A deep sense of connectedness to the living world. . .

The Unforgettable Commencement Address by Paul Hawken to the Class of 2009, University of Portland, May 3, 2009

When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren�t pessimistic, you don�t understand data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren�t optimistic, you haven�t got a pulse. What I see everywhere in the world are ordinary people willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world. The poet Adrienne Rich wrote, �So much has been destroyed I have cast my lot with those who, age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world.�

. . .

You join a multitude of caring people. No one knows how many groups and organizations are working on the most salient issues of our day: climate change, poverty, deforestation, peace, water, hunger, conservation, human rights, and more. This is the largest movement the world has ever seen. Rather than control, it seeks connection. Rather than dominance, it strives to disperse concentrations of power.

Thanks to Rosalie for drawing my attention to this hopeful call to grassroots action.

Meanwhile, Dave Bonta points out Derrick Jensen’s a Beyond-Hope call to action in Orion magazine. This one, it seems to me, goes the same place in bleaker language:

Hope is, in fact, a curse, a bane. I say this not only because of the lovely Buddhist saying �Hope and fear chase each other�s tails,� not only because hope leads us away from the present, away from who and where we are right now and toward some imaginary future state. I say this because of what hope is.

More or less all of us yammer on more or less endlessly about hope. You wouldn�t believe�or maybe you would�how many magazine editors have asked me to write about the apocalypse, then enjoined me to leave readers with a sense of hope. But what, precisely, is hope? At a talk I gave last spring, someone asked me to define it. I turned the question back on the audience, and here�s the definition we all came up with: hope is a longing for a future condition over which you have no agency; it means you are essentially powerless.

I�m not, for example, going to say I hope I eat something tomorrow. I just will. I don�t hope I take another breath right now, nor that I finish writing this sentence. I just do them. On the other hand, I do hope that the next time I get on a plane, it doesn�t crash. To hope for some result means you have given up any agency concerning it. Many people say they hope the dominant culture stops destroying the world. By saying that, they�ve assumed that the destruction will continue, at least in the short term, and they�ve stepped away from their own ability to participate in stopping it.

. . .

When we realize the degree of agency we actually do have, we no longer have to �hope� at all. We simply do the work. We make sure salmon survive. We make sure prairie dogs survive. We make sure grizzlies survive. We do whatever it takes.

. . .

When you give up on hope�when you are dead in this way, and by so being are really alive�you make yourself no longer vulnerable to the cooption of rationality and fear that Nazis inflicted on Jews and others, that abusers like my father inflict on their victims, that the dominant culture inflicts on all of us. Or is it rather the case that these exploiters frame physical, social, and emotional circumstances such that victims perceive themselves as having no choice but to inflict this cooption on themselves?

But when you give up on hope, this exploiter/victim relationship is broken. You become like the Jews who participated in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

When you give up on hope, you turn away from fear.

Both of these articles are calls for subversion. While the first one bothers me; it’s a bit too chirpy maybe, the second one bothers me more because, lurking under the language, seems to be a call for violent subversion and I am not into violence. I figure what the world needs now is not another “war on” anything. I’m just tired of the metaphor.

I am, however, against fear. Our fear controls us.

I think change is coming upon us, willy nilly. We’ve been partying at the end of the world.

Obama to the contrary, I don’t think our political leadership is going to do more than try to patch up the current system and keep it going. They can’t do anything more. They’re in power. They want to stay in power.

Any real change has always come from the people.

Carry these words with you:

The poet Adrienne Rich wrote, �So much has been destroyed I have cast my lot with those who, age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world.