Hope

Most people who read my latest blog post on how fucked the world is and what I think of it really liked it (which is great!), but also told me: when you're finished with the doom and gloom, can you write something about hope and a more positive future please?

So obviously, like every time I write about something, I looked for the definition of hope in the dictionary. To hope (verb) is defined as "to want something to happen and think that it is possible" in the Oxford Dictionary. I also checked the Cambridge dictionary for good measure which gives a similar definition: "To want something to happen or to be true, and usually have good reason to think that it might".

This is interesting.

In the climate and environmental sphere (which is what I know so this is what I'm focusing on) we talk a lot about hope, or the lack of it. Most environmentalists wouldn't be able to do what they do if they didn't hope that something would change for the better, and that their actions is helping to protect the planet while ensuring a fair world for all. I think Christiana Figueres is a great example of this as a public figure. For others, hope isn't really in the game anymore, basically since the Kyoto Protocol which was the first international treaty aiming to curb down emissions in 1992 - since then, emissions have kept rising exponentially. The current facts show us that we're never going to be able to ensure a safe world for all. If you want to see how fucked we are from a legitimate source, I urge you to listen to the Johan Rocktröm (a heavy-in-the-game climate scientist) episode from the podcast Sommar and Vinter. Even I stopped halfway through because I couldn't keep listening to all the things we have already lost and will never get back in the human lifespan, like ice in winter in Greenland or rare animal species. Finally, I guess for some of us hope is just not a relevant concept in the sphere of climate change right now. You just focus on what you need to achieve because you think it's the right thing to do and you can't think of not trying, regardless of the outcome.

Anyone who hangs out with me knows that I don't hold a lot of hope for the planet or humanity. Factually, we know things are getting increasingly worse and we're definitely not doing enough to stop catastrophic climate change. As for humanity, while we have made undeniable progress on many fronts such as health, or mortality rate or poverty, the systems we use remain poor and dysfunctional. The system we use the most, capitalism, is quite founded on racism, sexism and submission of the natural world. While it is being shaken and challenged by many global movements, I don't see it being dismantled or even changed soon.

Is hope relevant anyway? Can we find meaning in other things, like immediate satisfaction when eating something really good, or having sex, or having a good laugh?

Hope has become such a mainstream concept and buzz word (a bit like self-care) to the way we go about our lives: if you don't feel it, you feel a bit like an outsider, or like you're missing something out. At the same time, how do you find hope in a world that is going down on many levels?

So no, I guess I can't really write about hope as something holding us together, both as societies and individuals, because I don't believe that it does or that it should. I'm not saying we shouldn't hope that things get better: we absolutely should, but not all the time, and not in an over-optimistic and therefore unrealistic way as that this is just counter-productive. When you don't hope, you also have more time to act.

Personally, I learnt to find meaning in my life through other things than hope. Sometimes, I don't find meaning at all, and I'm learning to be okay with that. If hope helps you go forward, then by all means, don't stop to be hopeful. We do need a bit of hope, alongside fact-checking, empathy, love, action and self-reflection. Let's just remember that hope is not a means toward an end.

In the meantime, I hope you're all well, or well enough.

Love,

Mathilde

PS: here are other resources that talk about hope in a very different way to me, so give it a go!

The podcast Sustainababble episode 178.

Rebecca Solnit in The Guardian on living in dark times.