The Future Is Not a Utopia - It’s a Natural Progression
Is my vision for the future utopian?
Not exactly.
Utopias are often imagined as perfect and static end-states - airless worlds of order where everything is resolved. But what I’m speaking of is neither static nor perfect. It’s a movement. A shift. A rebalancing. Not a heaven built in circuitry or an Eden restored by policy, but an opportunity - an opening for a more natural and human way of existence once unshackled from compulsory labor.
This is not a new dream. Since the dawn of the industrial age, humanity has carried within it the paradoxical promise of the machine: the end of human slavery, both literal and economic, brought about by mechanical labor. The engines of progress that once enabled exploitation can now offer liberation. The question is not whether we can move beyond the labor economy. It’s whether we have the vision and will to imagine what comes next.
The challenge now isn’t technical, but imaginative.
We must guide the human imagination - individually and collectively - toward a higher, more whole state of activity. One rooted not in extraction, anxiety, or survival, but in meaning, contribution, curiosity, and creative flourishing. We already know that people will work tirelessly at what they love, what they find meaningful, what they believe in regardless of monetary reward. This is already proven by artists, caregivers, gardeners, citizen scientists, spiritual seekers, archivists, and all those who quietly dedicate themselves to work that may never yield conventional wealth.
But we need more than individual effort. We need a shift in the collective attitude. A shedding of antiquated aspirations: the house as status object, the career as identity, the constant hustle as proof of worth. These ideas, once functional, are now hollow husks dragging us into stress, division, and planetary harm.
So here is my personal suggestion to the creative community:
Put dystopia in the background - neither erased, nor denied - but rather repositioned. Let it remain as the cautionary shadow it is. But don’t let it dominate the screen.
Enough of the fear and helplessness.
Instead, lift your eyes to the constructive, the aspirational, the generative. Flood the zone with possibilities. Tell stories of what could be, what might be beautiful, strange, communal, unexpected. Architect futures of participation, not passive consumption. Make the desirable alternative more vivid than the possibilities of disaster.
That’s far more creative than endlessly recycling our nightmares.
We’re not here to echo the collapse. We’re here to compost it.
And from that compost, imagine and grow a garden of human life—not utopian, but alive, evolving, and deeply worth the tending.
Myself, I am a studio artist and a citizen. My job and my duty is to start the conversation and seed the imagination. It is up to others in the right places to nurture it into a reality. We all have a part to play. What’s your part? Do it.
Hashtags to use: #CreativeFreedomAct #CultureShiftAct #CreativeSocietyAct
web address: https://www.touchonian.com/s/creative-freedom-act
If this sparked something in you, consider sharing it with others. Your response, your vision, your work matters. Let’s keep building the counter-narrative together.
Comment below, share your thoughts, or contribute your vision for a post-labor, creatively alive society.
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I have found in creating the art that I make that there's room for all things.......the good, bad, and ugly so to speak. In what I create, all depends on moods (my own and society as a whole), ideas, concerns, humor, satire, irony, and so on. And as we all (should?) do....EVOLVE and as we do that, so does all the above stuff changes. Is there a collective consciousness? Perhaps, but we are all very much individuals, some with critical thinking skills, some without that just regurgitate what they see/hear on mainstream media and the vacuum chambers provide. And when there's a mutual communication where one is not forcing their opinions on the other but having an intelligent conversation where they can 'agree to disagree'....that's progress. I don't see that happening with too many people though at present time and have lost friends who disagreed with me when I expressed my views after being asked about them (never proselytizing). But I digress.
I am beginning to believe that we are actually at the cusp of a "new world", a new concept of survival, and a new reality that has seen that the monstrosity and empowerment of wealth and greed is merely a mirage that disappears as we get closer to it. And I believe that Trump is actually contributing to this shift in perspective.
People have now seen the stinky downside of what greed and corruption is doing to our society through racism, separatism, dishonesty, and false promises. It is now becoming increasingly clear that the platform of the GOP and Trump are openly working to screw over our citizens for their own personal aggrandizement, but for all their efforts they are actually revealing their hands before the end of the game, scrambling to make it appear that if we should follow their lead, and we can be like them. Who wants to be despicable?
To me they are the ghosts that used to scare me as a child, waking from my nightmares screaming, until my mother came in and assured me there are no such things as ghosts, and they faded from what I thought was reality.
Once they are gone, we realize we are still here, loved, protected, intelligent, kind, empathetic, and no longer subscribe to the falsities we were led to believe. When it comes down to it, when we have seen it was all a magic act, and a bad one at that, we can choose to be better. We can work together to form a new society based on clarity and truth, not dumbing-down to marauding ghosts whose illusions of reality are destined to fade and disappear as they are revealed.
As the truth of this false reality is increasingly revealed, we will once again find commonality and community. This is our trial by fire, the test of strength, courage, or faith in the face of adversity. I hold out hope.