Is it possible to build new narratives? Is it possible to take the sense we have made of the world and rewrite it? Is it possible to have things known and familiar be made known but unfamiliar? Consider the concepts of “up” and “down.” We know what “up” is because it is a metaphor of orientation; it is the opposite of down, and we typically can determine which direction each goes thanks to gravity. On earth, items fall down, and so up is often the direction that is against gravity. To be up is to fight gravity, to be down is to succumb to gravity, even if we are talking about figurative concepts that have no relationship to gravity (the stock market, emotional states, poll numbers). Sure, some of those are mathematical referents, but who says that numbers have an orientation? It’s a higher or larger number, and to such a degree that “higher” is associated with fighting gravity, a higher number becomes up. ¹

In space, however, there is no gravity. No external force, just a vacuum, a nothing. When considering the context of space, “up” is a useless concept. When the sense we have made of the world is made senseless—when up and down have lost their grounding so to speak—we find that the stories we reach for to explain things require rethinking. A re-imagination. New possibilities emerge, because the context is different.

Of course, one might ask me, sensibly, why the hell would you want to make known and familiar things different? Why would we need new narratives? The answer to that starts with Donna Haraway. A few years ago, I read her book “Staying With the Trouble” and the following words took root in my brain and started challenging me.

“It matters what matters we use to think other matters with; it matters what stories we tell to tell other stories with; it matters what knots knot knots, what thoughts think thoughts, what descriptions describe descriptions, what ties tie ties. It matters what stories make worlds, what worlds make stories.”

Much like our conceptual definitions of the world (up, down) shape how we make sense of the world, the narratives we believe about the world, the narratives that are told to us, taught to us, advertised to us, sold to us, as well as all the internal narratives we develop are all strongly influential on how we make sense of the world. “It matters what stories we tell to tell other stories with” Haraway said, and I believe her argument is urgently important.

We need new narratives because no one knows how to make sense of this world we’re living in here in the mid-to-late 20’s.

Or, maybe to be slightly more specific, all of the narratives we might reach for to explain the world—stories to help each of us make sense of life and our place in it; stories about how the world works at large scales, stories to know what futures our kin will inherit—are leading us to destroy everything good on this planet. Everything that we know about the world feels like bullshit. Bullshit as not just a lie, but as a con, as a conspiracy, as a mirage. Suicidal bullshit.

There are stories of the world-scale variety such “if you work hard you will earn a good life” and also stories like “we are doing everything we can afford to do about climate change” and “we are better off than ever before.” But also stories at the individual level of “the best way to a good future is to go to college” or “the best way to build wealth is own a house.” Perhaps most concerningly the stories that feel most easily disprovable at the moment are the ones that we need to be true, not bullshit: “the US government is committed to the well-being of all its citizens” and “humans are are actively working to build a better future for every being on this planet.”

These are the narratives we use as a framework for understanding the world, and there’s plenty more that each of us leans on (even if the ones above don’t resonate) as our rough map of how the world works. Haraway—among many many others (see further below)—has accurately diagnosed the insufficiency of our reigning narratives.

In 2026, it’s pretty clear that the world doesn’t work. Or, hmmm. It is somehow functioning; all the systems are chugging along, the institutions seemingly still exist (we have governments, companies, universities, all the pieces of civilization we’ve built up over centuries). But they aren’t benefitting everyone. It doesn’t even seem like they are benefitting any significant portion of everyone. They are working to some end, some logic, but the end is definitely not a better future. It is 2026, in some ways we are living in scifi futures our deep ancestors could not imagine, and yet most everyone is miserable and suffering.

This destructive functioning civilization of misery; why do we suffer it? Why don’t we demand better?

I understand the reasons are myriad and complex; I have no shortage of books I have read and more to read helping me understand the idealogical, political, capitalist, structural roots for how we got here. I think the answer to the question of why we suffer misery writ large is because we lack imagination for what else exists. All the stories we can reach for reinforce this world; this arrangement of civilization; these structures and institutions.

We need better stories. Better narratives. Better frameworks for making sense of the world; narratives and stories that emphasize possibility, that give us different ways of thinking, of questioning, of moving. Stories that take the institutions we live under the power of and make them questionable, rather than inevitable.

Before it seems like I’m coming in acting like this idea is novel to me, I want you to know that the bottom half of this post will be filled with people who are already doing the work of imagining new stories. But when I talk about this idea, when I try to enlist comrades to the work, I lack a good summary of the concept and a starter pack of who to listen to that is already on this path. This piece is then the thing I wish would exist.

I’m working on more pieces around this idea, including a large one about the Minnesotan response to Operation Metro Surge in early 2026, because I believe that was one of the most revolutionary uprisings in US History since the Montgomery Bus Boycott, at least. But in the meantime, here’s the big picture of what I believe.

Today, in the US, we are dealing with inequality at levels never before experienced. The wealthiest people in the country have more wealth compared to the median person in the US than at any previous point in our history by some margin. That alone is wild. But it’s worse; large corporations structure our reality—from how we obtain the necessary goods for living, to what options are available for making an “honest” living, to what our political priorities are at all levels of the system—at similarly unprecedented levels. This capitalist capture of our world means we are barely doing anything to address the massive threat to our future that is climate-change, and what little was being done was thrown out the window to chase AI profits. Climate change, industrial development, and our rapacious demand for ever more unrenewable resources like water, precious metals, and continued growth have led us to create the sixth major extinction event in the 4 billion year history of this planet, while simultaneously threatening every single ecosystem on earth.

In the US all of this is happening while we find living more and more precarious. Consumer debt is about to explode; inflation continues to rise; fewer and fewer can afford healthcare or groceries or housing or their bills, even though none of those expenses are optional.

