Plausible fiction – Topos Institute
Each of us can see problems in the world, cases where something we care about is in need of attention. On the global scale, I am deeply concerned about rampant pollution, countries engaged in hostile acts of aggression, political corruption, cultural fragmentation, the effects of modern technology on human lives and livelihoods, and more. To myself and I believe many other people, the world seems to be cracking under some sort of immense pressure, with “no one at the wheel” to steer the ship.
At the same time, we humans are imaginative. According to historian Yuval Harari, our superpower lies in creating fictions that can become real through our collective belief and action. This manifests in several ways:
Rather than waiting for someone else to steer our ship, perhaps we can harness this imaginative power to solve our problems. In this post, I’ll begin by considering how it is that what we propose in language can become reality. Then I’ll propose an idea I’m calling plausible fiction, based on this consideration, and how implementing this idea could lead to a good future for humanity.
As we’ll see, plausible fiction is a lightly-structured approach to imagining and implementing viable solutions to real-world problems. It works by encouraging people to outline a path from our current reality to a desired future, and inviting collective effort to fill in the gaps along the way. This collaborative gap-filling process refines and realizes ideas that would otherwise remain abstract or incomplete, and in so doing move them from fiction to reality. I believe that this approach could be applied to a wide range of issues, at a wide range of scales, and potentially lead to a more participatory world.
