know it gives us a window

spk_0 onto a possibility in a way that that feels doable and that feels something like something really

spk_0 really exciting and so when I do workshops and we do work around what if one of the things that we

spk_0 do is that we do what's called a walk of what if so we have a we have an overarching what if question

spk_0 what if in everything that it did this organization act it like this was really a climate

spk_0 ecological emergency what would it do what would it do differently and then they go out for a walk

spk_0 and they have all these strips of paper that say what if at the end and then they they they just

spk_0 brainstorm and I say there are two rules don't be constrained by what already exists and also

spk_0 that no one's allowed to say yes but during the whole activity you can say yes and and you can add

spk_0 to their idea and you can build off their idea and you can let it go somewhere else but you're not

spk_0 allowed to say yes but because yes but it's just the sort of sort of death of the imagination really

spk_0 and then so when they come back with those then then we explore those questions and then work some

spk_0 of them up into very firm proposals and a good what if question is like yeah there's I guess one of

spk_0 the examples I was used is is liaison Belgium which I talk about in the book where they buildings

spk_0 food belts around the city of liaison most amazing visionary project but that started with five

spk_0 people who said what if in a generation's time the majority of food eaten in liege came from the

spk_0 land closest to liege and then that inquiry that question evoked so much curiosity in people and a

spk_0 sense of yeah I'd love to see that and actually I've got something I can contribute to that and then

spk_0 so they did a big public event just based around this what if question 600 people came to this

spk_0 and then that then launched a whole load of different projects which meant that four years after

spk_0 that they had raised five million euros to fund 30 different new cooperatives in the city and

spk_0 that money came from the people of liege investing into those 30 different co-ops not the bank

spk_0 not the municipality the people of liege doing that were good what if question can just can unlock

spk_0 so much possibility gives us a different way of looking at that out problem so when I do workshops

spk_0 and trainings we do a lot of work with what if and it's really good fun you have any final thoughts

spk_0 for a specific tactic or habit from your practice for a listener to take into their daily lives to be

spk_0 a force for positive change well I guess before we do that what when I do workshops and talks we always

spk_0 do an activity where I bring my time machine and I turn the room into a time machine and we take

spk_0 a step forward into the future and we take a walk around using all of our senses what does this

spk_0 well smell like this world that you long for that you would most like to see what does it taste like

spk_0 what does it what does it sound like you know and once they've done that and I've bought them back

spk_0 again and they've shared with each other what they saw there what they experienced I always make

spk_0 the observation that this should be a daily practice like meditation like yoga like running because

spk_0 the reality is that doing the opposite of this is a daily practice we do it every day we wake up

spk_0 we reach for our phones and our phones say everyone's all full the world's horrible you know

spk_0 stay in bed why would you bother and that's really paralyzing you know so I feel like that it's

spk_0 something that should become like a daily practice because when we're trying to imagine the future

spk_0 what we're doing is where our imagination is going to the cupboards of our memory and looking through

spk_0 and finding useful things and then assembling them together in new ways and that's what the imagination

spk_0 bit is so if we just watch Fox News all day it's really hard to imagine a low carbon future because we

spk_0 go to those cupboards and there's nothing there there's nothing that we can assemble a hopeful longing

spk_0 for the future with so I always say to be one of the most important things you can do one of the

spk_0 most important ways you can feed your imagination and it's one of the things I try and do in the book

spk_0 is to know the stories of what's possible there's a chapter in the book set about how we need to

spk_0 stop using the word impossible and replace it with the words not yet because all the things that we

spk_0 get told are impossible and actually a lot of them are the things that we know are entirely possible

spk_0 of course we could tax billionaires of course we could act meaningfully on climate change of course we

spk_0 could have a different energy system a different transport system of course we could because we can

spk_0 already see how happening somewhere it already works somewhere we can see it but all the things

spk_0 that we're told are possible like infinite economic growth on a finite planet other things that we know

spk_0 just are absolutely impossible so so for me it's that thing of find those stories find the films that

spk_0 share those stories find the websites that share those stories find the social media feeds if you do

spk_0 that that will tell you those stories because if all we allow in is the stories about everything

spk_0 that's breaking down everything is falling apart the future just disappears and disappears and disappears

spk_0 so we kind of owe it to ourselves I think to intentionally and mindfully fill the cupboards of

spk_0 our memory with stories of possibilities that's beautiful so that's an invitation for everybody to

spk_0 take into their own lives you know you that addition of yet young people are learning this lesson

spk_0 in my daughter's school whenever somebody says even like I don't know how to play the Yoke

spk_0 Lely or I can't solve simultaneous equations they say they always say add yet exactly exactly

spk_0 sometimes for me people like to paint it as though a low carbon future is

spk_0 as if we're trying to ask someone to imagine like a star Trek plot or you know something really

spk_0 really tricky I would say to people it's not that hard it's the sighting infrastructure

spk_0 of Rotterdam is the super blocks of Barcelona is the car free neighborhoods of Freiburg it's the

spk_0 with with the food system of Liège with the commitment to taking space or away from cars that

spk_0 we're seeing in Paris it's such and such and such and everything that we need to do is already

spk_0 exists somewhere thank you so much Rob it's extraordinary speaking with you in the next episode

spk_0 we're going to have you tell you one of your future stories so I'm looking forward to that

spk_0 listeners can find that in the next episode thank you for everything you're doing for the planet

spk_0 well and thank you Scott for everything you're doing for the planet and bringing the way that

spk_0 you're bringing together the Dharma and the crises that we're in today and actually you know

spk_0 finding the places where those things meet and it's that is such precious and important work so

spk_0 thank you for doing that as well

spk_0 thanks for joining me for this interview with Rob Hopkins on how to fall in love with the future

spk_0 if you'd like to deepen your meditation practice and connect with the community exploring the ideas

spk_0 we share in this podcast visit howto trainahapimine.org you can sign up there for our newsletter

spk_0 and join our trainahapimine community which offers weekly lectures meditations classes and

spk_0 discussions you'll also find links there to purchase my book howto trainahapimine a modern

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How to Fall in Love with the Future—Rob Hopkins #205

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