In my last post On Hope, I tried to offer a corrective to understanding hope as a feeling, a secured possession, a right, or a spectator sport—something enabled by other peoples’ actions.
Basically, not this guy:
Or this word:
(My favorite responses on that thread: “hopium,” “bullsitting,” and “elpathy”—elpis = Greek for hope, + apathy.)
Anyway, I was trying to channel a small part of what others have said about hope: it is an active practice. If you want hope, don’t wait for it to magically arrive: take courageous action in the face of an unknown future.
But in this reframing of hope, I left out something important. Something that doesn’t come naturally for me.
Many thinkers-practitioners have identified something else that goes into hope: a vision of a future beyond the given.
We need to be able to envisage something beyond what is; something that makes it worth acting now, even if that something is unlikely, or ultimately doesn’t come to pass as we imagine.
In other words, hope also includes imagination.
Imagination opens up where despair closes down; it creates a sense of possibility; it feeds courage.
Imagination and vision gives us something to say yes to, not just something to reject or accept with resignation.
Among the other crises society faces, I think currently we face a crisis of imagination. In early 2022, we are still reeling from pandemic trauma and fatigue, political entrenchment and democracy in danger (in the U.S. and elsewhere), economic disparity and precarity, war, and threat of nuclear war. And of course, imagination can seem like a luxury if you just need affordable gas to get to work. Daily concerns take priority of attention, even if not priority of worry. For many, it can be difficult to envision a peaceful world beyond these conditions. Sightlines have, understandably, shortened.
But the times imagination and vision are difficult to hold are also the times they are most needed. To cultivate a vision of an alternative future is not just wishfulness, nor just a way to dissociate from the unpleasant present. It is not to ignore what’s in front of us; but it is to see beyond what’s in front of us right now. Crises of any kind can present opportunities to do things differently, or double down on the old ways.
Talk about imagination might strike strict pragmatists as impractical, wishy-washy, or avoidant. And while I appreciate a sensible recognition of constraints and the savvy to be effective within them, I am often reminded by writer Rebecca Solnit’s work (her short book, Hope in the Dark, and beyond) on how opaque the future is to any of us, how history is full of sudden and unexpected turns—so best be actively laying the groundwork for the alternative you want. Here she is on this the other week:
“Anyone who makes a definitive declaration about what the future will bring is not dealing in facts. The world we live in today was utterly unforeseen and unimaginable on many counts, the world that is coming is something we can work toward but not something we can foresee… in …uncertainty is room to act, to try to shape a future that will be determined by what we do in the present.”
So that’s one reason I think imagination matters in the practice of hope: there is a lot that we don’t simply don’t know about how the future may unfold. Newness is possible.
Here’s a second one: just taking action alone, without imagination or vision fueling it on some level, sounds a lot more like drudgery than hope. And that can be a recipe for burnout. (And as Susanne Moser says in All We Can Save, a volume rich in imagination, “burnt-out people aren’t equipped to serve a burning planet.”) Taking action can help to generate hope. But taking action based on a constructive vision (if you can) can do so even more sustainably.
And third, a lack of imagination—the lack of a positive vision to work towards—can leave us closed down, paralyzed, isolated. Such states of being don’t serve us well in times of urgent collective need.
This has been an ongoing lesson for me. Some people get activated because of the dangers of ecological breakdown and the fear it understandably provokes. But many of us, when faced with such realities on such a scale, instead shut down. (I know both because I do both.)
But engaging in creativity, on the other hand, more often leads to prolonged positive action. I think most of us want to see and contribute to a vision worth inhabiting. Most of us want to be part of making a regenerative future. Most of us have problem solving skills to bring to an achievable mission. Imagination gets us into that game, leading us into what social change entrepreneur Katie Patrick calls “environmental design imagination.” This is the space of creativity and resolve in which we can bring our best contributions to the interlocking challenges we face. It does a lot more than paralysis and isolation.
So to bring this point all the way around: in harrowing times we need courage. But I think we also need to envision the kind of world we want, or at least the kind of world that could be.
