We’ve all heard toxic, disempowering, dream-stomping clichés like
“You can’t fight City Hall”
“We’ve always done it this other way”
“That’s impossible”
“You’ll always be a failure”
“We call B.S.!”
That’s the appropriate response, made famous by X Gonzales, at the time an 18-year-old survivor of the mass murder at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida just three days earlier. That same year, they co-organized (and spoke at) a huge national march on Washington and helped to shepherd through the first meaningful gun safety law in gun-loving Florida in this century.
And we all have to “call B.S.” when anyone tries to destroy our self-esteem, our calling, and our power.
18-year-old X Gonzales (center) gives the “Call B.S.” speech in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, February 17, 2018. Photo by Barry Stock, via Wikipedia.
Like Gonzales, we must embrace our ability to make change and join with others, nonviolently, to achieve that change.
For some, including me, becoming an activist is a way to do that. For others, the path takes different forms, such as being a parent or teacher or health care professional—or, for that matter, an accountant, manufacturer, or prison administrator—and carrying out those duties in ways that build up others, help them achieve those dreams, and help THEM build up others—to build a community, and a planet, based on the worth of every individual. Because to focus only on building yourself up is narcissism, even sociopathic.
This post was inspired by a private note admiring my activism but saying the writer got too depressed to do this kind of work. Here’s s my response, exactly as I wrote it, except I broke it up into more paragraphs and added more specific locations:
I’m sure you make the world better in other ways. Not everyone is cut out to be an activist–it’s a path where 90 percent or more of your efforts seem to be for naught (though often, change IS happening but not visible in the moment).
Because I focus on the positive, I’m able to find the strength to continue. I keep in mind that when I was born in December, 1956, half of the US was still officially segregated and racism still ruled most of the rest. Women and people of color had very few career opportunities. White women were mostly teachers and nurses while people of color were channeled into laborer, domestic, sanitation worker.
Male-on-female domestic violence and casual sexual harassment were considered normal and acceptable. People were still getting fired or even imprisoned for being in a same-sex or interracial relationship. There was close to zero awareness of pollution, climate change and making our ecosystems more resilient. Decent food was very difficult to find. And the last well-known nonviolent revolution had been in India almost a decade earlier.
Except that OFFICIAL segregation had ended, most of that was still true on October 15, 1969, when one casual comment within a speech at the first Vietnam peace demonstration I ever attended set me on a lifetime path of activism. Yet, in 53 years–a nanosecond in geologic time or even in human history–all of that has shifted. So things ARE getting better because of activism.
The other thing that keeps me going is the knowledge that MY OWN ACTIONS have made a difference several times.
Here are my top three: 1) I founded Save the Mountain, the group that kept a particularly offensive luxury housing development off the Mount Holyoke Range [Hadley and South Hadley, Massachusetts, USA] a mile and a half from my house. Even experts within the environmental movement locally had given up hope. I went in with the attitude that we would win–but even I thought it would take us five years. We did it in just 13 months–because all of us worked on different pieces where we had expertise, and because we had mass support from area residents.
2) I was one of the 1414 people arrested on the construction site of the Seabrook [New Hampshire, USA] nuclear power plant in 1977. By the time the last of us was released two weeks later, a national safe energy movement had been born, most of it adopting the nonviolent resistance techniques and consensus decision making that we used in Clamshell Alliance here in New England. Here’s a link to an article I wrote about the lasting shifts in the culture that movement created: https://greenandprofitable.com/40-years-ago-today-we-changed-the-world-part-4-shifts-in-the-culture/. And while we ultimately lost the battle to keep Seabrook from being built, we basically put a halt to the development of new nukes (unfortunately, we have to fight that battle again–but keeping these unsafe and unnecessary monsters off the drawing boards and out of the power grids for nearly 40 years is a pretty good outcome. And this time, I have great confidence that we will win.)
