Thank you for such a lovely mention of my rambling nonsenseletter. :)
I would have said this days ago, but I didn't want to comment until I'd sat and thought a bit more about the topic you open this with, hope, which I'm writing a couple of pieces about right now - and I'm still thinking, but it's been DAYS and it's time I left a comment because that's just rude.
The big obstacle to thinking about hope is that showreel of awfulness that immediately starts playing in our brainpans when we mention the word. How can anyone have hope when all that stuff is clearly ridiculously dire?
But I think there's a trick played on us here, by ourselves. The assumption is the showreel is totally accurate in two ways: (1) it knows exactly what's happening in the world and is therefore qualified to sum huge chunks of it up as "awful", and (2) it's capable of extrapolating ahead with complete confidence to paint a perfectly reliable picture of future awfulness.
So I think hope is what creeps in when you realise (1) and (2) are illusions. The first isn't real because we never see the full picture, and our news sources are riddled with negativity bias and exceptionalism bias (only the best./worst things are "news", with heavy weight towards the worse side of things). And (2) is bogus because nothing in this life is certain.
This is me being rationalist, using my brain - and my heart usually calls BS on all of it. You can't self-math your way into feeling hopeful (no matter how some scientists would like to argue, eg. Steven Pinker). This is part of why hope is so damn hard. You can't just Do The Numbers...
But I really love what Cal Flyn says here, about the need for a new narrative around climate change other than "if everyone just get filled with enough dread maybe something will be done" (which is terrible psychology and yet pretty much the normal approach, I'd say):
"A quotation, commonly attributed to the writer and pioneering French aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, says: “If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.” This, if I ever read one, is a manifesto for nature writing in the present day. This is our own task: to evoke the experience of being in this wild and beautiful world. To stir people to love the planet with a jealous passion, to act in a way more befitting of a custodian or even lover. Go in through the heart, and the head will follow."
Hope is about how we feel, and I've found in my own writing that encountering hitherto-unknown mysteries makes you feel like you know nothing, just *nothing* about the world, and make you long for the immensity of learning more. And if THAT starts to sink into your bones, suddenly (1) and (2) can't get a foothold on you. You lose your egotistical, cynical certainty that everything will unfold in exactly the way you most fear. You realise that nobody actually *knows* anything. Not really. Not about the big stuff. Including scientists, who (despite criticism to the contrary) are always working with theories and hypotheses. That's 100% what science is made of.
If nobody knows for sure, then other possibilities exist. And where there is possibility, there is hope - and there's everything to play for, because all the doors are still open.
That's kinda where I'm going with my thinking on hope. The pieces I'm writing are a total mess, though. I hope I can whip them into shape in time...
Also, this comment is WAY too long. Thanks for reading and also I'm sorry, reader.
I absolutely love this, Mike. I need your perspective to keep me from steering into the wreckage of daily news that warps my outlook! I think it does for most of it. "You can't self-math your way into feeling hopeful" is a fantastic reminder, along with Exupéry's reminder that the power of imagination has a lot more to do with the realities we create than the drumbeat of daily news.
(Actually, I realized that these points are some of why I personally really liked "Don't Look Up." Lots of people hated it, which I get and I think its audience is very specific, but one of the things I thought it did well aside from being cathartic was the little snippets of David Attenborough-like focus on the beauties of the natural world. Far more than a full-length BBC Earth documentary, these tiny, focused moments in the midst of impending disaster reminded me, at least, of the miraculousness of this world and how much it's worth loving.)
I haven't seen Don't Look Up yet - but yes, it's been fascinating how polarizing it's been. I also saw climatologist Michael Mann say it was difficult for him to watch because it felt so accurate to the stonewalling & ridicule he's faced in his career - so, that too. It's hitting a lot of nerves.
But your recommendation here has been the first one that's made me actually want to watch it, because if those tiny moments of beauty are there, then it's making the right points. If it was 100% wry pessimism, I'm not sure I could deal. A bit too much like a lot of HBO shows: yes, the drama is thrilling, but if the only takeaway is "all these people are awful and maybe all people are awful and my extension maybe everything else too," I'm not here for that stuff for very long. (That's what burnt me out on Game of Thrones.)
