Project Vision 21

There is a wide range of beliefs that can be considered harmful because of the negative effect they have on our lives once we accept them—most often unconsciously and uncritically. One such belief, now widely prevalent, is the assumption that there are no possible alternatives or new opportunities, whether on a personal or global level.

The toxicity of the idea that “There are no alternatives to the current reality” lies in the fact that it leads us to justify the existing social system (status quo), even when that system does not benefit us and, in fact, perpetuates inequality. As social psychologist John T. Jost explains in several articles and in A Theory of System Justification (2020), this belief works as a defense of the very structures that constrain us.

Believing that there are no alternatives is a way of seeking material security and group stability in a context that is otherwise negative for personal and collective identity and history, thereby reducing anxiety. But in exchange, we deny the creative becoming of who we might be.

This denial of unexplored opportunities and possibilities is often accompanied by another deeply harmful belief —the notion that our lives will never experience sudden, profound, uninvited, and irreversible change, a comforting illusion that we live in a coherent and predictable world.

The “benefit” of believing that life doesn’t change in an instant is that it reduces the distress caused by unexpected events and by the potential loss of control over our own lives. Yet, in doing so, we block all hope and resist transformation. As William Miller suggests in Quantum Change (2001), we close ourselves off from the “epiphanies” that everyday life can offer.

Ultimately, these two beliefs—one that denies alternatives and another that denies sudden transformation—form a double barrier against personal and social change. The first fixes the horizon of what is possible; the second cancels the moment of rupture. Together, they lead us to silently abandon the futures we might otherwise inhabit.

When individuals and communities assume that the current order is the only possible one, they give up imagining, and with that, they shut down the anticipatory power that Ernst Bloch called the not-yet: the awareness capable of intuiting what has not yet come to be but could be—contrary to what Martí Peran describes as “the unbearable repetition of a present that only keeps cloning itself over and over again” (Abandoned Futures, 2014).

While neuroscience and the psychology of change demonstrate that decisive shifts often occur suddenly—as flashes of understanding that reconfigure our perception—many people deny this possibility, closing off the kairos, the instant of revelation, and, as a result, shutting themselves off from the future.

We abandon our futures because two belief mechanisms neutralize them: the inability to imagine what is different, and the denial of the sudden openness of time. Recovering our futures requires a critique of the instant, a readiness to recognize that change can emerge unexpectedly, in any crack within the present.