Is visionary activism capable of imagining a borderless ethical governance?

It was during one of those insomnia nights—when the window offered up its usual mix of sirens and echoes, when my daughter slept softly in her vision of the future and I remained awake in mine—that I began to think about activism, really think about it. Not activism as marching, chanting, carrying signs. But its quieter cousin, the kind Micah White talks about—visionary activism, the dreams beneath the noise.

Micah says the highest purpose is collective mobilization that breaks humanity free from its socially-imposed limitations. Imagine that—breaking not just chains but the very ideas that shape them. That line stuck in me, lodged itself behind my forehead, whispering its secrets in grocery checkout lanes and school pickup lines and in the dim quiet of empty playgrounds. Because if we can't imagine a world without limits, how can we ever live in it?

I found another voice, Jacques Ellul, a restless thinker who thought politics were diabolical—quite literally satanic, meant to divide rather than unite. Ellul offered no solace in electoral reforms or policy adjustments; he said hope lay out beyond our reach, in a metaphysical realm. It reminded me of the astronaut dreams my daughter used to have before adolescence clipped her wings. Buckminster Fuller, too, believed that a metaphysical initiative could unify the world. Comprehensive thinking replacing specialization, metaphysical unity beyond politics—it became a patchwork revelation, something I meant to sew into our daily lives.

Ellul, Fuller, White—they formed a choir in me, each adding a note until I sensed the beginnings of music. Is there a quantum nature in protest, I wondered—to rise spontaneously and unpredictably, like storms, reshaping destinies overnight? Was it our imaginations that made activism matter, the contagious collective epiphanies that could tug humanity toward something expansive enough to cradle all our fractured selves?

Once at dinner—between bites of undercooked pasta—my daughter said she wanted to go to Mars. Not escape Earth but expand it, take it further. I'd worried then: Would Mars have borders, passports, divisions all over again? Now it seemed if we ever went to Mars, it would have to be with visionary activism leading the way—borderless mentally, spiritually, ethically.

And suddenly, imagining felt like something tangible—not airy metaphysics, but the solid hopeful weight of possibility—the possibility of broad, borderless ethics that encompassed humans and non-humans, that gave rivers and animals rights; activism that didn't end at our atmosphere, grabbing gently at the hems of outer space. The possibility of mondialization, of communities declaring themselves tied to a global ethical standard instead of narrow patriotisms. Activism becoming quantum-inspired shifts—nonlinear leaps from one way of being into another.

But what were the small acts to match these large dreams? Simple daily revolutions: classrooms teaching empathy beyond species lines; artistic rituals seeking metaphysical shifts hidden in the mundane; Mars Day celebrations that taught children and adults alike to transcend national allegiances. Tiny acts of mundialization, localities declaring worldly alliances, pressing gently but firmly against borders as if to say, we see through you and your thin, arbitrary lines.

I came first hesitantly to these ideas, then wholeheartedly. They took root and grew quietly around grocery lists and library returns, errands and unpaid bills. They asked something of me, something quiet but insistent, ringing out not with shouting, but singing: See the borders you've placed around your imagination; lift them up, throw them open, see how little separates one thing from another. It was about activism not merely as protest—but as metaphysical reclamation. As imagination. As the opposite of division.

Maybe someday, somewhere, my daughter might wake up in a place without fences around dreams or futures, without boundaries etched into hearts or maps. A place we imagined into existence, ours only because we believed—deeply and with revolutionary wonder—that it could exist.

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A relevant historical case study illustrating how visionary activism has grappled with borderless ethical governance is found in the Oaxacan political movement, specifically through the organizational framework known as the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO). In response to the authoritarian governance of their PRI state government, the APPO articulated a radical political imagination that reached beyond conventional electoral cycles and party politics. By emphasizing "autonomous action and organization," the movement aimed for ethical transformation that transcended traditional hierarchical governance structures and instead focused on grassroots political participation, social engagement, media activism, and cultural initiatives. Central to APPO’s vision was a comprehensive concept of autonomy that incorporated indigenous political traditions as sources of renewal without being limited solely to identity politics. This flexible "spider's web" model allowed APPO to forge a resilient network of diverse actors—indigenous communities, students, environmentalists, and grassroots groups—united not simply by shared grievances but by common aspirations for a mode of governance anchored in "human rights, indigenous communal life, and municipal autonomy," thereby creating a resonant example of activism transcending internal and external borders alike.