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then_and_now [2018/05/18 10:54]
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then_and_now [2018/06/14 15:01] (current)
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 In our weekly international online Future Historians seminars ​ we pretend that we're historians putting together a centennial history book for the teenagers of 2117.  We are constructing utopias, if you will, but we are also explaining how we got here (a peaceful, cooperative world society in 2117) from there (the catastrophes of 2017). We're a group from a wide variety of backgrounds,​ spread out from L.A. to Moscow, including a subway track worker, some students, a businessman,​ a few academics and various old radicals like me. Unlike so many Leftists, we don't argue or denounce each other, although we have many differing viewpoints. For this simple reason: viewed from 2117 we see the complimentarity of the different roads leading to the Emergence of the new society from the shell of the old (for example ‘reform’ and ‘revolution’).  ​ In our weekly international online Future Historians seminars ​ we pretend that we're historians putting together a centennial history book for the teenagers of 2117.  We are constructing utopias, if you will, but we are also explaining how we got here (a peaceful, cooperative world society in 2117) from there (the catastrophes of 2017). We're a group from a wide variety of backgrounds,​ spread out from L.A. to Moscow, including a subway track worker, some students, a businessman,​ a few academics and various old radicals like me. Unlike so many Leftists, we don't argue or denounce each other, although we have many differing viewpoints. For this simple reason: viewed from 2117 we see the complimentarity of the different roads leading to the Emergence of the new society from the shell of the old (for example ‘reform’ and ‘revolution’).  ​
  
-Our method of building our ecotopian narrative on this WIKI is to take up the various topics we are exploring in the Study Group and then put on our Future Historians'​ hat, get into our role as historians of 2107, and look BACKWARDS at the declining old world of capitalism (THEN), describe what our better world of 2117 looks like (NOW) and account for how we got here from there (HOW?​) ​Our purpose ​as historians of 2117 is to produce ​kind of textbook for teens, organized by topic rather than by straight ​chronology.+Our method of building our ecotopian narrative on this WIKI is to take up the various topics we are exploring in the Study Group and then put on our Future Historians'​ hat, get into our role as historians of 2107, and look BACKWARDS at the declining old world of capitalism (THEN), describe what our better world of 2117 looks like (NOW) and account for how we got here from there (HOW?​) ​One outcome of our efforts ​as historians of 2117 could be a kind of textbook for teens, organized by topic rather than by chronology. The results may also be presented in the form of a conceptual grid, as detailed in our [[grid-guide|Guide to the Grid]].
  
 This method brings out one of the two main functions of utopian fiction, which - along with proposing an alternative world - provides an ironic critique of the present state of affairs. Thus, Thomas More’s 1515 //Utopia// famously begins with a description of Tudor England as a “barbarous land where “sheep eat men” because, through enclosures by landlords, thousands of peasants were being driven off their farms to make room for the profitable grazing of sheep, only to be hanged as thieves and vagabonds if they steal food to survive. ​ This method brings out one of the two main functions of utopian fiction, which - along with proposing an alternative world - provides an ironic critique of the present state of affairs. Thus, Thomas More’s 1515 //Utopia// famously begins with a description of Tudor England as a “barbarous land where “sheep eat men” because, through enclosures by landlords, thousands of peasants were being driven off their farms to make room for the profitable grazing of sheep, only to be hanged as thieves and vagabonds if they steal food to survive. ​
then_and_now.txt · Last modified: 2018/06/14 15:01 by admin