I was struck by Manda Scott’s article in a recent edition of Mslexia in which she argues for a new genre that she calls thrutopia. We have had enough, she argues, of the dystopian tales, not least because they are becoming increasingly probable as we continue to waste our world. At the same time we’re all too cynical now to believe that Utopia was ever more than a pipe dream, a spiked pipe at that. What we need, Scott tells us, is a genre of story-telling that shows us a better future
that is realistically attainable. We need stories that show us how to get out of the mess we’re in. And we need them urgently.
Writers, she tells us, are the people who can make it seem real, make it seem possible, and anything that seems possible has half a chance of coming to be. Part of the problem we have right now, maybe the biggest part of the many problems we have right now, is that we cannot see
solutions that don’t involve making things a whole lot worse before they begin to get any better, and we’re not wired for that kind of long-term solution. No species on earth is hard-wired to say ok,screw this generation and the next one or two, we’ll sacrifice all of that for the longer term good. And most of the solutions that readily spring to mind pretty much amount to that approach.
If we want to change the failing systems that we’re living under – and, trust me, if we want our species to survive, then we absolutely DO – then we have to find a less painful way of doing so.
Scott’s article places the responsibility for articulating those ways, for imagining them, creating them, laying them on the page, on the screen, in the ether, getting them down and getting them out and talked about, firmly upon the shoulders of writers.
Making them happen will rest upon more shoulders: engineers, educators, scientists, visionaries, politicians, workers, financiers, dreamers, preachers, healers, mystics and mechanics. But first showing that maybe they can happen, starts with creatives. Many artists may be called upon to depict the vision, but the story-telling part of it, the how of it, rests with the writers.
I agreed with everything I read. I wondered where it left me, personally. As a non-fiction writer, a responsive writer rather than a researcher or journalist, as a poet, how does my work play into that agenda?
I have no easy answer.
Then the question became deeper: how does my life play into it?
No easy answer there, either.
I keep coming back to Satish Kumar’s words: whatever the question, the answer is simplicity.
If the only story I have to tell is my own, then it follows that my first duty is to make that a story worth telling. It will never be an epic tale. I have not endured great hardships and have certainly no wish to do so. I freely admit that I have ‘had it easy’ and unashamedly say I would like that to continue.
I am not about to don a hair shirt, give all my possessions away and go live in a cave. But I think the point about Scott’s argument is that I shouldn’t have to, that we should be able to change the system fundamentally, without such huge shocks to anyone’s mode of being, but we have to be serious about doing so. We can do this incrementally, but we have to be serious about it. And we have to start now.
Naturally, that raises other questions: am I serious, am I willing to commit, starting right now, to do more than I have been doing? Am I willing to look at how I am living, look for the tweaks, that will build into change?
Of course I want to shout YES. But…am I? Really? Honestly? I don’t know.
I have a friend who avoids the word “try”. He says that to try is to fail with honour. My flippant response is that failing with honour is better than doing so dishonourably. It also better than not trying, which is automatically to fail.
I love the Star Wars character Yoda, but I heartily disagree with his statement Do or Do Not, There is no try. Sorry Yoda, but yes there is. For all of us not born with the Jedi heritage, we can but try… only then will we know what we can achieve.
Fail we might, but try we must.
I am willing to try. Next step, next question: how?
Given that I’m not about to start writing the great thrutopian novel, or even a half-way decent thrutopian short story, I am going to start with the life and let the writing follow. Simplifying my life has been high on the agenda for a few years now, but it is clearly time to re-energise my approach
to doing so.
In my head, I’m calling this “adventures in simplicity” because although the agenda is serious, I don’t want to be. I want to be playful and joyful about it. This girl wants to have fun along the way.
Very quickly, before I embark, let me acknowledge the P-word: Privilege. Or if you prefer, call it Luck. Whatever word you want to attach to it, I will put my hands up here & now to the fact that I am fortunate. I am writing (today) from a place of relative security. However the ‘adventure’ unfolds, I know that I can only consider setting out upon it because life has brought me to this place and time, where I can be utterly selfish in how I proceed.
I know that this is not everyone’s reality. But I also know that many who have a similar reality will not grasp the opportunity it provides, so grant me that much: that I recognise my good fortune and am
thinking about how best to deploy it.
I’ve dithered about how to begin, how to proceed, how to make sure I enjoy the process because we all know that enjoying something is key to sticking with it. Cycling is great exercise, but my bike is gathering dust. Swimming on the other hand…you’ll hear me lament any time the pool is closed. Just one example. If it's fun, we keep doing it.
Whatever the question, the answer is simplicity: I figure the best way to proceed is one step at a time, look at one area of my life at a time. The plan is to focus on one “theme” or life-area for a week, and seek greater simplicity within it. Not as a one-off, but as something which becomes cyclical. A spiralling. Some aspects may be simplified by a single act; most will take many iterations, and I fully expect (being me) that I will add in unnecessary layers of complexity even as I try to strip out those that already exist.
As we're heading into the summer holiday season, my first theme will be Simple Pleasures. Let the adventure begin.
