Finding solutions where only impossibilities are found
Hope. It’s the reason why we buy lottery tickets, enter all those Instagram competitions and rebut medical diagnosis in favour of being the one in a million-miracle cure. It’s the reason we chase impossible dreams and above all it’s the catalyst for change.
I have believed for a long time that hope is a more powerful tool than fear and as a practice, it’s a philosophy that runs through the veins of Studio 31. Increasingly today, we live in a world of soothsayers who predict the end of life on earth and point out the imperfections and immorality of our most imperfect of race’s. I don’t doubt the importance of their role in our society and our future; indeed we need the journalists, scientists and academics to help us understand the level of catastrophe we are causing and the depth of the repercussions of our actions. However, we also need solutions.
Enter the X prize. This was recently brought to my attention by a colleague, a hypothesis that in the midst of all the wildly diverse minds on this planet, lie the answers to all the world’s problems. A vision that solutions are collective; born of collaboration, togetherness, community and a firmly optimistic belief that “there isn’t a problem that cannot be solved”.
Yes, it is an organisation born of space travel and yes, there are those that could, perhaps rightly, argue the unsustainable motivations of its past, but that first seed of hope has sparked true innovation, creativity and technological advances that have the power to change the world. Its mission now is to create a ‘future for this planet that we can be proud of’ and it seeks to provide people with the motivation (financial and otherwise) to seek solutions where only impossibilities have been found before.
Peter Diamandis said “The day before something is truly a breakthrough, it’s a crazy idea” and that’s true. It’s hope though, that transforms that crazy idea into a reality and organisations like the X prize that seek to bring together the hopeful with the “crazy ideas” to a common cause and greater good…as landscape architects maybe there are synergies there.
Photo by Nagara Oyodo