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In The Alternative c / It is now common place for us to imagine change and difference predominantly through imagining our individual future, or collective futures. We continually state that "in the future we will.." (be able to/ be free from/ be free to/ have technology to/ have acquired/ have accomplished/ have reduced/ have increased etc). However, the use of the future tense ultimately locks our collective ideals, ambitions and prosperity into events that have not yet happened, but are just expected to happen.

What if instead of projectively stating a future tense "in the future I will", we believed in a present tense of "in the alternative I can".

Alternative Presents, rather than Speculative Futures, might now begin to be methodically applied to imagine the new alternatives that are critically needed to replace existing unsustainable (or extinct) ideologies, systems and products we currently live by. If we're to grow the possibility of alternative, to consciously and collectively traverse directly into a parallel reality that is aligned with our human values and the long term potential to support the survival of human consciousness, then we first need permission to imagine alternatives. We then need to make tangible alternatives so that they might be critiqued, propagated, implemented, measured and lived.

The world around us, the world of capitalist realism, is a product of design and designers serving political and corporate growth agendas born of the organising reality of consensus that states 'There Is No Alternative' (to capitalist economic neo liberalism). Subsequently, design and designers might logically also create new forms of realism. Alternative realism.

I now care not of the future.
I only care for the alternative.
For I can be present in an alternative today, not tomorrow.

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