Prefiguration and planting seeds
Last winter, I wrote about prefiguration: building the future you want within the shell of existing structures.
Rather than focusing solely on tearing down systems you don’t like or pointing out what’s wrong with how things are, prefiguration aims to start laying the foundation for what you’d like instead… right here, right now, with the tools you have available.
One of the frustrating things about the approach is that while it allows you to take immediate action, it never really feels like enough.
As I said last year…
It’s generally not going to replace an existing system—at least, not in any sort of immediate or rapid time scale.
But it does provide models people can look at to imagine something different.
But yesterday while I was working in my garden, it struck me that prefiguration is a lot like planting trees.
When you plant a new tree, you don’t see the benefits of doing so for years. The real payoff happens decades down the road. The running expression in gardening circles is that you plant a tree for the next generation, not yourself.
Prefiguration is like that, too.
You won’t see the kind of big change you want right now. But if you don’t plant that seed today, you’ll never have that tree a few years down the road.