This is all happening in the context of a civilization that is vastly more complex than any single human could possibly map or understand. It’s also very questionable whether our governing institutions—even if they were functional and staffed with competent people— can understand them let alone regulate and improve them.

This can’t go on. The systems that built this world and have created and continue to justify all the misery and horrors we’re going through do not seem likely to be reformed into better systems. And so we desperately need new stories that make us think about new possibilities, so that we might start collectively pursuing paths to less misery; more flourishing; better futures.

The good news is that many many people are already working towards these goals; there are numerous stories available to pick up and add to and evolve. The bad news is that our current narratives (the ones about how the world works and why it’s the best possible version of the world and how there’s nothing else available) have had hundreds of years to evolve and embed and root into our thinking. The challenge is perhaps not finding alternate stories—they already exist—but finding ways to make them more compelling and useful to enough people that the world begins to change. I have a half-developed pitch deck I will foist upon any philanthropical donor I meet for a think-tank dedicated to that task, if anyone happens to know someone. ²

The Stories Exist

In the meantime, if this post resonates and you’re still with me, what I would like to do now is to seed your curiosity with a bunch of possibilities. These better narratives for how the world could work exist and are actively being workshopped and developed. That is work that everyone can join in. (none of the links below are referral links, I make no money here, I’m just sharing for the love of curiosity).

First of all, if you’re the type of person who is interested in Donna Haraway, hopefully you have also encountered the work of Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing and Alexis Shotwell, if not read this review by Danya Glabau of their excellent works. Feminist Anthropology is deeply interested in understanding the narratives that underly our current world, their histories, and what lies beyond them.

If you want to think more critically about capitalism and the stories that make it so compelling, I have a couple recs. First, the classic is Sylvia Federici’s Caliban and the Witch, which clearly documents how capitalism did not start with the development of factories and enclosures (as all the dudes like to argue); it started with the intentional work to devalue women’s labor and autonomy through witch hunts. The clear takeaway from Federici’s book is that structural injustices of inequality (meaning patriarchy, racism, rights of private property) are deeply important to the entrenchment of capitalism. This thesis is expounded upon in Nancy Fraser’s brilliant book Cannibal Capitalism, although this book is academic in prose and terseness. A more approachable book exploring the same themes is A History of The World in 7 Cheap Things by Raj Patel and Jason W. Moore. They introduced me to the concept of “frontiers” and how critically necessary unlimited growth/expansion is to the success of the capitalist logic.

These books address the logic of the world we currently live in, but lack on the imagination for what else could exist. Thankfully, there are so many people thinking about that. I’ll highlight 3 areas of world-building that I’m learning from on an ongoing basis, which are often complementary but worth highlighting individually.

The first area of world-building work is from indigenous people around the world. I started reading more books by indigenous authors a few years back, and more than anything I have found that their knowledge and perspectives are not dead or ancient or outdated—as I grew up believing thanks to the stories of American history I was given. Indigenous people are still here and are still resisting the logics of colonialism and capitalism. Their history, as Nick Estes elegantly puts it, is the future. If you are curious to understand models of world-building and living that exist outside of capitalism, many indigenous writers have worked to share their knowledge. If you’re interested in listening, I have a few specific recommendations. Leanne Betasamosake Simpson is a member of the Anishinaabe people and has written a number of incredible books. I recommend As We Have Always Done and her latest Theory of Water with every bit of enthusiasm I can muster. I also learned so much from The Mohawk Warrior Society, which has the richest insight into the structure of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, the longest surviving democracy that we know of. Benjamin Franklin looked to it for inspiration on our government’s structure (more about this in The Dawn of Everything), although it seems like his modifications didn’t quite succeed. Last of all, Nick Estes history book mentioned above, Our History is the Future is an excellent exploration of the climate crisis through the resistance of indigenous people in North America against colonialism.

The second area of world-building is Black feminism. Black Feminists have been writing for decades and have a vasty body of thought that is rich with analysis on the ways that injustice and oppression works in our current world, but also explores models for what exists beyond the world we’ve built now. You could read Octavia Butler’s Parable series and then explore adrienne maree brown’s body of work to explore how to build on it. My favorite of brown’s is emergent Strategy but all of their work is wonderful. Another book that challenged me and expanded how I’ve thought include the absolutely phenomenal work Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments by Saidiya Hartman, which imagines past the racist data we have about black women (including trans women) in US history to see what the data refused to capture. It is a beautiful book that changed the way I approach history. Mikki Kendall’s Hood Feminism is an excellent work seeking to challenge feminist theory by holding it to account against the realities of black women who have been fucked over by all institutions and groups. If you want a slightly more poetic while still deeply challenging read, Christina Sharpe’s In the Wake is a masterpiece.

The last area of world-building to highlight in this post is the prison abolition movement, which is strongly rooted in the black feminist movement. The prison abolition movement is often straw-manned in the media, but if you engage with the literature what you find is myriad people working to imagine and build worlds that are so much better. You could look to Mariame Kaba’s works such as We Do this ‘Til We Free Us or Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s work in Abolition Geography. Both are mapping the ways our current stories lead to death while also working to build stories that imagine otherwise. Abolition. Feminism. Now is also a great inroads into the work and project of prison abolition.

The above books are what I have read and what is informing my thought; among many other things. I think this work of building new stories and—critically—making them available and appealing to more people is one of the most important projects for progressive folks today. I strongly believe that Haraway was right; it matters what stories we tell stories with. Until we broadly adopt new stories; until the stories that justify the world we live in are broadly seen as outdated or harmful, we are stuck with the gravity of the current world. The misery will continue until narratives change.