Clinging to Hope. Hope for Hope's Sake - Thomas Homer Dixon

As Thomas Homer Dixon sees it, humanity's only hope is the power of hope itself.

THD, author of "The Upside of Down" (now in my 're-read' stack) has written a new book, "Commanding Hope: The Power We Have to Renew a World In Peril," to be released on Tuesday. I have pre-ordered a copy on Kindle.

The author has written an opinion piece in the weekend Globe and Mail.  The Star has published an excerpt from the book, 'Hope has seen better days. But Thomas Homer Dixon has written a book for 'those who choose to fight'

From the Globe:

It seems hard to believe. Just 20 years ago a feeling of exuberance still animated many societies. After the Soviet Union collapsed and before the war on terror, political, business and intellectual leaders in the West told us that a fusion of capitalism, liberal democracy and modern science would create a future of near-boundless possibility for all humanity. Now, we’re at a perilous juncture. Problems such as economic and social inequality, climate change and the risk of nuclear war have become critical. COVID-19 has hammered societies around the world. International scientific agencies are issuing report after report declaring that a global environmental catastrophe is imminent. Meanwhile, reason and scientific fact seem impotent before entrenched vested interests, worsening social polarization and rising political authoritarianism. In country after country, freedom and democracy are under siege.

...

Anxiety about the future, detachment, self-deception, and feelings of resentment and helplessness – this is a perilous psychological state, the starting line of a fast track to the end of hope. It also makes the future we fear far more likely to happen, because the best way to ensure we’ll fail to solve our problems is to believe we can’t. 

To believe in the possible and to make the possible real, we must recognize that the right kind of hope can be a tool of change, and we must give our hope the muscle it requires in our present crisis. We need a potently motivating principle that’s honest about the gravity of the dangers we face and about the personal responsibility each and every one of us has to face those dangers; that’s astute about the strategies we can use to overcome those dangers, given the viewpoints, values and goals of people around us; and that’s powerful because it galvanizes our agency, our capacity to discern our most promising paths forward and choose among them.

A kind word for the Dark Mountain Project.

Today, as our future grows steadily darker, relinquishing hope and focusing on the present appeals to more and more people. The English writer Paul Kingsnorth wanted to help people relinquish hope when he co-founded the Dark Mountain Project – an international network of people trying to make better sense, through shared stories, of the emotional and moral import of humanity’s environmental crisis. Everyone wants hope, he notes. “Hope, all the time. Hope, like a drug. Do not look down – look away.” He and others began the Project because “we needed to look down, and not to flinch as we did so.”

Mr. Kingsnorth stresses that relinquishing hope can allow us to acknowledge our despair more completely. [American environmentalist Derrek] Jensen and Mr. Kingsnorth say that despair is an entirely reasonable reaction to the crises humanity faces, and I agree. I’d also say that we need to consciously recognize and accept this despair, because it’s unhealthy to bury emotional trauma deep in our psyches.

The place for hope, "Commanding Hope."

Our hope isn’t necessarily false because it rests on a belief in the mere possibility of a desired future. It becomes false when we ignore or select evidence to convince ourselves that the outcome is more likely than it actually is. And we can choose not to do this: We can have an exciting possibility in our mind but still be ruthlessly realistic about its likelihood, drawing on the best evidence and predictions we have available.

So while I’m sympathetic to the critics’ insistence on reason, realism and honesty about likelihoods, I also think they’re profoundly wrong when they imply that we should entertain in our minds only those future outcomes that seem highly likely, given what we see around us – that we should always seek certitude. ...If we adopt this approach, we won’t use our imagination to explore the broad range of less likely outcomes, some of which could offer us the chance of a much better future. Nor will we imagine how we might use our agency to make some of those positive but less likely outcomes real. And that just ensures those outcomes will stay less likely.

Rather than disdain hope, as these critics do, we should treasure it. Psychologists have shown that few of us can flourish physically and mentally without hope. Our reasonable and necessary despair mustn’t displace our hope, making despair the final stage of our response to the world’s crises. That would be capitulation – as if we’re kneeling before fate and baring our neck for its sword.

Where I think THD has strayed is in his suggestion that Dark Mountain is about resignation to our fate. That would make it something of a Doomsday cult. To the contrary it is about continuing to fight the good fight, continuing to work for change and a less gloomy future, liberated from "the lies society tells itself."

THD seems to believe his hope is the essential motivation for progress. I have children. I don't need hope to motivate me. I believe that we have both an opportunity and a duty to do what we can, today, to ensure a future for our children and grandchildren that is no more difficult and dangerous than that need be.

We are doing things today, many things, that will rebound on our heirs in the decades to come. We are, in some respects, today writing their future in ways that are indelible. In some ways we're robbing them of their future and by what right? We are placing our interests, in this closing era of ease and comfort, in conflict with theirs.

If we really care about our youngest and others who will follow them why, given how much we know today, are we building pipelines and coal ports to hasten and worsen what's coming for them?

To read more about THD's 'Commanding Hope' check out the excerpts in the Star linked above. It's a good read.