3) My work in local electoral politics [Hampshire County, Massachusetts] has helped to bring about a lasting progressive majority and a series of four progressive mayors in a row in Northampton, and this April took back the Hadley Select Board again after losing to a Trumpian majority in 2021 when we couldn’t find anyone willing to run. I think we’ve taken control of the board three times. Two for sure.
Again, I recognize that my path of activism isn’t for everyone. Neither is my parallel path of working within the business community to spread the message that solving our biggest problems, like hunger, poverty, racism, othering, and even catastrophic climate change and war, can be a profit path for business.
But each and every one of us can find our personal way to make a difference, to brighten the light for all of us, and to help bring into being the planet we want to pass on to subsequent generations.
If this post inspires you, please post a comment about what you’re already doing, or what you will start doing.
I just came across a query letter I wrote in 2020. It raises a lot of questions that are still very much worth asking—and attempting to answer.
How some people view the world—Opportunity for businesses that genuinely care
In many ways, these questions were easier to answer back then. Unfortunately, as a society, we missed the window to create those kinds of sweeping changes when the active threat of Covid made them easier—but we can still make the effort. We can still transform society, our relationship with other beings, and the planet in our own lifetime. It’ll just take more effort.
Here’s the relevant section of what I wrote back then (I’ve removed a long paragraph with my credentials, as well as my closing.)—and I’d love to get your comments:
Hi, there,
As an experienced journalist and award-winning, best-selling ten-book author with several books on social enterprise as a profit center, I propose an article, Leveraging the Great Pivot: How COVID-19 Creates Long-Term Post-Pandemic Opportunities for Racial Justice, Economic Advancement, and Environmental Healing. Probably in the 1500-2500 word range.
The premise: For decades, activists have been told we can’t fix the crushing problems of our time, like hunger, poverty, racism, war, catastrophic climate change, etc. Yet, starting in early 2020, the entire world pivoted and everything changed. As education, many types of business, and even cultural events shifted online or reinvented themselves, we learned how resilient, adaptable, and creative we are. And that process created opportunities that could never have happened in the pre-pandemic world.
These massive global, national, regional, and local shifts prove we can reinvent the world as the place we really want to live in–and we can replicate the shift in other areas. As a society, we have to do this pivot strategically, and it has to involve many sectors: government, nonprofits, activists, community organizations, academia—and the business community.
Just look at how the massive expansion of the racial justice movement since May has changed perceptions around the US and around the world. And that’s one small piece of a big multi-issue cauldron of solution-driven thinking and activism; a lot of good work is going into solving those big crises, as well as protecting our fragile democracy. The question is: pivot to what?
Could health care coverage be shifted away from employers so the next time an emergency shuts hundreds of thousands of businesses, their laid-off employees don’t lose their safety net? Could this be the US’s chance to adopt the single-payer model most of the rest of the world uses? And to shift from treating the sick’s symptoms to maintaining wellness across the population so fewer people get sick in the first place? Can this be the moment to finally get away from fossil and nuclear, to combine clean renewable energy with massive systemic conservation so we’re no longer squandering our children’s heritage polluting and carbonizing our planet while depleting scarce resources? Is it time for decent affordable housing to be seen as a right? What are the best ways to create more housing that also protect the environment, create pleasant yet affordable neighborhoods, and avoid negative consequences like urban sprawl?
We can ask similar questions in every sector: criminal justice, job creation, transportation and shipping (moving both people and things), replacing armed conflict with peaceful conflict resolution, ensuring a pluralistic society that honors both its majorities and minorities, etc.
After four years of Trump and a year of COVID, it won’t be enough to go back to the “normal” of 2019, or even of 2015. But with the pandemic comes the luxury and responsibility of critically examining every aspect of society. We need to figure out what the goal of every institution is–and how to achieve or surpass that goal as we rebuild. Just as many developing countries skipped landlines and clunky desktop computers and went straight to smartphones, we need to ask questions like:
What are we *really* trying to accomplish?
