Imagining Thrutopias II: The Best Possible Futures We Can Actually Have

A residential gathering at Furnace Brook, September 23-28 2026

Last year we began a difficult inquiry: not into what the ideal future might look like in theory, but into what the best future we could actually navigate toward might feel like in practice. We call this thrutopia — getting through what is coming as it comes as well as possible, without pretending collapse won't happen, and without pretending a good future needs to be perfect.

This year we’re going deeper. Sign up below.

Thrutopia as a living process, not a destination

One of the traps of utopian thinking — including much progressive thought — is the compulsion to arrive somewhere: to describe the endpoint, agree on its features, defend its coherence. But Ursula Le Guin, one of the sharpest navigators of this territory, understood that utopian imagination becomes dangerous the moment it freezes. 

The kind of thinking required to change the goals of human domination and unlimited growth toward those of human adaptability and long-term survival involves "acceptance of impermanence and imperfection, a patience with uncertainty and the makeshift." This is thrutopianism: not a map but a direction, not an answer but an ongoing practice.

This year we want to take seriously the dialectical nature of this process — the way a genuinely thrutopian imagination has to hold tension between what we hope for and what is actually possible, between the present's constraints and the future's genuine openness. In Le Guin’s words, the present is not stable — "it is the product of constant change." Octavia Butler in her Parables was perhaps indicating something very similar.

Thrutopia is what we do in that space.

The questions we'll carry through the week:

• What does it mean to hold thrutopia as an ongoing, revisable process rather than a destination? What does that ask of us emotionally and intellectually?

• If the future we're imagining is to genuinely involve the majority of people — not just the already-convinced — how does that change what and how we envision?

• How does awareness of silent majorities and the better values they want to live by create a solid ground upon which we can imagine thrutopias?

• What are the places, practices, and relationships that make this kind of imagination possible? What are we building when we build those?

• Where does thrutopia live in the body, in daily life, in the small-scale and the local?

More about Furnace Brook

It was crucial for us this year to gather in a place where we could witness and support people who are undertaking a thrutopian experiment. Apart from the grazing goats on premises and on-site tap-room (providing real ales brewed by none other than our host Di!), just a few hours South of London, Furnace Brook will greet us with eighty acres of farmland, lakes, meadows & old farm buildings that are becoming a home for thriving wildlife, regenerative farming & a growing family of nature-based enterprises.

Its vision is to connect people of all ages with nature & with each other. Furnace Brook partners with local farms & schools to help children understand where their food comes from, supports local residents to grow produce for their community & facilitates a Community Gardens Network to engage older adults, isolated individuals, young people & those navigating mental health challenges.