Last night i was sitting in a room of about thirty people who were diverse in age, gender and race as we took a couple of hours to look a little more deeply into the concepts of Economics and Theology.

One comment that someone made sparked some thinking that i had already been doing – she said something about the fact that we assume that history is finished in the sense that the systems and powers – financially and structurally – that are in place today are going to be in place for all time.

Clearly the systems and power structures and boundary lines that are in place now were not always in place.

i remember growing up when telephones were these things we had at home attached to walls with these round rings of numbers you had to dial, and wait for it to spin back before you could dial the next number, to call someone. The idea of a phone you could carry around in your pocket – let alone on that could give you accurate street directions to a place you have never been to before or take photos – would have been ridiculed for sure. Something for sci fi movies perhaps. And yet how much of sci fi movie technology now exists today?

There was a time before cars and trains, a time before airplanes, a time before the internet as a source of news and entertainment and immense frustration. Back in the day you had to go to school to find the idiots and the bullies.

Technology advances so quickly these days that even if you are too young to have had to copy with phones that only happened at home, you can still relate to many aspects of this-didn’t-used-to-be-a-thing-now-it’s-a-thing. Change is inevitable.

Many of us have looked at an economic system that seems to favour some people at the expense of others and quickly come to the conclusion that it is not the best way of doing things. Possibly because it is hard for us to imagine what is a better and viable way of doing things, even if everyone was on board with wanting to give it a shot if we could just figure it out, we tend to buy into that belief that the current system is it. This is what we have forever from now.

But it doesn’t have to be.

People were dissatisfied with the abomination that was slavery and it was eventually ended [in its pure form at least]. 

People were no longer okay with the fact that women were not allowed to vote and so in many places that was changed.

People realised the evils of apartheid and that system came crumbling down. [although we deal daily with its residue].

What if we dared to dream that another way was possible when it comes to economic things?

That a small percentage of people controlling the majority of a country’s money and resources and systems is not the best we can do?

If we just start to dream that it is possible and consciously start to work against the lie in our minds that the present day systems are set.

Planning and mobilisation and action and revolution can all happen somewhere else down the line.

But what if it all begins with some of us just dreaming that it was possible? 

future things