Is this the best way to meet that goal?
How could we improve it?
How could we make it more inclusive?
Then we brainstorm with these ends in mind, using a seven-step process that opens up new thinking and lets us implement new solutions. To make this concrete, think about spending millions of R&D dollars to create a pen that can write in zero-gravity. But the real goal isn’t to have a pen that can write in space—that’s a means to an end. The real goal is to be able to write in space. And suddenly, with that framing, the solution is obvious: use pencils—or computers! Maybe you create a pencil lead that can make a darker, easier to read impression, create a Velcro mount for your device so it doesn’t go flying across the cabin, or make other little tweaks—but you’ve accomplished the basic goal, with resources you already have. Business has a vested interest in reinventing itself, as dozens of industries were rendered obsolete, as supply chain issues showed up unexpectedly, and as those sectors that strengthened and grew had to adapt. Small businesses can survive and even thrive, but not as it was in 2019. Whether a manufacturer switches from making luxury goods to PPE or a retailer learns how to blend online and (protected) in-person approaches, pretty much everyone has to pivot. Why not seize the opportunity to have that reinvention foster racial, gender, and class equity…green the planet while creating jobs…match product introduction and production not to advertising-created materialism but to solving real needs and getting paid for it? In the activist world, meetings that might have had 10 local people in a room can now draw 500 from around the world—and provide digital tools to mobilize action, such as Spoke, a texting platform that can allow volunteers to send 1000 or more text messages an hour and respond individually and personally when someone replies. In my own professional development this year, from the comfort of my own home, I’ve attended dozens of far-away events. Some had hundreds or thousands of attendees from dozens of countries (among them a worldwide UN conference, multiple 50th-anniversary celebrations of Earth Day, and gatherings on more niched topics such as the special situation of Jews of color). I could not have afforded the time and money to go to so many conferences, and several times, they’ve overlapped. But I was able to participate in more than one at a time, or listen to what I’d missed on replay. I’ve also participated in some thinking and brainstorming calls from widely scattered groups of thinkers and researchers working on global solutions to these and other problems. As somewhat more exciting examples, local cultural performers with no previous broader following are finding global audiences—and the sound technicians who can replace awful-sounding Zoom calls with concert-quality production are keeping busy.
Even on the personal side, some of the restrictions can be reframed as empowerment—just as we can think of a wheelchair user not as “confined to a wheelchair,” but “liberated with a wheelchair,” because it allows that user to go places that would otherwise be off-limits. My wife and I hosted a Passover Seder with family and friends from three generations and 9 different states from Massachusetts to California–most of whom would never have come in person.
At our best, America’s not a zero-sum society or for you to succeed, someone else has to fail. A promise in America is big enough, is big enough, for everyone to succeed. Every generation opening the door of opportunity just a little bit wider. Every generation including those who’ve been excluded before.
We believe we should leave no one behind, because each one of us is a child of God, and every person, every person is sacred. If that’s true, then every person’s rights must be sacred as well. Individual dignity, individual worth, individual determination, that’s America, that’s democracy and that’s what we have to defend.
These powerful words embrace what I’ve been talking about for years: that we have enough to go around, but have to address kinks in the distribution and a lack of political will that leave some clinging by a thread while others amass far more than they need or even can use. These truths are amplified in powerful books like The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, Business Solution to Poverty, and my own Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World.
We don’t need to live in a world crippled by dire hunger and poverty–cutting off who knows how many amazing new discoveries because the people who would have made them are too busy struggling for basic survival. We don’t have to accept war as a consequence of limited resources, because the abundance mindset understands that a particular resource is only one path to a goal, and there are others. We especially don’t need to go to war over petroleum (which has incited so many wars, including US-conducted wars in places like Iraq and Vietnam)–because we are already using different energy resources, such as solar, wind, and geothermal, which are already edging out fossil and nuclear in both financial and environmental benefits.