I have watched Don't Look Up seven times and found it extremely cathartic each time, but have heard from many friends and people whom I respect that they either don't want to watch it, or tried and couldn't.
I happened upon David Roberts's review of it before the movie was fully released (https://www.volts.wtf/p/dont-look-up-the-first-good-movie) and I'm not sure that it didn't prime me to approach it in a particular way. But I suspect not. I was really surprised at all the bad reviews, but almost all of them seem to complain that this isn't the way to make people care about climate change. Which I didn't feel was the purpose of the movie. Maybe I'm wrong! But to me it was specifically for climate scientists and activists who've wondered why the world is so insanely refusing to change for a very long time (the media ecosystem in particular, as well as . . . well, just capitalism) and as far as providing catharsis goes I seem to be squarely in that target audience.
I think the ending, the part where the scientists are (since the ending is a montage of a bunch of different things) saves it from wry pessimism. My teenager watched it and was talking about it, and we talked about how the ending felt important because it brings us back to the understanding that what matters *matters* whether the planet's getting hit by a giant comet or not. That what's truly important never really changes, no matter what the surrounding circumstances.
That doesn't mean it's for everyone, though, and I get why many people don't like it.
Also also - your photos are incredible. What a gift, made of light and brain trickery. Just the most amazing thing. I've never seen a sundog or light pillar and it's an aching absense within me now. (I've also never seen the Northern Lights, and last night was their third appearance here in Scotland, and the third night I didn't see them due to heavy cloud: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-59927887 GHAGHFFARGHG.)
I wish I could guarantee one if you came here! But I've got 2 in 6 years, so it would be a crapshoot. My daughter's New Year's Resolution (she had to write one for school) is to see the Northern Lights. We get them here, but generally in the wee hours so I have to keep an eye out for alerts and clear nights (winters here tend to be overcast for weeks at a time). I would happily read a long post about Northern Lights and the best conditions for seeing them, hint!
Haha. And I would very, very happily "research" it with my tent and a thermos and an empty beach one of these nights. I'm hoping, fingers crossed, that southern Scotland will get lucky again, one of these nights, before the winter is out.
I am jealous of your sundogs and Northern Lighting. Montana sounds like the grandest of places to go chasing awe & wonder.
I don't know what hope as an outlook quite means, and I don't know that it's particularly important that I do? To me, the more interesting and instant question is "how is hope an action or a thing that you do?"
I tell myself all the time that hope is a verb. It's not just something you have or you don't, or something you sit around and wait for, it's something you can *choose to do.* It is work for me - I am not naturally an optimist - but I can choose to hope anyway and work to make it real for myself.
Looks like that essay was the one I was looking for, thanks! Very well said. I listened to another interview recently (I can't remember with whom) where the person said that they didn't like to focus on hope because then it implies that you're not going to do anything unless you hope it will work.
I don't know about hope either. I try not to lean on it. When I think back to this time last year, none of the most world changing events of my tiny life were anywhere near my radar. They just happened as a result of my shouldering into the harness and pulling the plough day after day. Some of them sucked, sure, but a lot of The Things were pretty great too. So if I've learned anything it's to just keep showing up and keep a keen eye out for the beautiful things because they probably aren't going to last. But then again, they just might endure a whole lot longer than we expect they might.
You are absolutely right (of course). Just keep showing up and paying attention (or giving attention -- "paying" feels fraught these days, or at least an ingredient in resentment).
Thank you for such a lovely mention of my rambling nonsenseletter. :)
I would have said this days ago, but I didn't want to comment until I'd sat and thought a bit more about the topic you open this with, hope, which I'm writing a couple of pieces about right now - and I'm still thinking, but it's been DAYS and it's time I left a comment because that's just rude.
The big obstacle to thinking about hope is that showreel of awfulness that immediately starts playing in our brainpans when we mention the word. How can anyone have hope when all that stuff is clearly ridiculously dire?
