A Better World

It's in my low moments that I try my hardest to be optimistic. When I feel rage at so many many people, I push myself to remember empathy. If not for my belief in a better world and better people, I couldn't remain optimistic and empathetic. Sometimes, popular media helps me imagine a better world.

I just watched Superman (2025). I knew James Gunn would present a kind, hopeful hero, because that's who Gunn is. All his irreverent, rude characters have that kindness in them. Clark Kent would be the first that had to wear it on his sleeve. Knowing that not only could this character still be popular, but be the center of a universe that includes Peacemaker, gives me a little more hope that the people truly want good things.

Years ago, I read Cory Doctorow’s “Walkaway” and I've been singing its praises ever since. Doctorow said we already live in a post-scarcity world, and the only thing keeping us from happiness is greedy and sometimes mindless adherence to a hierarchical system. He described a group of people who started voluntary, intentional, anarchic communities and the problems they faced from within and without. “Walkaway” made me believe in anarcho-communism.

This month, I've been listening to Ursula K. Le Guin’s “The Dispossessed”. There's already an established anarcho-syndicalist society on one of two twin planets. The society puts in a lot of work to raise its children to maintain their central beliefs (sharing and not egoizing). It has slurs for people who think or behave like capitalists. They struggle. Their society is called a utopia, but there's pain, starvation, and isolation. But people don't suffer just because someone is withholding resources until that person extracts profit. How wonderful would that way of life be on a planet with abundant resources instead of a limited, desert planet.

Lots of political and economic thinkers have written the details of how a better world would work, but the imagination of fiction fills the soul in a different way. I want to imagine a world with excess for everyone, and if not excess then at least enough.