When people tell me they feel hopeless about the future, I never question why. The news cycle is a relentless amplifier of catastrophe because fear holds attention longer than nuance. The platforms that claim to keep us connected are designed to pull our nervous systems into continuous vigilance. And the culture built around these technologies has exposed us to a scale of grief, fury, and instability that we were never designed to absorb. The root of hopelessness is the direct product of the environment we have been living in.
In that context, it is perfectly understandable that so many people struggle to imagine anything better. When the cultural weather is permanently stormy, it’s hard to believe that sunshine exists at all. I have come to think of this as an imagination crisis. It sits beneath many of the large-scale tensions we talk about every day. Demographic anxiety. Technological disruption. Global authoritarian creep. Billionaires positioning themselves as philosopher kings. Ever-increasing wealth inequality. The exhausting backlash cycles around gender and identity. All these dynamics rely on a population that has forgotten how to think beyond the immediate conditions in front of them.
Every political system, every economic model, and every cultural norm began as an idea. Someone imagined it into being. Which means our current problems are not natural laws. They are accumulated stories we have mistaken for inevitabilities.
Political scientists have a framework for this. It is called the Overton window. It describes the range of ideas that a society considers politically acceptable at any given moment. Ideas that fall outside that window are seen as too extreme or too implausible to enter public debate. The window can shift. Sometimes it widens because a crisis forces people to rethink what they once dismissed. Sometimes it narrows because powerful actors find it convenient to restrict the boundaries of collective imagination.
I’ve been working on a more personal version of this idea. I jokingly call it the Harfoush window, and it’s a way to think about the limits of our own imaginative horizons. When we picture the future, we almost always anchor that picture to what we already believe is realistic. We do this instinctively, without noticing. It’s how a thousand small invisible assumptions shape the futures we think are possible. Most people don’t realize that their imagination is already fenced in by inherited norms and by the conditions of the present. We treat these constraints as facts rather than as accidents of history.
Famed science fiction author Ursula K. Le Guin spoke about this during a speech back in 2014. “We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable — but then, so did the divine right of kings.” She points out the fundamental truth that systems we treat as permanent have always been temporary. They feel permanent only when our imaginative muscles have atrophied to the point that we cannot picture alternatives.
The world we live in was designed according to someone’s vision of the future. Politicians. Corporations. Lobbyists. Activists. Artists. Communities. Some visions had tremendous resources behind them. Others were dismissed or suppressed. But the key point is this: none of what we are living through today was inevitable. It was chosen. And what is chosen can be reimagined.
This is where art and culture come in. Le Guin’s wisdom from that same speech continues. “Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings,” she said. “Resistance and change often begin in art.” She predicted that “hard times” would be coming, and that our society would need the voices of writers who could “see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope.”
Art becomes an infrastructure for the imagination. When societies devalue art and the humanities, they weaken their own capacity to adapt. Over the past decade we have systematically stripped away funding, attention, and legitimacy from the very fields that help us understand ourselves as human beings. At the same time, we have embraced technological systems that prioritize frictionless efficiency over emotional depth. Platforms reward outrage and speed while penalizing slowness, curiosity, and contemplation. Is it any surprise that our collective creativity feels depleted?
To rebuild imagination, we need practices that interrupt this cycle. Not escapism. Not empty optimism. Practices that restore our sense of agency and remind us that futures are not found. They are made.
One of these practices is to deliberately diversify your media diet. Our attention is shaped by what we repeatedly see. If you only consume information that reinforces catastrophe, your sense of possibility will inevitably contract. Seek out sources that highlight constructive change and community-driven solutions. These stories do not negate the seriousness of our challenges. They simply counterbalance the cultural narrative that insists everything is sliding toward collapse. Hope, in this context, is a disciplined choice. I would go so far as to say it’s an aspect of civic responsibility.
Another crucial practice is engaging with hopeful art. I find the solarpunk movement compelling because it offers emotionally resonant visions of how daily life could function in a more ecologically sane and socially interconnected world. Solarpunk imagines a future in which nature, people, and technology are holistically integrated. Green roofs. Community gardens. Renewable energy woven into the fabric of cities. Public spaces designed for actual human flourishing rather than maximum throughput. When you encounter these images often enough, something subtle shifts. The impossible begins to feel plausible. Your Harfoush window widens.
Restoring creativity is equally important. Many of us are too burned out to imagine anything at all. Creative thought requires spaciousness and presence, conditions that are incompatible with chronic stress. Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way remains one of the most accessible tools for creative reawakening. One of her recommendations is “Morning Pages”: writing three longhand pages of your stream of consciousness at the start of each day. It works because it clears the mental clutter that blocks imaginative thinking. Other small creative acts can also open the door. Draw. Write. Cook. Repair something. Make something with no expectation of quality. The point is activation, not mastery or perfection.
Reintroducing boredom into daily life is another deceptively powerful practice. We have become so accustomed to constant stimulation that silence feels threatening. But boredom is a generative state. When your mind isn’t occupied, it begins to wander. Connections form. Ideas rise to the surface. Spending time outdoors reinforces this. Imagination doesn’t thrive when the body is in fight or flight. Nature recalibrates the nervous system. It shifts you out of hypervigilance and into a state where creativity and openness become possible again.
Finally, none of this works without tending to the basics. Sleep, hydration, and movement are the unglamorous foundations of imaginative capacity. You cannot innovate from depletion.
If imagination is the starting point of any meaningful societal change, then treating it as an optional extra is a mistake. We must invest in strengthening the part of ourselves that can picture a world beyond the one we are currently living in. A world that doesn’t simply replicate the inequities and constraints of the present.
We are not trapped in the futures being marketed to us. Our sense of possibility can expand. The Harfoush window can widen. The Overton window has always moved. Systems that appear permanent are only stories. They last only as long as we collectively believe in them. The imagination crisis is real. But the tools to confront it are within reach. The work begins by remembering that the future is not something we inherit. It is something we imagine first, and then build.