But I think there's a trick played on us here, by ourselves. The assumption is the showreel is totally accurate in two ways: (1) it knows exactly what's happening in the world and is therefore qualified to sum huge chunks of it up as "awful", and (2) it's capable of extrapolating ahead with complete confidence to paint a perfectly reliable picture of future awfulness.
So I think hope is what creeps in when you realise (1) and (2) are illusions. The first isn't real because we never see the full picture, and our news sources are riddled with negativity bias and exceptionalism bias (only the best./worst things are "news", with heavy weight towards the worse side of things). And (2) is bogus because nothing in this life is certain.
This is me being rationalist, using my brain - and my heart usually calls BS on all of it. You can't self-math your way into feeling hopeful (no matter how some scientists would like to argue, eg. Steven Pinker). This is part of why hope is so damn hard. You can't just Do The Numbers...
But I really love what Cal Flyn says here, about the need for a new narrative around climate change other than "if everyone just get filled with enough dread maybe something will be done" (which is terrible psychology and yet pretty much the normal approach, I'd say):
https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/climate-change-writing-cop26-uk-cal-flyn-islands-of-abandonment-life-post-human-landscape
"A quotation, commonly attributed to the writer and pioneering French aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, says: “If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.” This, if I ever read one, is a manifesto for nature writing in the present day. This is our own task: to evoke the experience of being in this wild and beautiful world. To stir people to love the planet with a jealous passion, to act in a way more befitting of a custodian or even lover. Go in through the heart, and the head will follow."
Hope is about how we feel, and I've found in my own writing that encountering hitherto-unknown mysteries makes you feel like you know nothing, just *nothing* about the world, and make you long for the immensity of learning more. And if THAT starts to sink into your bones, suddenly (1) and (2) can't get a foothold on you. You lose your egotistical, cynical certainty that everything will unfold in exactly the way you most fear. You realise that nobody actually *knows* anything. Not really. Not about the big stuff. Including scientists, who (despite criticism to the contrary) are always working with theories and hypotheses. That's 100% what science is made of.
If nobody knows for sure, then other possibilities exist. And where there is possibility, there is hope - and there's everything to play for, because all the doors are still open.
That's kinda where I'm going with my thinking on hope. The pieces I'm writing are a total mess, though. I hope I can whip them into shape in time...
Also, this comment is WAY too long. Thanks for reading and also I'm sorry, reader.
I absolutely love this, Mike. I need your perspective to keep me from steering into the wreckage of daily news that warps my outlook! I think it does for most of it. "You can't self-math your way into feeling hopeful" is a fantastic reminder, along with Exupéry's reminder that the power of imagination has a lot more to do with the realities we create than the drumbeat of daily news.
(Actually, I realized that these points are some of why I personally really liked "Don't Look Up." Lots of people hated it, which I get and I think its audience is very specific, but one of the things I thought it did well aside from being cathartic was the little snippets of David Attenborough-like focus on the beauties of the natural world. Far more than a full-length BBC Earth documentary, these tiny, focused moments in the midst of impending disaster reminded me, at least, of the miraculousness of this world and how much it's worth loving.)
I haven't seen Don't Look Up yet - but yes, it's been fascinating how polarizing it's been. I also saw climatologist Michael Mann say it was difficult for him to watch because it felt so accurate to the stonewalling & ridicule he's faced in his career - so, that too. It's hitting a lot of nerves.
But your recommendation here has been the first one that's made me actually want to watch it, because if those tiny moments of beauty are there, then it's making the right points. If it was 100% wry pessimism, I'm not sure I could deal. A bit too much like a lot of HBO shows: yes, the drama is thrilling, but if the only takeaway is "all these people are awful and maybe all people are awful and my extension maybe everything else too," I'm not here for that stuff for very long. (That's what burnt me out on Game of Thrones.)
I have watched Don't Look Up seven times and found it extremely cathartic each time, but have heard from many friends and people whom I respect that they either don't want to watch it, or tried and couldn't.
