Metasystems
In all things written, there is the eternal division between fiction and non-fiction. Fiction is stories, figments of an author’s imagination. Words with a capacity to take you to fairy-tale worlds and travel alongside imaginary characters. Non-fiction is facts, preferably of the kind that reveal truths unknown to you. Wrapped in how-to titles and lathered with numbers and arguments, their aim is to instruct, to teach you something. Yet fictional worlds are just as laden with lessons as their more factual counterparts. While less didactical or not as obvious, their teachings are just as valuable.
We’ve had a hard time categorising this book in either one of these boxes. Obviously, this is no romantic fairy-tale. But it isn’t lab-made scientific research either. It surely isn’t futuristic sci-fi, yet depicts a world that doesn’t quite exist—yet.
This book finds itself tightrope walking the dividing line between fiction and non-fiction; reality and make-belief. In part, it is a book about how we see, experience and read the world today. A description of our reality. In part, it is wishful thinking, an attempt to predict a future reality, and with this prediction, to increase the odds that our predictions may materialise. This is a prophecy we hope to be of the self-fulfilling kind.
We are no scientists, psychologists or business gurus. Neither do we qualify as academics, politicians or heroes. However, we are humans wishing for this world to turn and keep turning, with as little hiccups as possible. That, to us, is reason enough to articulate our wishes out loud, telling you about how we see the future of the next generations, the planet, society as a whole, and, more specifically, what the role of business is in all of it.
We are no experts, but we are bold optimists. Rather than starting fires, or acing the never ending- optimisation game, we prefer the design and co-creation of a desirable future. For us, not bad is not good enough. And so we got to work, drafting a possible blueprint for this future ahead in a few hundred pages. While it may not be a crystalline roadmap, we think it may be a silver lining—the motivation you need to get going, the belief that there are ways to do this. Here is an outline for a path we feel is both possible and desirable, sustainable and exciting.
This book wants you to start moving. It encourages you to start wishing out loud, together, and by doing so, making that future more probable. So maybe today, our book is still filed away as fiction. But with every person who reads it, we get closer to the non-fiction section.
fragment uit Metasystems, Why Trust Is Going to Change the World,
een boek geschreven in opdracht van Dado Van Petegem en Nils Van Dam. Uitgegeven bij Die Keure en uitgevoerd met Annelies Desmet, lid van ink. copywriting collectief.