The current threat of nuclear war and the evidence of climate breakdown both challenge vision and necessitate it. Vision sees a better world than could be otherwise; a future that might be worth inhabiting. Vision doesn’t mean everything will be better. It does mean there can be better within the big picture.
Take the present invasion in Ukraine. It may seem unlikely, from right now, but is not impossible, that not only is there no more catastrophic loss of life—that Putin’s stupid war will end without world war or mass death—but also that ten or twenty years on, the energy world looks completely different than our current crippling, autocrat-enabling dependence on oil and gas (and petrostates) to heat and cool and move and make things around the world, and widespread adoption of clean energy leads to a healthier, more equitable, less warsome society. (Thanks to shifts in clean energy tech, economics, and culture, earlier decades’ “imagination” is now today’s feasible and sane way forward.) Here’s Solnit again:
“It would be unreasonable to predict that we can leave the age of fossil fuels behind and do what the climate requires of us, but it would be unwise to say that it’s impossible, and only our actions can make it possible.”
The challenge, not just now, but in the decade(s) ahead, will be to work from the present but also to keep imagining beyond the apparent given. Here’s a small but timely example:
Who would have imagined the culture shift to make this happen? Some people did.
(No, I’m not saying bikes are “the answer”—there are thousands of solutions needed and already available—only that there was a vision, and clever people found a way to make it happen within a specific place’s opportunities and constraints. Here’s a thread contrasting that with the UK’s approach.)
Here’s another imaginative solution (pioneered in India, implemented in California):
Okay, one more, while we’re on the topic of solar and multisolving (“one action, many benefits”):
South Korean 20-Mile Solar Bike Highway Generates Electricity
Neat, huh? These are just some off-the-cuff examples, but many more abound on the local level.
Alright, to bring this to a close: going forward, I’m going to try to do a better job of sharing examples of good ideas and solutions at work. They help feed the imagination and resolve.
Right now, we need all kinds of good ideas on the table. We need lots of people bringing their imagination and resolve—neighbors, designers, inventors, engineers, architects, business people, electricians, artists, you name it—to create new ideas and to make the current ones happen.
What’s your vision for a life-giving future? How can you use your skills and resources to advance that vision? I’m going to be asking myself this, too. Living the answers is part of how each of us can practice hope.
Recent & Related:
Two pieces I didn’t write, two I (at least partly) did:
I’ve shared this before, but if climate hope is specifically of interest to you, check out this article by Rebecca Solnit. One of her recurring points is that the future is uncertain and history is full of abrupt turns—so we best be at work for the future we want. She recently explored this theme again in light of the Russian invasion and the way it has highlighted fossil fuels’ volatility and the possibility for widespread action away from them.
Bill McKibben’s recent article “In a World on Fire, Stop Burning Things” is a thorough piece on the why’s and how’s of decarbonization. It distills the many issues into a helpful, hopeful framing: we not only ought to, but can power the world differently—to the benefit of (almost) everybody. It makes the case that we have possibilities now that used to be on the outer horizons of imagination. Right now there are a lot of “yes”es available to us; but to get to these requires some upfront “no”s to powering society through combustion. There is plenty here to challenge anyone’s priors. It certainly did some of mine.
When we face threats, we are more subject to our lizard-brain impulses of fight, flight, or freeze—which close down our imaginations. As we increasingly reckon with environmental chaos, a lot of us may be tempted by various forms of flight. My friend Liuan and I recently wrote about this in Sojourners, suggesting faith resources to stay grounded in collective solidarity rather than fantasies of escape, to imagine a future beyond the lifeboat option. (Primarily for a Christian audience.)
On that note, I also wrote a short piece for Faithward on “What Can Lent Can Teach Us About Creation Care?” for those who observe it. When there are lots of things we can be doing, Lent can be a return to first principles: to accepting one’s own transitory nature and what it means to be in reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world. (Primarily for a Christian audience.)
Thanks for reading, when there’s so much good stuff to read these days. Want to move this monologue into a dialogue? Hit reply. I’m always interested in your thoughts.