 We have a very beautiful definition in the program about an aesthetic movement and a cultural movement that aims to be like the, you know, brighter side of cyberpunk. But the thing that excites us really about solar punk is not just the plans and the studio give me vibes and this, you know, solar tag and the green tag. But it's more the vibe or how we imagine like really living there in the future. Like how does it really feel to be a person living in solar punk. And that that is essentially what the imaginary is because if we look at the difference between cyberpunk and solar punk is not so much the tech that's different as in like the infrastructure that we're in because pretty much they're both like highly advanced technological societies, but it's rather like how we're using this technology and the difference in precisely how we use and the narratives, the cultural narratives and like the cultural background in which these two very different worlds take place is the imaginary. So basically they're similar infrastructure, but just a different imaginary that different manifestations of the imaginary take place. And imaginaries are these words that gets, okay, that gets thrown a lot gets thrown a lot around recently it's yes just become is this concept in sociology that is kind of new to our imaginary again, but right now it's getting it's getting a lot of traction. And there is a specific reason of why we're talking about imaginaries now, and we haven't been talking about imaginaries in, say, the past 50 years so much. And this is because imaginaries to really understand them. And the difference that they have between like near cultural narratives, or ideologies is because they're especially relevant when we're talking when the humanity or civilization is making a very big leap a very big transition. Then that transition isn't really happening just at the level of culture or ideologies and I'm going to get more into detail later, but it's a leap that's happening in imaginaries. And for you to really understand this, I'm going to walk you through how imaginaries were born and how did the imaginaries of all with us. So little imaginary session this will be relevant for the workshop to imagine is one on one. So how did imagine how did the imaginaries were born. Well, so here, you can see where this hunter gatherer societies enjoying a nice bonding fire by the lake. And, you know, back in back in this time we're starting to collaborate with each other we're starting to create, you know, this, this language that we started in trade culture and we need this social glue that keeps us together and that it provides a framework in which we make it easier to collaborate with with each other. And that social glue at the beginning before, even before culture is the fact that we're all directly related either by blood so we're all keen, or related by sharing food and resources in the or also related to the fact that we were all dependent on the same environment to leave. So we had this like natural connection to the natural world, and that was the glue that that kept us working. And so the thing is that both, both kinship and the natural environment, they are, they're real things like they're not imaginary like if you're my, if you're my son or my daughter. That's a very real connection I'm just not making up. And that, or if we're like sharing food together that's a very real connection that we haven't seen with the environment like the trees, the river that we took the fishing and the watering like those were all real material stuff. But what we did is that we elevated this concept and we created an imaginary dimension on top of them. So that's the imaginary it's like that's how like the simulation starts, we create the concept of the tribe like this cohesion that we have, like collective coherence. And then we have the spirit, the spirit is like these, like, call it like the spirit that's that's my naming we call it like the flow of life. The Chi. That's the belief that everything was kind of the same. And that's our how our like first beliefs in animism started. So there's like these, yeah, like natural flow lab is like natural energy that is like manifested through everything and then we're all like part of it. But yeah, so that's like how the first imaginaries were born. But what happened later is that with the rise of agricultural city states. We, first of all, we become much more people so we're less in touch. Like the concept of a tribe that we're all like they're related or like sharing food with each other like that's not true anymore. We go by, we surpass this 150 number number. And we also lose we're right now in in agriculture city states, what we're doing is like not equal to creating grains. That's a classic Harari how the grains actually dominated us. But what that did is that these greatly diminished the connection that we had to our natural environment. And so these made our first stories to like start breaking. So what did we need in order to continue to collaborate and then we needed to create different stories. And so what we did is that from the tribe, we created the concept of the king and we were all part of the king's kingdom. There's this like metaphor that, but actually was taken quite literally that everything is, it's part of the same kingdom, we're all like the body of the king. So the king has like the king is just the environment, but we're all like part of the same thing. And everyone, no matter if you're like a priest, peasant or a princess, like we're all exactly in the place that we need to be in the great, in the great order of life, that's called the great chain of being. And that's what created a lot of cohesion. There was no so much intention that we needed to progress or that you need to change your role because that was the role that was meant for you. And everyone fit perfectly in these divine order of the universe. And so that was king and the kingdom that like kept us together but then from the spirit, we like we capitalized with personalized the spirit into like capital G gods that now they ruled every part of our life they ruled every part of our existence. Okay, now fast forward quite some years many things happen between. But when do we have again a very big transition of imaginary well that's during the enlightenment the 18th century in that enlightenment. We discover science scientific method rationality and the stories of gods and kings they just, you know, don't cut it anymore. And what do we do in order to keep collaborating with each other. Well, we create new ideas we create new stories. So instead of the king that rules everything according to divine guidance now we have nation states that I ruled, not by kings but every money to its own key now. And it's the self governing of the people we all like govern each other in our own sovereignty. And then from