Utopias get a bad rap. The imagining of better futures, without any kind of details about how to achieve them, is seen as a form of escapism from life’s real problems. But utopian thinking can be much more than simply a way of consoling ourselves that better days will come. Utopias can help us retrain our desires and prepare us for different ways of living. And while authoritarianism is always a danger lurking in utopian thinking, the risk of simply continuing to live as we have is much greater, writes Mathias Thaler.