And we can absolutely reject the outdated concept that if one person or group wins, some other has to lose. The abundance mindset is collaborative: we win by joining forces for common goals. This powerful frame can apply to material goods, and also to intangibles like love–as Malvina Reynolds made clear decades ago in her charming song, “Magic Penny.”
How are you using abundance to create a better world? Please respond in the comments (which are moderated, so don’t bother filling it with junk).
Re: The Problem with Green Standard Offerings: You write, “focus on the main issue, health-focused cleaning; directing energy to one and not two main goals: health or sustainability, not both, or you compromise the program.” We need a reframing here.
The question is not whether to choose health over green practices (of course we do!). The better question is how to achieve the health outcomes while also minimizing negative and maximizing positive environmental impacts. As one very easy example, how much packaging do we really need? Does it really increase safety to wrap every component of a kit individually, place the wrapped components on a foam tray, wrap the entire inner contents, box the wrapped set, and then add another layer of shrinkwrap around the box, stick the box in a case with 11 others, shrinkwrap the case, stack cases on a pallet, and then wrap the pallet?
For that matter, could some of the components in that kit be used again? Why do we design so many products to be used once and then thrown away?
My comment ended there–but that’s only the beginning of a much larger discussion. Some other questions to raise would include:
When can we use nontoxic natural cleansers and disinfectants such as baking soda and peroxide–and when do we actually need something stronger?
Can we get our cleaning agents in eco-friendly formats such as pellets to be dissolved in water, rather than harmful ones such as aerosol cans?
What are the most ergonomic ways to clean that protect our hands, shoulders, and backs from injury?
How do we most effectively train cleaning personnel to understand health, environmental, and safety issues?
A whole bag of usable produce thrown away. Photo credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dumpster-a-plenty.jpg
I have a moral problem with food waste when others are going hungry. In the developed world, our hunger crisis has nothing to do with insufficient supply–and everything to do with throwing out vast quantities of usable food, and the people who need it being unable to get it. 30 to 40 percent of all food grown in the US is tossed. Some gets thrown away because it spoils–but 1) a whole lot of perfectly good food goes to the landfill, and 2) if one area has gone bad (like mold one side of a block of cheese), in many cases, the item can be trimmed and most of it saved. Smell, taste, and appearance can help you decide what can be salvaged and what should go in the compost.
Where it does food waste come from? To name a few: Restaurants cooking more than they sell. Uninformed consumers who think food has to be dumped once it passes its sell-by date. Produce wholesalers who reject fruits and vegetables because of non-uniform appearance. Commercial processors who are not set up to capture and process every bit.
Grocery stores need similar programs. One step in the right direction is services like Imperfect Foods and Misfits Market, both of which sell reject produce direct-to-consumers.
On the consumer side, the biggest results will come from education. We need trainings that demonstrate:
What foods really aren’t safe past their expiration dates, and which are perfectly fine (in general, meat products should be used or frozen before their expiry dates, opened refrigerated dairy is typically good for at least three days beyond, and unopened often for a week or two, while many processed foods are shelf-stable for years)
How to preserve various foods
Where to donate if you have too much food that’s still good
How buying locally grown organic foods minimizes waste (including the huge environmental burden of transporting foods across oceans and continents
What makes sense for your size household to buy in bulk, and what’s much better to just buy as much as you need inn the near future
How to use smell, appearance, and small tastes to determine whether food is still ok
When it makes sense to trim bad parts off, and when to discard the whole thing
How to use leftovers without getting bored with them
Environmentally friendly options for disposing of spoiled food (compost, slops for animals, etc.)
One area where sustainability can really easily interface with consumers–and give them a direct role in becoming more sustainable–is the very simple step of adding signage (including website notices) that indicates how far a product has traveled. Informal observation (not any real research) at a store that was doing this showed me that it significantly raised consumer awareness and drove purchasing choices toward more local options. Similarly, signage can clue people in about what progress you’re making on the social equity issues you’re addressing.
