Growing the future: ways forward, together

an article by qpoc activist elly befort-mattos

i always go on about how we need to abandon capitalism

someone asked me what we should replace it with

i wrote a response that i’m happy with. these are not original thoughts, but my words on a current of thought that is relatively new to me

still, i was happy enough with the summary that i thought it was worth sharing, so i’ll post it here and some other places:

i think what would work hasn’t been invented, yet. i think it would be presumptuous of me to think i know what would work. i don’t think anyone does

what i know is what, in the great scheme of things, doesn’t work. i think we need to accept that before we even attempt to imagine and work towards a different world

i think we first need to mourn and compost the old world. not only our economic system, but the concept of modernity, of nation states, the notion of hierarchy, the belief in single truths and that we humans are separate from nature

we need to rethink even the way we think, feel and interact with the world around us, including what we call inanimate objects and the very air we breathe

i think there’s a wisdom in plurality of thought that white supremacy has erased and i think we need to rescue that before we can envision something that could work

indigenous peoples survived cataclysmic events in ways that aren’t understood or acknowledged. their civilisations had issues, too, and i’m not advocating for primitivism, but i think there’s a wisdom that’s been suppressed

i think we should start by trying to rescue that wisdom. one of the ways i’m doing that it by reading from indigenous authors, but i know it’s not enough

i believe the way to rescue that wisdom is to listen attentively to indigenous peoples everywhere, accept all their different truths and hold them all simultaneously as such in our minds