If our organizations are inhuman, it’s because we designed them to be so—whether consciously or not. Every institution is an assemblage of choices about how best to organize human beings in light of some particular goal. The premise of this book is that most of these choices can and must be revisited.

This shift from autocracy to democracy didn’t occur spontaneously, nor was it led from the top. Instead, it was the work of a sprawling confederation of philosophers, protesters, and patriots who were inspired by the promise of self-government.

Their successes teach us that a purely utilitarian argument is not enough to dislodge a deeply embedded social system that serves the interests of the few rather than the many. While data can crack the ice, real progress is possible only when hearts begin to melt.

Confucius’s Analects still sells hundreds of thousands of copies annually. Every day, quotes from these sources influence political decision-making around the world.

It is so important that we fight for the future, get into the game, get dirty, get experimental. How do we create and proliferate a compelling vision of economies and ecologies that center humans and the natural world over the accumulation of material?

We embody. We learn. We release the idea of failure, because it’s all data.

But first we imagine.

We are in an imagination battle.