the secret third thing

some thoughts on the future

I’ve been listening lately. To the news (a little), to my beloveds (a lot). To other things, too: the sounds of trees being cut down in my neighborhoodf (painful). The sounds of new houses going up exactly at sea level on a barrier island in the gulf (absurd). And finally, to my dreams, to other people’s dreams (weird, but also cool). To the dreams of the earth, which is what I’m calling things like that video of the snapping turtle at the top of this post (the pine tree pollen making it look like they’re swimming through the ever-expanding universe). Here’s what I’ve heard in my listening.

---

I think on some level we want the future to be easy.

That’s what we’re promised under the binary of capitalism after all! If you go along with extraction, it will be easy. If you go along with white supremacy ideology, it will be easy. If you go along with climate destruction, it will be easy.

And the corollary: If you don’t go along, you will be punished. You’ll experience violence *and everyone around you will think it is at some level, justified.* You’ll be alone. It will be hard.

The real kicker is, going along is not easy, of course. We do get all these conveniences, those of us who can “go along.” We get protected from *some* forms of state violence *sometimes.* You can do things like buy a house, buy groceries from all over the planet. Watch almost any kind of show on one of the thousands of streaming platforms. Ask AI to write an email. But/and: all of it is still exhausting. And unfulfilling. And precarious. And doesn’t deep down, feel real.

So sometimes when we think about the future, we want the opposite of the present. We want ease. We don’t want to have to work EVEN MORE for it. We don’t want it to feel precarious, or slippery. We don’t want to feel like we’re in charge of it, even as we hope, so desperately, for something to change. For something different.

Sometimes this means we slip into an unintentionally fascist dream of the past: “back to normal,” is a key phrase here. When we didn’t have to think so hard or work so hard. When we were happier, ignorant, blissful. This version of the past maybe doesn’t *seem* fascist, it just seems…normal? Better? Just…less of what’s coming at us right now.

…what’s coming at us, of course, (let me hold your hand for this part)…is what’s already been here. Just more intensified in our case, for those of us who live in the heart of empire. Just what our government has been using on *other* people for a long, long time. Brutal, violent, colonial. Ultimately, a nightmare.

This leads us to the real real: the future can be different than the too often horrible present. From the dream of a past that doesn’t exist.

But how do we get there?

The future will be different if WE are different. If we learn how to be different kinds of people. If we unmap our values system from capitalism and colonialism. From extraction, from exploitation. From domination.

This is what people mean when they call us to turn toward mutual aid. Towards collective projects. Towards sharing, towards non-extractive ways of exchange.

But sometimes too, that form of exhortation is also terrifying, because that future doesn’t feel that different from the present for many of us. It still asks us to actually pay attention to how difficult and painful the present is. It draws us closer to our own terror about now, and the near future.

And so we snap back towards the past, seeking, as I just learned from the buddhists, the last moment of safety. The last time we felt okay. And if we can’t REALLY have that, then I guess we’ll just take whatever feels closest. Easy. Normal. A kind of fever dream of okayness, of “this is fine” while the world is on fire, under snow, underwater, drying out, shaking, uprooted.

But, sweet humans (let me hold your metaphorical hand again while I say this). That “okay, this is fine” dream is not your dream. The dream of normal is not your dream. That dream was given to you, by a system that wants to control you. To make you good, not defiant. That lets the world slip deeper and deeper into fascism, which at its core is a kind of death + domination cult with a lot of dress-up options.

So I’d like to offer you a different thing. A secret third thing, if you will, although it’s only a secret because of how thoroughly educated and entrenched in capitalism’s imagination we’ve been.

The secret third thing is: we can build a different kind of future together. We can be different kinds of people together. If we learn how to listen to our dreams.

Each of us has better, deeper dreams inside of us, for ourselves, for the kids in our lives, for the elders around us, for the earth. Better, deeper than just passively letting things get worse and worse. Better and deeper than the flimsy disney dreams of the past.

YOU know how to dream in ways that empire could never touch, never get its bleached, extractive hands on. Even though it wants to, so, so much.

Dreaming sounds silly, but/and the secret third way is often silly, absurd, totally fanciful. And to become different kinds of people, ones who aren’t only terrified of the future or longing for the past, we will + must practice different kinds of things. Silliness, absurdity, joy, laughter — even and especially when those seem like a totally inadequate response to what’s coming at us.

We must turn toward everything in us that these systems try to take away from us. That they spend so, so much time trying to make over in their image. And we must put our arms around what is there inside of us, the way we would a child, a little dog, a cat, a friend. And we must do the work that is here for us to do, not drudgingly, not extractively, but seriously, playfully, lovingly. To build a world we can live in. And be our full selves in. And I don’t know about you, but THAT’s the kind of future I want to live in and build. With you, if you’re interested.

If this feels intriguing, I invite you to take a look at Weird Wondrous World: a sturdy 10-month cohort of dreamers, organizers, mystics, pre- and post-revolutionaries, and maybe, maybe you. We’ll untangle our imaginations from empire, reconnect to our wildest, most absurd dreams for the future, and learn all the ways our dreams aren’t just a vehicle for personal transformation or wish fulfillment, but are actually a secret third thing: a portal into a different kind of future. For all of us. Weird Wondrous World starts March 11 and runs through the rest of the year.

With the queerest, trans-est of love, this month, from the ocean and the dunes, and the blackbirds and the herons and the turtles and the pine trees and the eagles and the pelicans and the dolphins, and me,

Kali