the gods, like this ultimate authority that we want to explain everything that happened in society, we create the concept of the economy and in the economy, everyone has its own right place to we have our, we derive our worth from our productivity and like how well we're contributing to the economy and the nation is just a different a different story that we create in order to get this cohesion, get this cohesion working. A little clarification here that doesn't mean that the concept of kings or God is completely ruled out as we will know they're still kings, even today. And there's many people still that believe in God is just that they stop being the main death, like the main definition like the main cluster that we all group ourselves around in society. Okay, now, the things about imagineers that really, really like prevalent like they inform and they impact every single aspect of our social existence, starting with our conception of the self. So, how we think of ourselves and our place in the world is greatly defined by the imaginary that we give it. And so, as, you know, before, in a modern in a pre modern social imaginary, mostly a good person was someone that was a good Christian that like knew their place in the great sort of things and they just did their role very well. And now we change when we when we change to the modernity is like, Oh, now you have. Now we have much more agency and you can change things and the great, the great qualities of someone is maybe how productive they are how much they contribute to their nation how much they contribute to the economy. The most elite people being the noble born and being the priests and the clergy, the most noble people being entrepreneurs or scientists. So that's a meme that we're going to use later. Essentially these capitalism versus what we would have in pre modern social imaginary. And this is actually like quite relevant for example, if you look like this time during quarantine that we were all so stressed like this, you know, deep fear of not being productive isn't it isn't the like a made up fear, especially by by our current modern imaginary. It affects a lot our conception of relationships of what are good and fair relationships and how should be relating for each other, how should be relating with each other for example before we would have much more. Good relationships where the ones in which you know your role. So maybe like your role in life is to be father is to be a good wife is to be peasant and, and that's the thing like that's how you're made to be in the great order of things and that's your divine role and you just need to do that very well. While we transition to a pre modern social imaginary roles change a lot, and even they start getting a contractual undertone so good relationships are when we know each other's position. And we know their goals and we help each other collaborate with these goals and we make contracts and agreements like for example the social contract, and then we need to same like keep this contract with honor and responsibility. Okay, and also of course it affects a lot the, the conceptions of the systems that were ingrained in systems be natural systems or social systems. And, yeah, great example for this is, yeah, social contract versus the divine order of the cosmos it's what provides your, your externality like how do we take decisions through, you know, and who rules things. Is it just, you know, God's word or is it do we have a meritocracy that we have a public sphere that we're all debating, you know, ideas and let the best ideas win. So yeah, so as we can see the imaginaries are the collective unconscious. I say it's them. What mediates our psyches. All of our psyches and our collective vision of society, and they are what provide what create coherence, common coherence, directionality, like what should we be aiming for. And they are essentially what create our sense of normality normality and it is something that we talked about a lot this year 2020 where normality is gone where are we going back to normal. This is also very much related in the imaginary, as I'm going to speak now. And this is also why. Yeah, and this is also why they say a very common metaphor to refer to them is to say that imaginaries are like water for the fish is it something that is all around us. That we're like completely immersed in but for most of us they remain completely visible. And difference again with what I said like at the beginning, how are they different from cultural ideology. Well, they say that imaginaries are like the API of social life. So they're essentially like the canvas where we construct all the other things. Or we construct like all the other narratives or ideologies and this is very much explicit when if you look at if you look at the ideologies that we created in the modern, during the modern imaginary like capitalism communism socialism or like fascism. They all directly refer either to the economy, like capitalism communism or socialism like, they're just different ideas on how should we organize the economy, or to fascism like they refer directly to the nation state. And that's why, like when we're talking about culture change, you know, the next, like the next ideologies that we will have like the ones that really make a leap of imaginary. They can't be constrained with the economy and nations but we need to like really reinvent the whole thing like think of better stories. So, to sum it up, social imaginaries they are the unconscious collective dimension that organizes our social life. And even though they are imaginary constructions, they're not actually real in the material sense, they are very deeply rooted in material reality so as the world evolves, we evolve with it. Okay, now how is this relevant for today? In many ways, because like, you know the gist this is like a tech conference so technology is deeply changing our world like deeply changing our material reality. We have globalization. Same. It's, it's really like blurring the boundaries of the nation state. This is a trend that has been happening for a longer period of time too. And then we have the paradox of capitalism, the fact that capitalism has been incredibly great in the sense of creating a world of vast material abundance, and it has greatly elevated our standards of living in many metrics, but at the same time it's created, it's really depleting our natural world, created an epidemic of bullshit jobs and a deep sense of meaninglessness for a lot of people. There's like deep, deep, deep, deep social and economic inequality. I love that. So what we're seeing is that the main pillars that our imaginary spilt on nation states and the economy are being, they're, they're glitching like they're, they're being deconstructed, they're being made less relevant similar to what we had when gods and kings were glitching were, were