Fine-tune your critical antennae with Imagination author, Ruha Benjamin
“If there’s one thing I hope you take away from reading this book, it is that you will commit to keeping your critical antennae tuned in to the nightmarish fantasies of post-human proselytizers, among them many Silicon Valley elite and super intelligentsia, who believe the best thing they can do for humanity is ‘get filthy rich, for charity’s sake.’ Why? Because those who monopolize resources monopolize imagination.” (p.21)
This excerpt hit home with us, and got us thinking about some of the ways we experience “imagination monopolization.” So we made a quick list:
- Technology solutionism narratives
Technology elites are promoted as humanity’s saviors. Effective Altruism principles often justify extreme wealth accumulation.
HOPEFUL EXAMPLE → Community-led tech solutions, like Resonate, a musician owned streaming service, built by and for the community it serves as a non-extractive alternative. - Post-human future concerns
Tech-pro media is shaping public imagination around transhumanist and post-human futures, positioning tech visionaries as the architects of humanity’s next phase.
HOPEFUL EXAMPLE → Indigenous futurisms rooted in traditional ecological knowledge, storytelling, and reciprocity. - Philanthropic power asymmetry
Systems centered around philanthropy often perpetuate power consolidation in shifting agendas of the wealthy few, rather than supporting mutual aid and systemic change.
HOPEFUL EXAMPLE → Participatory budgeting in places like Porto Alegre, Brazil and New York, allow communities to directly decide how public funds are allocated. - Scarcity of alternatives visions
Dominating funding, media attention, and platform access, gatekeepers limit which imaginative possibilities get resources and visibility.
HOPEFUL EXAMPLE → The open source software revolution restored software freedom in the 80s, gave us the GNU Project and galvanized the open source movement. - Resource hoarding as experimentation control
One of the book's key insights is exemplified in the opening quote; who controls the material resources also controls the imaginative resources.
HOPEFUL EXAMPLE → Mutual aid networks demonstrate how distributed resources and collective care can address needs without relying on concentrated wealth.
In Imagination, we are also reminded by Kelly Hayes that “A lot of things people say ‘cannot be done’ have not been meaningfully attempted in our context or our lifetimes. It’s easy to maintain myths of impossibility when you crush all experiments.” Precisely!
Please join our conversation and experiment with us next Tuesday, August 26th at 8PM ET, to welcome Dr. Benjamin as we explore this and other themes from her essential work, Imagination: A Manifesto. Let’s find and create hopeful examples, together.
— The god(m)others