Imbolc \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Bloodroot Moon<\/p>\n
A friend last night said we don’t spend enough time thinking about the future. \u00a0I believe he also meant imagining it, then trying to press ourselves toward it. \u00a0He may be right, I don’t know.<\/p>\n
I know in my youth, say from 13 or so until the waning years of my forties, I had clear images of the future and put my back into seeing them come to be. \u00a0When junior boys couldn’t go to the senior prom, for example, I decided we needed to have junior prom. \u00a0And we did. \u00a0Seniors had always bought their rings from Jostens. \u00a0I thought we needed bids. \u00a0We chose Herff-Jones.<\/p>\n
In college it was eliminating in loco parentis, the war in vietnam, racism. \u00a0We manged the first, raised hell about the second and, well, the last one. \u00a0Not so much. \u00a0Later feminism, affordable housing, normalization for the developmentally disabled, neighborhood based economic development, a jobs response to unemployment. \u00a0We made good progress on all of these. \u00a0Examples. \u00a0There were others, many others.<\/p>\n
However. \u00a0Today we fight in Afghanistan, just finished up in Iraq. \u00a0The class inequality in the US and its attendant ills: \u00a0homelessness, joblessness, foodlessness are as high as ever. \u00a0Those neighborhoods in which the affordable housing got built and the businesses started as owner co-operatives worker managed. \u00a0Mostly out of business. \u00a0I imagine the senior class at Alexandria High is back to Jostens by now. \u00a0And no more junior proms.<\/p>\n
Thankfully women are no longer locked in their dorms after ten on college campuses. \u00a0I’m not saying there hasn’t been progress. \u00a0Actually, I believe there has been. \u00a0And in difficult areas like racism, feminism, gay rights. \u00a0All to the good. \u00a0Not far enough, no, not by any means, but some progress, yes.<\/p>\n
Yet the deep painful trench that separates the 99% from the 1% has gotten only wider. \u00a0Our new gilded age had some of its gold-plating knocked off, revealing a lot of brass, some tin and lots of lead, but the plating is mostly back now.<\/p>\n
My point is this. \u00a0Imagining the future is one thing. \u00a0Not a bad thing to do I suppose, though it might be, but working for change is quite another. \u00a0It’s messy, painful and often fails. \u00a0Imagining can be a diversion from working now, for what’s possible, in incremental ways. \u00a0And in that sense we may imagine the future far too much.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Imbolc \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Bloodroot Moon A friend last night said we don’t spend enough time thinking about the future. \u00a0I believe he also meant … Continue reading Imagining the Future<\/span>