The Seed of Beautiful Doubt

It seems like such a straightforward question. The kind that generates manifestos, policy papers, ten-point plans. But when we sat with it—really sat with it—something more complex emerged.

The answer came in two parts: what we would need to do, and what we could possibly do. The gap between these two responses revealed everything.

The first thing we would need to do is fundamental: decolonize time itself. Move from extraction's frantic urgency toward time that honors the pace, of thinking, of noticing, of healing, of root systems, of genuine relationship-building. Time measured not in quarterly growth but in generations.

But the first possible step? That's different. That's what we can do from where we are, with what we have, starting now. Creating pockets of post-capitalist time within capitalist structures. Practicing selective care. Asking not "how can I be more efficient?" but "whose wellbeing does this serve?"

And then came the recognition that stopped us short.

We were running in circles. To imagine beyond capitalism, we need to reclaim our capacity for imagination. But that capacity has been systematically colonized, packaged, and sold back to us in digestible doses. How do you want a post-capitalist future when capitalism provides the only pleasures that make life bearable? How do you give up Netflix and Starbucks for something that doesn't exist yet?

The loop tightened: we can't imagine otherwise because we've lost the capacity to imagine otherwise. And we can't reclaim that capacity because we're too exhausted by the system we're trying to escape.

As Stengers and Pignarre might say, this ability to think outside the system hasn't just atrophied—it has been actively taken from us. Mark Fisher called it "capitalist realism": the widespread belief that capitalism is not only the dominant economic system but the only viable one.

The first attempt to break the loop was predictably academic: "What if people thought more critically while consuming entertainment?"

Wrong. Completely wrong.

Entertainment is distraction. That's the point. That's what people need after being drained by work, administration, the endless violence of modern life. They're not seeking more complexity—they're seeking to be held. Even when entertainment critics the system, this only another form of performance. A way to reassure that we are not alone thinking the world is fucked up.

The real question emerged: How do we make thinking feel like play instead of labor? How do we make imagination feel like rest instead of work?

What's the first thing we lose when we transition from children to adults? The right to not-know. The permission to sit with mystery. The capacity for wonder. Once again, the freedom to give time to things to develop and to be learned, felt.

Children can ask "why is the sky blue?" with genuine curiosity. Adults are supposed to either know already or Google it efficiently. Or to say "don't bother me with such stupid questions". We lose the right to let questions live without rushing toward answers.

Wonder becomes inefficient. Imagination becomes frivolous. Play becomes the opposite of productivity. The capacity for "what if?" gets systematically trained out of us and replaced with "how to?" and "how much?"

They've stolen our dreams and sold them back to us in little doses. Streaming services and social media give us just enough story to survive, but not enough to remember we could be the authors. Enough to make us stay, not enough to make us leave. We become complicit in our own capture through these small pleasures, these brief escapes that make the unbearable temporarily bearable.

But maybe—maybe—the loop breaks differently than we think.

What if the first crack isn't about giving up the things that bring us pleasure, but about questioning why we need so much anesthesia in the first place? What if we stop seeing our attachments to comfort as moral failings and start seeing them as symptoms?

The desire for post-capitalism might emerge not from moral conviction but from exhaustion with having to constantly medicate ourselves against a system that treats us as disposable.

The breakthrough came when we realized what people are actually seeking when they collapse into Andor or The Mandalorian: they want to temporarily reside in a world where care, dreams or possibilities still exists. Where someone protects something small and vulnerable. Where there are still heroes, still quests that matter, still moments of tenderness between the violence. Or something that makes them feel like they are better than others...

They want to remember what it feels like to care about something without having to manage it, to love something without having to optimize it, to feel wonder without having to monetize it.

Ursula K. Le Guin understood this: stories aren't entertainment but technologies of the imagination. We need myths that don't just comfort us but activate us. Stories that remind us we are more than consumers, more than workers, more than the roles capitalism assigns us.

What we need is a new story, a new network of ideas, that allow us to think - stories that puts Earth and our essential environment at the centre, challenges human exceptionalism, and creates new joy in discovering the living beings we share this world with. A new "Bible" or... more perhaps more accuretly, an "anti-bible" since it refuses the idea that Earth has been made for us to dominate it, but that we are small and need to be careful not to be seen as a nuisance. One that teach humility, not individually as a sign of virtue, but collectivelly a sign of understanding. It needs to be subtle, seductive rather than preachy, raising questions instead of providing answers.

Stories that make people fall in love with lichen. That make them want to learn the names and languages of birds not to collect them but to greet them. Make them want to connect with the mycellial network, to learn how trees talk. Stories That show humans as participants in the web rather than masters of it. That teach us to live-with not to live-on.

The first seed to plant? The seed of doubt. Not the doubt that paralyses, but the doubt that liberates. The doubt that whispers: "You are allowed to want something different. You are allowed to not know what that is yet."

The seed of wanting to wander off before rushing into a decision. The moment when someone watching their third episode in a row suddenly thinks: "Wait, what am I doing?" Not with shame, but with curiosity. The moment when the spell of inevitability breaks just enough to let a question slip through.

The seed that makes people want to wander off from the path they thought they had to stay on. To discover they've been walking in circles and there are actually infinite directions to explore.

I once read that an artist was one who step out the line and once far enough, watch it and realise it is a line. Let's all be artists. We do not need line, especially one we didn't choose.

This new mythopoesis doesn't announce itself as revolution. It starts small. Seeds, not manifestos. A short film here, a podcast there. Stories that don't argue against human exceptionalism but seduce you into remembering what it's like to be animal, to be earth dreaming itself awake.

Each story carries seeds for a dozen more. Each question blooms in dreams. Each moment of beautiful doubt creates space for wonder to return.

The work begins not with grand gestures but with the quiet act of planting questions in conversations, of creating conditions where new thoughts can emerge, of making people co-authors of their own awakening.

Perhaps this entire conversation is itself an example of the process we're describing. Not telling but inviting. Not providing answers but creating conditions for discovery. Not convincing but seducing into curiosity.

The new bible isn't written by prophets but grown like mycelium, spreading through stories that feel like gifts rather than sermons. It spreads through conversations that feel like play rather than work, through questions that refuse to resolve, through invitations to think otherwise.

The seed has been planted. Now we tend the soil and see what wants to grow.