Another is revealing what goals were met in the making of the product, which were not meant, and how the failure to meet a sustainability or equity goal is pushing your company to do more.
And a third is to open actively monitored channels where customers and other stakeholders can make suggestions on your sustainability and social justice improvements. Think of it as a form of zero-cost consulting help (but recognize that however well-meaning they are, they are unlikely to know the true costs and feasibility levels of their suggestions. ALWAYS respond to any serious suggestion (ignore and block the addresses of the ones who spam your form, though). Engaging in real dialog is not only excellent PR, it’s also excellent market research.
Very quickly, the results provided so many benefits that the company started measuring an additional 80 metrics. As Bob Willard reports in his book, The New Sustainability Advantage (which I cite in mown book Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World),
The company expected to invest £200 million in the program, but by 2009-10 Plan A had broken even and was adding £50 million t0 the bottom line. In response, M&S added another 80 commitments to the original 100 in Plan A. (p. 159)
Robert Hubbell’s Today’s Edition politics newsletter (which I read daily) quoted a reader who suggested that Democrats label the Republican platform for 2022 as “The Big Steal.” Here is his suggestion, with edits and additions by me:
Vote Republican, and you vote for the “Big Steal”:
Your Social Security will be stolen.
Your Medicare will be stolen.
Your prescription drugs will be stolen.
Your affordable health care will be stolen.
Your right to privacy will be stolen.
Your control over reproductive choices will be stolen.
Your voting rights will be stolen.
Your right to elect leaders will be stolen.
Our democracy will be stolen.
It’s not perfect, but you get the idea. Iterations are endless. Republicans want to take things away (The Big Steal), including personal liberties and equal protection under law. Democrats want to provide Americans the things they need to lead safe, healthy, productive lives—including personal liberties and equal protection under the law. Somewhere in there is a winning message.
Republicans doing The Big Steal is half of the messaging. Yes, absolutely, we need to show that corrupt and greedy party for what it is. But we also need another half, maybe call it The Big Payoff. And the second part will subdivide into two as well.
The first part will be what the Democrats have actively accomplished. They have created jobs in a terrible economy. They have restored us leadership in the world sphere. They have taken some action to mitigate climate change. They have stood up for integrity of the political process and showed that insurrections and coup attempts will not be tolerated here. They have supported Ukraine against Putin’s barbaric war. And they have restored dignity and mission to a corrupt and twisted executive branch.
The second part is the wish list: things Biden and the Democrats tried to do but were blocked by filibusters, judicial opinions, or just plain refusal to cooperate from the Republican side. This would include Build Back Better, protecting the right to vote, protecting women’s right to control their own bodies, meaningful progress on the biggest issues like climate change and immigration reform, and of course, the right of regulatory bodies to regulate. Not only have Republican judges forced the CDC–which stands for, let us remind them, Centers for Disease Control–to give up protecting the public in transit facilities, but other decisions will threaten such rights as environmental protection and labor protection, using that very bad precedent to attack EPA and OSHA. Let’s also talk about the right not to be sitting next to someone who is carrying a concealed weapon. The right to love and marry whom you choose as long as they are above the age of consent. Etc, etc, etc
The man who lived in The White House from January 2017 to January 2021 took the US from respected world leader to banana republic serving the whims of an incompetent would-be dictator in an alarmingly short time. We are fortunate to have a new leader who is doing his best—though not enough—to undo the damage, and who steadies our foreign and domestic policy at a time when the need for leadership is clear.
But even though DT is out of power despite every crazy attempt to maintain it, his numerous judicial appointments gave the crazies a scary degree of control that persists today.
Which seems to mean that reproductive rights, environmental protections, the right to be protected from contagious lethal diseases, and the right to vote have had big portions chiseled away, while the rights to carry and use firearms, to infiltrate others’ airspace, and the right of corporations to fund candidates and dictate favorable terms have been enshrined.
