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 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.
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.
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 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.
“Hope is a longing for a future condition over which we have no agency,” and "Forgiveness is giving up hope for a better past."
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
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.