Status Updates From Utopias of the Third Kind (...

She had recently come to the conclusion that the world she lived in was not a separate, self-contained thing, but actually an intersection of many worlds. There was the world of the beetle, the world of her mother pounding spices in the kitchen downstairs, the chess-world, where her brother battled the evil enemy king, and who knows how many hidden worlds outside her awareness?

So utopias, then, must be different from each other, yet their global expression must have weight, if we are to dislodge the global pyramid of power that has such a hold on our imaginations and our lives. How? [i follow] the Vikalp Sangam project and the Global tapestry of Alternatives, which compile in detail the many different experiments in resistance and alternative living that are taking place around the world.

I was familiar with some of the Indian stories: the legendary Mendha Lekha village in Maharashtra, which had defeated the scourge of alcoholism, protected its forests, and its right to self-determination; the extraordinary story of the Dalit women of the Deccan Development society and their organic farming revolution; the resilience of the Dongria Kondh tribals in their struggle to protect their beloved hills.

She continued to read her science fiction novels because, more than ever, they seemed to reflect her own realization of the utter strangeness of the world… And that this great truth, which she would spend her life unraveling, was centered around the notion that you did not have to go to the stars to find aliens or to measure distances between people in light years.

“Hunger”