Imagine we could name the sickness. Imagine the sickness is our division. Imagine the division was not inherited, it was manufactured. Imagine the manufacturers are not your neighbours, your friends, or your family.
Imagine the first step to getting what you want is acknowledging our growing division. Imagine the more divided we are, the stronger they are. Imagine they know it, and work to keep things that way.
Imagine the algorithm as the common enemy. Imagine the screen as the place we learned to hate strangers we never met. Imagine we can stop blaming each other for the infection and look for a cure for the disease.
Imagine a social media we welcomed, and imagine what it did while we were looking at pictures of family, friends, pets, and babies. Imagine teen girls told, a thousand times a day, that they were not enough. Imagine Instagram’s own researchers knew, and the report was buried. Imagine we found out. Imagine we let them do it again.
Imagine leaders who would say it plainly: the rage is not yours. It was sold to you, at scale, by a system that profits from your fear. Imagine a politician who named the wound instead of picking at it for votes.
Imagine the last time you spoke to a neighbour you had not been taught to fear. Imagine how long the feed has kept you from them. Imagine the conversation you could have had. Imagine the one you had instead, in a comment section, with a stranger who was paid in your attention to make you feel small.
Imagine a conservative and a liberal at the same table. Imagine both of them tired of being the other one’s villain. Imagine a father in Calgary and a mother in Montreal, each convinced the other has lost their mind, each watching a different feed. Imagine they are both right about something, and both losing to the same machine. Imagine asking: who profits from my anger? Imagine we could see each other again.
Imagine a country where we agree on what is real before we argue about what to do. Imagine deepfakes and bot armies in the month before an election. Imagine a political campaign that did not have to compete for our attention against synthetic rage. Imagine protecting the truth before we lose it.
Imagine naming greed for what it is, in boardrooms, and in us. Imagine admitting it was cultivated, not chosen. Imagine it was fed to us by a system we did not build. Imagine we can build a better one.
Imagine Israel and Palestine, and two neighbours who stopped speaking over a conflict neither can solve from a kitchen table. Imagine pipelines and protests, and a country that cannot say oil without choosing a side. Imagine housing and immigration, and a generation told to blame the newcomer for what the landlord did. Imagine every one of these wounds is real. Imagine none of them were sharpened by accident. Imagine the world’s sharpest minds and best mathematicians, powered by the world’s most powerful computers, given a single goal: make the news addictive and profitable, not informative and healing. Imagine that is not a conspiracy. That is the business model. Imagine it takes great effort to undo great influence, but that healing starts with acknowledging we are all a little sick.
Imagine we are all on a plane we did not choose to board. Imagine the pilots are the CEOs of five companies. Imagine the pilots get richer the faster the plane goes. Imagine the engineers who built the plane are screaming from the back, begging the pilots to slow down. Imagine the plane has no seatbelts, no oxygen masks, no landing gear. Imagine the engineers are certain: at this speed, the plane will not land.
Imagine politicians sitting near the front of the cabin. Imagine they hear the engineers. Imagine they treat the screams as background noise. Imagine, below, the plane approaches paradise. Imagine the engineers begging the pilots to slow down, to land safely. Imagine the pilots accelerating, exponentially, into the dark fog. Imagine half a billion dollars a year paid so that nobody reaches the cockpit.
Imagine a country that has done this before. Imagine Montreal, and the ozone pulled back from the cliff. Imagine Ottawa, and the landmine banned while bigger nations shrugged. Imagine Canada, now, convening the world on intelligence before intelligence convenes us.
Imagine a childhood without algorithmic comparison. Imagine schools that teach attention back into the body. Imagine guardrails for the years a child cannot yet choose them. Imagine reducing the trauma we inherit and refusing to pass it forward. Imagine our kids inheriting a world we built with care, not one built to make a few people richer.
Imagine acknowledging that the free market gave us abundance. Imagine also acknowledging that it brought us a whole host of harms and side effects we never voted for. Imagine a planet handed to us in trust. Imagine we burned it for quarterly earnings. Imagine the fossil fuel companies that knew, decades ago, and chose the shareholder over the sky.
Imagine wealth so concentrated it could buy silence. Imagine a man who trafficked children and dined with presidents. Imagine the names we still do not know. Imagine a system where enough money makes a crime disappear, and enough power makes the victim invisible.
Imagine a country where the owners kept the gains and the workers carried the cost. Imagine being promised it would trickle down. Imagine waiting forty years. Imagine it never did. Imagine asking who wrote the rules. Imagine discovering it was not you. Imagine voting for a more thoughtful system moving forward.
Imagine the young developer whose first job has already been eaten. Imagine the call centre whose every seat closed in a quarter. Imagine job losses that make the Great Depression look small, but this time the jobs do not come back. Imagine losing your ability to provide for your family. Imagine that every dollar you lose flows upward, to the people who already hold more wealth than they could spend in a lifetime. Imagine that is not a forecast. That is the transfer already underway. Imagine zero laws or taxes drafted to date to protect us from this.
Imagine technology built for human flourishing, not engagement time. Imagine extracting every gift AI has to offer, and refusing every harm it is allowed to cause. Imagine liability where there is none. Imagine that cars are liable, drugs are liable, airplanes are liable, and AI is not the one industry that gets a pass.
Imagine we already have everything we need. Imagine a decade of flourishing beyond anything we have dared to picture. Imagine an education for your child better than any private school on earth, and free, and open to every child alive. Imagine the end of cancer. Imagine mental health support that is powerful, personal, and available to anyone who asks. Imagine solving the climate crisis with tools we have already built. Imagine governance so transparent that corruption has nowhere to hide. Imagine all of this is possible right now. Imagine all we have to do is slow the plane down and land it safely.
Imagine you have, inside you, everything needed to change the course of the world. Imagine that is not a slogan. Imagine it has always been true.
Imagine the imaginal cell. In the caterpillar, the cells that become the butterfly are attacked first. The body reads transformation as threat. Imagine you are one of those cells. Imagine you find the others.
Imagine feeling like you do not know enough to speak up. Imagine you do not need to be one hundred steps ahead, only a couple. Imagine real change on the other side of a little discomfort.
Imagine three people who need to read this. Imagine telling them. Imagine they each find three. Imagine a movement is not one signature but the thread from one hand to the next. Imagine we were always many, and only the feed made us feel alone.
Imagine your thoughts become your words. Imagine your words become your beliefs. Imagine your beliefs become your choices. Imagine your choices become your actions. Imagine your actions, together, become the world we live in.
Imagine signing your name. Imagine writing your MP. Imagine that the only way the world has ever changed is this way. Imagine choosing, together, what comes next.