Imagine the state of our health service if everyone was eating home cooked meals, made with the finest ingredients, harvested directly from rich soil in ‘no dig’ beds we worked ourselves, using ancient farming techniques our species have been practising in harmony with our ecosystem since forever.
Imagine nurses and doctors spending half of their shifts walking around sustainably retrofitted housing estates, being clapped from door steps by a grateful healthy public as they monitored for the presence of things that might make people sick – like billionaires and shit public transport systems.
Imagine this way of living together was funded entirely by our government diverting public money away from subsidising the oil, war and farming industries that are killing all life on earth. Imagine our politicians redirecting our economy, bolstered by a substantial tax injection from the richest people we can find, to support a massive sustainable housing led development program and repurposing food banks as community action centres for equality and environmental protection. Imagine a resilience force of refugees – once blamed by politicians and fascists for all the worlds problems – now leading in the battle to protect our communities from climate collapse – utilising unique skills to support people who have limited experience of adversity or catastrophe.
Imagine that community grounded, participative, democratic institutions, supplanted our broken and corrupt representative democratic system and became the centre of gravity for the mainstream media, businesses, the political class and our public bodies. Imagine profits, ratings and relevance depended on how they were supporting healthy habitats and divestment from eco-cidal economics.
Imagine Lough Neagh was born again into abundant life because our farmers were no longer incentivised to poison her. Imagine that instead of working to profit the wreckers of the Amazon by over fertilising our soil and torturing chickens in factories, before exporting them into our suicidal global food system, that farmers were supported to love the land they love by working it sustainably.
Imagine a world where the Ulster Farmers Union was a clandestine organisation holding secret meetings with funny handshakes as they plotted the redistribution of Little Lord Shaftesbury’s land and the wealth of the Aristocracy and Churches as reparations for colonisation to poor communities and polluted habitats. Imagine healthy conversations about decolonisation, feminism, patriarchy, capitalism and climate collapse - that were not killed at birth by focusing on the delicate sensitivities of our hierarchy led by straight, white, old, anglo-saxon, protestant males. Imagine our response to the climate collapse caused by capitalism was not to pretend that capitalism can fix it, or wasting time propping up its failed institutions with the credibility of our attention.
Imagine a world with no more short term, self indulgent, tokenistic identity politics, where all activism was a deep investment in human rights based solidarity and intergenerational strategies for progressive institution building – planting trees we will never see grow, in a world without big ego. Imagine a world where people’s first thoughts were not; ‘what can I get out of this?’, but ‘how can I be part of this’, ‘how can I be of use?’
Imagine An Sliabh Dubh was not just another deforested Irish tragedy – seen simply as a playground for mining companies, developers and hill walkers with cars and Berghaus Jackets. Imagine it was the temperate European rainforest it wants to be, safeguarded by the people who live in its shadow, their kids playing freely, high up in harmony with the multitude of other species that call our hills home.
Imagine a world where targets were set to make people and plants happy, where the oligarchs gave up on exploitation, power and wealth - volunteering to work in community gardens and return to the land as compost at the end of their long, healthy, meaningful lives.
Imagine that the social media platforms that currently exist to harvest and sell our data by mining us with tools of fear and anger, were banned and their assets transferred to users as compensation for stolen time. Imagine a world where ‘likes’ could only be seen on the faces of people you meet. Where fashion lasted longer than five minutes, where ‘no phone zones’ were the coolest place to be. Where taking your time, paying attention to details and displaying empathy was rewarded by an organic algorithm broadcasting through the mycelial network.
Imagine our schools taught children things they need to know to support themselves and their ecosystems now and in future – abandoning education to create a labour force for the Oligarchs, in favour of two hours a day in between play time and forest time. Imagine energetic teachers, who are not overworked and underpaid, facilitating hope filled conversations nurturing critical thought and understanding of the world.
Imagine talking about all of this in the history class of the happy healthy classrooms of the future - analysing how the new world was ushered in from the most unlikely of places – by A dicky bowed white man in western Europe – the Environment Minister in an old broken colonial institution in one of the oldest colonies on earth in Belfast, some time in the early part of the 21st Century...
“Tá an ceart agaibh a Phaistí, (yes, you are right kids) go dtí sin (until then)... our politicians had all supported a very nasty game played by greedy people, where multinational corporations mined the land, killed our trees, poisoned our lakes. All the food we made was taken far away on diesel powered boats and our ancestors were all forced to work for these greedy people or they would become homeless and hungry. Yes, Children, it is bonkers, I agree, they were killing everything by land, sea and air until Andrew The Bold of Béal Feirste finally cracked under the overwhelming weight of scientific evidence, public pressure, and the rotten rafters of that old ruin on Cnoc An Anfa, which tragically collapsed in an extreme weather event in 2025 killing half of the parliament as they debated whether or not Stormont needed to be reformed.”
“Ach ach ach, (But But But) asked Gráinne the Palestinian from Bothár Na Seanchill (The Road of the Old Church). Is it true that Andrew the Bold wanted to force everyone to become gender neutral, attend mandatory Irish dancing classes, give up their homes to refugees and live off Vegan Falafel?’
‘Níl a Stór, (No, Love)’ Replied the teachers, ‘That’s just a lie the grumpy old white men with power told, because they were afraid of the future.’
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In Gairdín an Phobail we have a lot of imagination – we grow food, work our we piece of land, weed the beds, make plans and take action. Join us every week to see where your imagination takes you. Na habair é, déan é….