It takes courage to have Utopias today. 

(Translated from German; published 06.07.2022 in in the Tages Anzeiger)

By Joshua Beer (his real name) 

Pandemics, climate crisis, wars: young people only know the future as a horror scenario. It’s high time to imagine a better world again.

Pessimistic view of the future

The future – and thinking about it – is no longer fun, because it is occupied by dystopian images: climate catastrophe, the end of democracy, an epidemic age and, more recently, nuclear death. What we lack are utopias. No fantasy worlds to escape into, but positive ideas of how we want to live in twenty, thirty years. Or even in a hundred. Instead, we hope on a small scale that the acute crises will become a little less acute: ceasefire in Ukraine, a mild corona winter, that would be nice. We do not dare to think bigger and further. Why even if the next crisis could come at any time? Surely it is already lurking somewhere. The majority of younger people are pessimistic about the future, many even long for the past. A decade ago, it was the other way around.