being replaced with no ideas and same, same this goes with the fourth, like the different industrial revolutions that happen. And what does that makes us so that makes us narrative orphans in the sense that normality is gone, the collective coherence that we grouped ourselves under is breaking. And now we all look like me man. So me man for those of you who are not familiar with it is this character that comes from the surreal memes type of memes that I mean I guess some of you might be familiar with it. And I think it really like represent very well that feeling of weirdnessness and that feeling of like what the fuck is going on. And that is so prevalent in these past years, and especially today, especially in 2020. And what happens when, what happens when we're in this position where like the grand narratives have like all broken down. Well so we have, we still need these social glue still in cohesion, but it's hard to get that so we have essentially the right that wants to go back to the narratives that we have and that's why they're right today is like appealing to, you know, make America great again or like, like a lot of like nationalism because that's where we will save like that's a narrative that we're all familiar with the nation states. And that's why the left is essentially just eating itself and like the great left's greatest plan is just to say no to what the right is doing, but it doesn't really feel like they have a grand vision for what could come next and that's mostly based in you just saying no to to the rise of the right. And so what that makes us is our current society is like we have the most advanced iPhone, like say the iPhone 2020, but we're still running on a very old software on essentially like 18th century software. It's a way more older density, but that's the better analogy that I could come up with. And, as we all know, what happens when there's such a big difference between our software and our software and hardware, well, that our device our devices start to glitch. So what we have today what we've seen a lot this year is that our current social imaginary all of our current narratives, they're glitching, they're breaking down. And to be honest, this is not a trend that has been unique of 2020, even though this year has been magnified. This essentially like a lot of accumulation of changes that were happening during the years. It really, at least for me, started to break in 2016 with a sense of these like really like weird. And then it goes back into the weirdness that comes with like Harambe like the name of Harambe the gorilla that was dead then it, the major glitch was the election of Donald Trump that put the whole world on on hold. And it's before we had this like sense of normality, even though normality is always extremely constructed, but then it really starts to break recently 2016. So we have a, it opens up this, this like era where like things just like seem to like, start getting very weird assimilation started switching more and more. And, however, what change, however, what change with this year, what change with these years that we have corona and corona comes, and it really puts the whole world on hold. What it made us is it really made us open the eyes so like before we could still pretend that, you know, things were kind of like okay we had this sense of things are weird, but most of us could still carry on with our normal lives and pretend that this was not happening, but has changed really in like 2020 is that now we're just forced to drop the pretense to like, just accept because it's like straight in straight up in your face that things are extremely weird and these things just keep getting weird and weirder. But what did corona really change. So, you know, we have been talking a lot about the future of work, the future of education and now it's just real now we're all working from our homes and this students like students from, you know, their laptop with like this is the last content. The retail apocalypse that hasn't been building up actually for quite a while but now it's here, essentially by law, as all of our corner shops are closed and then we're all forced to buy on Amazon. Then the social inequality that same we've been talking about it for a while now we just playing sick in the obvious as we, you know, divide our workers between essential workers and non essential. All the tech people will be able to like get their money regardless but you're working from home, while so many of others are just, yeah, actually right there. Massive surveillance but now we're asking for it, having people asking the government to like trace all of all of our contacts. The ascent of China to decline in the US like is there any time that it just more real how the US is really breaking down the demand for fossil fuels completely drops and the fragility of our supply chains get completely exposed. So those, those all of these are trends that they had been building up for a long time but because we're so reluctant to change. We just were postponing because I mean change is really hard so we were postponing them and in Corona really like forces us, and it just blasts open the gates of the future in a way. And that's why the first days of the pandemic felt so weird because we were literally fish that had been taken out of the water, like fishing the void in the narrative void. And now the big question is what is next, because will all these weirdness change tomorrow at 12, you know when we get finally to 2021 will this, you know will be like restart. We're going back to normal. And the things that for me normality we might get some sense of routine and we might get some sense of that things are somewhat stable ish, like we're getting it right now I mean after all we're animals of habits so we get used to whatever we have. But normality in the sense that, you know, we know where we're at and we have like a narrative that can make sense of our life and our relationships and, and a shared sense of directionality that we're all working that we're all walking towards. That's not going to happen anytime soon that sense of like having a like new imaginary that we all share is going to take some more work and some more years and definitely a lot more weird things happening and a lot more glitches happening. And that's why I would say, welcome to the permanent weird. Welcome to the permanent weird world. And this actually a concept by Venkatesh Rao, I highly encourage all of us were in all of you who are interested in in these content in this weirdening and breaking down of And yeah, now we're going to go to a workshop where we're going to try to, instead of getting stuck in the permanent weird imagine how it would be to be another human in in 2070. So imagine how does it feel to believe in a solar punk imaginary. So thank you very much for being here. It was lovely.