I happened upon David Roberts's review of it before the movie was fully released (https://www.volts.wtf/p/dont-look-up-the-first-good-movie) and I'm not sure that it didn't prime me to approach it in a particular way. But I suspect not. I was really surprised at all the bad reviews, but almost all of them seem to complain that this isn't the way to make people care about climate change. Which I didn't feel was the purpose of the movie. Maybe I'm wrong! But to me it was specifically for climate scientists and activists who've wondered why the world is so insanely refusing to change for a very long time (the media ecosystem in particular, as well as . . . well, just capitalism) and as far as providing catharsis goes I seem to be squarely in that target audience.
I think the ending, the part where the scientists are (since the ending is a montage of a bunch of different things) saves it from wry pessimism. My teenager watched it and was talking about it, and we talked about how the ending felt important because it brings us back to the understanding that what matters *matters* whether the planet's getting hit by a giant comet or not. That what's truly important never really changes, no matter what the surrounding circumstances.
That doesn't mean it's for everyone, though, and I get why many people don't like it.
Also, I love that you spotted Henry's Aeon piece too - I know him via Twitter and he's such a great writer. He also just wrote a fine piece on awe for the New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/27/opinion/space-tourism-awe.html
Also also - your photos are incredible. What a gift, made of light and brain trickery. Just the most amazing thing. I've never seen a sundog or light pillar and it's an aching absense within me now. (I've also never seen the Northern Lights, and last night was their third appearance here in Scotland, and the third night I didn't see them due to heavy cloud: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-59927887 GHAGHFFARGHG.)
I wish I could guarantee one if you came here! But I've got 2 in 6 years, so it would be a crapshoot. My daughter's New Year's Resolution (she had to write one for school) is to see the Northern Lights. We get them here, but generally in the wee hours so I have to keep an eye out for alerts and clear nights (winters here tend to be overcast for weeks at a time). I would happily read a long post about Northern Lights and the best conditions for seeing them, hint!
Haha. And I would very, very happily "research" it with my tent and a thermos and an empty beach one of these nights. I'm hoping, fingers crossed, that southern Scotland will get lucky again, one of these nights, before the winter is out.
I am jealous of your sundogs and Northern Lighting. Montana sounds like the grandest of places to go chasing awe & wonder.
I think that of Scotland, too! It's one of the places I've loved most in the world, very truly. One feels so close to . . . something there.
I don't know what hope as an outlook quite means, and I don't know that it's particularly important that I do? To me, the more interesting and instant question is "how is hope an action or a thing that you do?"
That's a good point, that we don't necessarily need to know what it means as an outlook, but how we act that matters.
I tell myself all the time that hope is a verb. It's not just something you have or you don't, or something you sit around and wait for, it's something you can *choose to do.* It is work for me - I am not naturally an optimist - but I can choose to hope anyway and work to make it real for myself.
I like that, "hope is a verb." Maybe all of our nouns are truly verbs?
“Hope is a longing for a future condition over which we have no agency,” and "Forgiveness is giving up hope for a better past."
That's a good one.
Beautiful words, thanks! Somehow I missed the “what could possibly go right“ podcast until now. I ruminated on hope as action vs feeling a few years ago: https://blog.entire.life/accepting-hopelessness-a3abd225eae9
Looks like that essay was the one I was looking for, thanks! Very well said. I listened to another interview recently (I can't remember with whom) where the person said that they didn't like to focus on hope because then it implies that you're not going to do anything unless you hope it will work.
Such an involved, complicated word, hope.
I don't know about hope either. I try not to lean on it. When I think back to this time last year, none of the most world changing events of my tiny life were anywhere near my radar. They just happened as a result of my shouldering into the harness and pulling the plough day after day. Some of them sucked, sure, but a lot of The Things were pretty great too. So if I've learned anything it's to just keep showing up and keep a keen eye out for the beautiful things because they probably aren't going to last. But then again, they just might endure a whole lot longer than we expect they might.
You are absolutely right (of course). Just keep showing up and paying attention (or giving attention -- "paying" feels fraught these days, or at least an ingredient in resentment).