Hello, again. This is Emma, and I’m here for another drop-in episode to discuss the composition and purpose of This Utopia.

I talked last episode about how the book came to be what it now is. In this episode I’m going to delve a little into the woo-woo of it all. As I said before, I used to be very religious and fairly right leaning, and yet I was always fascinated with what goes on in the unknown. Maybe that was my fascination with religion, after all, because it gives a structure to the unseen world, and the unseen world is something I’ve had some experience with from the time I was a small child. And perhaps I should keep this serious and scientific and not delve into the oddities of life, but then I think we are missing half the point of this juncture at which we have all found ourselves.

And please understand as I get into this concept that I know perfectly well how strange and nonsensical it is. I’m an intelligent person, and so I know utter madness when I see it, but I also know that there is more to this world than we are able to conceive of with our five senses. There is something else going on, and some of that, maybe all of that, I don’t know, is explained by quantum physics, but I can only say that I’ve experienced enough of the unexplainable to really and truly believe that this existence we are living in is … something other than we can fully comprehend.

I saw a post, I don’t know if it was on YouTube or Instagram, I’m somewhat terrible at remembering sources as I’m more concerned with concepts and ideas, but it was a discussion about television show The Simpsons and how many of our modern events that show has predicted. One commentor said that, it wasn’t so much that the writes predicted those events but that it resonated just enough with the collective consciousness that it became manifest. I thought that idea really profound, and if I hadn’t seen enough of it happen in my own life, I would have dismissed it out right. As it was … as it is … I can’t do that. And I’m not saying this is the answer, but I think there is something to it.

If you think about the media over the last several decades, hasn’t it all been about how our government can’t be trusted? Or unbalanced power structures? Or repression and the fight to free ourselves? So has all of that conditioned us for this moment? And I’m not suggesting that there is some magic element in this. That we saw a television show that depicted a certain purportedly wealthy businessman descending an escalator to announce his intentions to run for president magically made that happen. Maybe it was just a good guess. But also, maybe, if one understood that the U.S., government was an oligarchy run by political showmen, then it wasn’t a far stretch to take it to its furthest extreme. All of that to say, there may be something in our collective imagination that has brought us to this point. Look at the popularity of dystopian literature and film. Why is that attractive to us at this moment, or over, say the last twenty years? Is it because we want it? Or is it because we already felt the foundations of it forming? Maybe they were warnings.

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I have also heard it said that great writers aren’t inventing anything truly new, they are simply pulling from the ether the greatest they have already created in another timeline, assuming time is not linear but fluid. Everything that has ever existed or that will ever exist is already in existence at least energetically. If time is not a ruler of events but rather a sandwich of stacked ones, who is to say we cannot reach through the stacks and pull from it what we need now to cope with future events?

A few weeks ago, my car was broken into. The contents of my glovebox were thrown all over my car. In the back was a bag in which I keep my business paperwork including my checkbook. When I checked the bag where I keep my money, the bag was unzipped and my checkbook gone. But as I got to thinking about it, the fact that the bag wasn’t torn apart and its contents thrown everywhere made me wonder if it was not gone through after all. So, before I notified the bank to cancel all those checks, I decided to go through my other bags instead. The checkbook was in my purse, which sounds, I know, like the logical place to find it, only I don’t mix up my business financial stuff with my personal and I have never, ever put my business checkbook in my purse. There’s just no reason for it to be there. Only, I think, the last time I used it, I was interrupted, and so I quickly put it away in the wrong bag, and when I realized that it was not stolen, I just had this feeling that my past self was watching out for my future self. And maybe that doesn’t mean any of that, but it has stuck out to me and felt at the time as if it was a real sort of spiritual intervention.

I think I mentioned in the last episode how I had originally written about vaccinations, and I will say that there is an element in this book even as I’m redeveloping it that I may still go there simply because it’s the easiest solution to a particular problem, but it was not long after I wrote that version into the book that that became a real flashpoint. I wrote about aeroponic vertical farming and then that became a big thing in the locality where I’m currently living. And I don’t mean I heard about it. I mean it became a huge and exciting headline as this company moved in and hired a bunch of people and then expanded.

And that’s not to say I’m a visionary by any means. And I know it isn’t entirely coincidental. Maybe it was already in my subconscious. I don’t know. But there is something in all of this that makes me wonder if, at least in my own reality and lived experience, I have mapped out a future where those in power are at a tipping point. Either they crush us or we crush them.

I will also say here that I have written a lot of romance novels in the hopes of manifesting some grand romance into my life, and that has not worked at all, so … I could just be talking nonsense here.

Whether I am or not, This Utopia is not a dystopian in the sense that it’s all gloom and doom and there’s no hope for mankind. It’s entirely the reverse, actually. I do think we are at a tipping point. I think we are in a place where, potentially, we the people could rise up and demand that the United States keep the promises it made at its outset and has never yet fulfilled. I think it’s time women rose to power in the States and became an example to the rest of the world the impact we can make together when we are finally unfettered and allowed to stand and to speak and to lead on equal ground with equal opportunities. It’s time we stop demonizing people for looking different than us and for aiming at an ideal (whiteness) that really makes no sense and says nothing at all about who a person is in their heart and soul and mind.

I also know, because I’m an active protestor, that many people are afraid and that, as the numbers grow, people gain courage. People follow the crowds, they are influenced by the thoughts and actions of others. Few people have the courage to stand up alone at the beginning of a fight, but many will join in who otherwise wouldn’t when critical mass begins to be reached, and that’s where we are now. The tide is turning. Which way will it turn?

Whatever this oppressive regime has in mind, it cannot last. And so it is up to us to dream up what will come next. We’ve spent generations dreaming up the worst case scenarios in our doom and gloom media, but what is next? Isn’t time to start dreaming up a future that feels good, that is truly great and for everyone?

That’s what I’m trying to do here. I’m trying to give hope. I’m trying to issue a call to the dreamers, and that is all of us, to dream up a world that is fair and safe for everyone, where all have a voice, and all have representation.

And even if there is no magic to this thing we call manifestation, certainly there is something to our desires that, once dreamt and lived in our minds, however big and grand, or perhaps because of their grandness, it will give us the inspiration and hope that we need to fight the battle that is ahead of us.

So that is my invitation. Dream big, dream of the impossible, dream of the ideal, and when the time comes to act, we’ll know what we are fighting for.

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