Food For Thought: Is hope enough to cure the world's problems?

This week's Food for Thought may be seen as a bit provocative because brings together a book and an article that I have read recently that are linked to the concept of hope and how having hope will not solve the issues that are plaguing the world today. Both raise questions about how we approach encouraging our students to take action. In a simplified format at present we point out all that's gone wrong in the world and then tell our students there is hope, you can fix it by taking action. But what if hope is defined as, " a longing for a future condition over which you have no agency; it means you are essentially powerless." If this definition is true then I believe it raises questions about the 'why' we use to encourage students to take action. 

Below is an animated summary of the thinking behind Mark Manson's book, Everything is f***ed, A book about hope. In it, he suggests the opposite to happiness is hopelessness and that it is hopelessness that is contributing to the increase in depression and anxiety in our world at the time when all the metrics point out that it has never been a better time to be alive. We have to ask, do the things that we talk about with our students in any way develop a sense of hopelessness in their thinking?  Mark Manson may not be an academic, but his pulling together of a vast amount of psychological research made his book a very interesting read and makes one think about who we are as humans. This 9-minute video summarizes the book but I would recommend it as a good read for educators searching for a better understanding of society today.

Moving beyond Mark Manson's ideas of hope I was interested to read this article in Orion Magazine, Beyond Hope by Derrick Jensen. Derrick Jensen is the author of Thought to Exist in the Wild, Songs of the Dead, Endgame, Dreams, and other books. In 2008, he was named one of Utne Reader’s “50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World." He is an environmental activist and his article again emphasizes the issues we are facing regarding our earth and the futility of relying upon hope as a solution.

Photograph by Stephen Wilkes



"THE MOST COMMON WORDS I hear spoken by any environmentalists anywhere are, We’re fucked. Most of these environmentalists are fighting desperately, using whatever tools they have — or rather whatever legal tools they have, which means whatever tools those in power grant them the right to use, which means whatever tools will be ultimately ineffective — to try to protect some piece of ground, to try to stop the manufacture or release of poisons, to try to stop civilized humans from tormenting some group of plants or animals. Sometimes they’re reduced to trying to protect just one tree.

Here’s how John Osborn, an extraordinary activist and friend, sums up his reasons for doing the work: “As things become increasingly chaotic, I want to make sure some doors remain open. If grizzly bears are still alive in twenty, thirty, and forty years, they may still be alive in fifty. If they’re gone in twenty, they’ll be gone forever.”

But no matter what environmentalists do, our best efforts are insufficient. We’re losing badly, on every front. Those in power are hell-bent on destroying the planet, and most people don’t care.

Frankly, I don’t have much hope. But I think that’s a good thing. Hope is what keeps us chained to the system, the conglomerate of people and ideas and ideals that is causing the destruction of the Earth."

The concluding sentence to this passionate article again provides a pointer as to how we should be approaching student action, 

" And when you quit relying on hope, and instead begin to protect the people, things, and places you love, you become very dangerous indeed to those in power.

In case you’re wondering, that’s a very good thing."

Finally, I'd like to return to Mark Manson and his thinking. Although not touched upon in the summary, the book ends with a chapter that focuses on our future relationship with AI. This chapter yet again raises questions that Elon Musk, Yuval Harari and multiple other philosophers and futurists are predicting as the outcome of the impending power of AI. 

" The AI, realizing that the productive energies of humanity emerge only through conflict, will generate endless series of artificial crises in a safe virtual reality, where that productivity and ingenuity can be cultivated and used for some greater purpose like a resource, a never-ending reservoir of creative energy........................

And then, maybe one day, we will become integrated with the machines themselves. our individual consciousness will be subsumed. our independence will vanish. we will meet and merge in the cloud, and our digitalized souls will swirl and eddy in the storms of data, a splay of bits and function harmoniously brought into some grand, unseen alignment.

We will have evolved into a great unknown entity we will transcend the limitations of our own value-laden minds. We will live beyond means and ends, for we will always be both, one and the same. we will have crossed the evolutionary bridge into "something greater" and ceased to be human anymore. 

Perhaps then, we will not only realize but finally embrace the Uncomfortable Truth: that we imagined our own importance, we invented our purpose and we were, and still are nothing.............

And maybe then, and only then, will the eternal cycle of hope and destruction come to an end."