We have become a society of pessimists. Anxiety and despondency dominate political discourse. We are facing no end of existential catastrophes: climate change, pandemics, the strain of ageing populations, the polarisation and breakdown of democracies. It’s no wonder we feel like giving up – and that in itself, argues the public-policy expert Geoff Mulgan, is the real crisis. “We can more easily imagine the end of the world than a better future,” he writes in his introduction to Another World Is Possible. And if we can’t imagine solutions to these challenges, how can we hope to confront them?
Mulgan has decades of experience working with governments and NGOs; he knows that, while progress isn’t easy, it’s not impossible. His book is a manifesto for creativity, and for thinking big. It’s full of radical policy suggestions such as replacing the creaking welfare state with a universal basic income, or moving to a holistic healthcare system focused on the lifestyle and environmental factors that contribute to morbidity, not to mention his ideas for averting ecological disaster and saving the planet. It’s a touch idealistic in places, but, as he argues, “our imagination is limitless”. If we could learn to use it again, maybe our ambition could be too.
By Rachel Cunliffe
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