On Monday I went a "vision meeting" organized by the Transition group. It was prepared by three guys that clearly had three different ideas of what this "vision" was, and they compromised on something that was neither here nor there. They asked people to imagine what our city would be like in 200 years time, after all the troubles of climate change and peak oil were resolved and it was all over. Well, I love to engage in that kind of speculation myself, like any amateur science-fiction writer, and I threw in some interesting ingredients in the pot:
Kokopelli, one of the American floating cities, has just arrived. Everybody has gone out to the beach to trade, to meet the exotic strangers and to gossip. Children, especially, are running wild, absolutely ecstatic with all the novelties. The floating city is like an island that has suddenly appeared in the middle of the sea where there was nothing before. A lot of it is covered in trees and greenery, the rest are domes and roofs curved in peculiar shapes, to make the best use of solar energy. People can visit by crossing a floating bridge wide as an avenue, and even before you reach the city itself you'll meet the first merchants on the sides of the bridge, selling everything from exotic fruit to small electronic gadgets...
But precisely because I do it often I'm keenly aware that a) most people are hopelessly unable to imagine as far as 200 years in the future and b) the exercise can be fun but mostly irrelevant to your day-to-day life. Twenty years in the future would have been a much more useful horizon to think about, and even then, I doubt we would have got anything very useful for any purpose, because uninformed opinions are exactly that. I just can't see the point of having this type of "vision", it's a vision that doesn't see a thing.
On Tuesday it was the Energy Group meeting, and we talked about another kind of vision that I can understand. For this group, a vision is the same thing as a plan, and the Action Plan is something they understand and can get excited about. I wholeheartedly agree that having a good plan for the future is one of the best things one could have, but I believe a vision is something different. Planning isn't the same thing as seeing, it's what you do after you've seen.
On Thursday I got to talk with the guy that runs the building where most charities in Brighton have their offices. He's a fundamentally practical guy, he spent half the time dissing people who have meetings to "enable" or "empower" others. For him, it's all about action, even trying to make large scale plans is a waste of time. "Vision" isn't a word he would use, but if he did, his vision is people doing things. I can sympathise a lot with his point of view. But I find it lacking a fundamental ingredient, and this was proved by the reason we met: full of the good intentions to do something, he had set up a website to encourage charities in general (not just the "greenie" ones) to become greener. But the website flunked. There was action there, but no vision, no effort to see what would likely happen to the website under the circumstances.
Today, I set up a stall for the Transport Group (yeah, the same thing I promised I'd do in a fit of rage after they decided to drop their act entirely, as I described in the post "Missed opportunities"). It went to hell in a basket. First, a security guard told me I wasn't allowed to do it there because it was private ground (I never knew that), and when I relocated to a public space, it started raining. All in all, you could call it a complete waste of time. But I didn't feel too bad about it. I tried to do what I came to do, and I failed, but it was no fault of mine. You could say I held true to my vision.
Vision, for me, is having the attitude of a hitch-hiker or an old sailing ship captain, knowing exactly where you want to go even if you don't know how you'll be getting there or when, or if you'll ever manage to arrive. It's seeing peak oil come and knowing you will have to cope with it in whatever ways you can. It's making up your mind that you want to live in a houseboat even when you don't know the first things about boats. It's looking out at the horizon, all the time, every time, scouting for anything from icebergs to new lands, and setting your course firmly based on what you manage to see, and the harbour you are aiming for, constantly plotting your route in uncertain seas.
No comments:
Post a Comment