## Pays étranger > [en] After all, in the past, pretty much everything was worse. But with the world now changing faster than ever, the past seems more remote from us, too. There’s a growing gulf between us and that alien world — a world we can barely comprehend. “The past is a foreign country,” a novelist once wrote: “they do things differently there.” […] > > The past teaches us a simple but crucial lesson: *Things could be different.* ==The way our world is organized is not the result of some axiomatic evolution.== Our current status quo could just as easily be the result of the trivial yet critical twists and turns of history. > > *Utopia for realists*, Rutger Bregman Il ne tient qu’à nous de rendre le passé — ce que nous venons de vivre — d’autant plus étranger que le présent nous est intolérable.