While DT’s government made up new and undid longstanding laws and regulations with no regard for precedent or separation of powers, Biden’s attempts to return to normalcy, curtail the pandemic, and govern effectively keep getting shot down by—you guessed it—the appointees of his predecessor.
These judges and Justices invent new legal doctrine out of whole cloth, undermining more than two centuries of settled law, and using truly bizarre reasoning to uphold a “new normal” where skin color, gender, sexual orientation, country of origin, and religion are once again grounds to be discriminated against.
Early in his term, Biden kept campaign promise to end the MPP Remain in Mexico program—one of several policy pieces that inflicted massive violations of human rights (and international law) in his predecessor’s immigration policy of deliberate cruelty. MPP (and several other immigration changes instituted under DT) put thousands of people at grave risk of kidnapping, rape, and murder at the hands of the cartels they were fleeing. Even though the policy, developed by the notorious xenophobe Stephen Miller, undid generations of settled procedure without any plausible justification, A DT-appointed judge forced the Biden administration to reinstate this horrible program.
Just this week, another DT-appointed district judge overturned the CDC’s public transportation mask mandate, drastically increasing the risk of COVID spreading when people are next to each other in tightly enclosed spaces for hours at a time. District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle is one of many DT-appointed judges (along with Supreme Court Justice Barrett) whose confirmation was rushed through with many other nominations in the closing days of his administration; she was deemed unqualified by the American Bar Association. I don’t know about you, but I don’t think I’m getting on a plane again for a while—and I flew five round-trips since April 2021 when my vaccine took full effect. By what spurious reasoning do you take away the right of the Centers for Disease Control to control disease? Some lawyer should rapidly organize a class-action lawsuit on behalf of people who bought tickets with the understanding that they would be protected by a mask requirement in airports, bus and train terminals, and on the planes, trains, and buses.
Whatever happened to “the land of the free” and “give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”?
Is there anything we can do about this?
Yes. Before I start suggesting things, I need to state that I am not a fan of the Democratic Party, have a long history of supporting electoral reforms that would reduce both Democratic and Republican Party power (like ranked-choice voting and nonpartisan administration of elections), and have written many letters, posts, and articles criticizing the current system. Nevertheless…
The first step is to win enough elections—whether for School Board or Senator—to wrest control of every possible office from the right-wing conspiracy theorists, January 6 conspirators, climate change deniers, bigots who see themselves as legitimized by a Republican Party no longer willing to confront evil and punishing the handful of its members who are still willing to go out on a limb and do the right thing. While I wish we had a viable alternative, under the two-party system, our choice in most races must to support Democrats.
But I do give money to groups like Movement Voter Project that funds progressive grassroots groups to influence elections in swing districts—and reminds politicians who of the promises that got MVP to support them. That creates a progressive sphere of influence in ways normally reserved for powerful corporate donors and wealthy individual contributors in the 1%.
The third step is to consider major reforms like changing the judicial nomination process (perhaps through a non-partisan commission), ending lifetime appointments, and forcing the Supreme Court to apply the same Code of Ethics to itself that other courts require. This will be much more successful if we have accomplished step one.
The fourth step scares me and I wish we had a better alternative. This could come back to bite, and bite hard. But the judiciary has been running roughshod over the rights of average citizens, and especially those with less privilege.
So, reluctantly, we need to consider expanding the Supreme Court. We have to remember that the appointments of three of the six current conservative Justices (Thomas, Kavanaugh, and Barrett) were confirmed by brute force with narrow majorities, and that Obama’s nomination of current Attorney General Merrick Garland was denied by brute force—McConnell refused to even hold a hearing and 17 Republican Senators supported him in public statements.
I said at the time and still say that Obama should have pushed back, saying that failure to hold a hearing by a certain date would constitute approval. Thomas and Kavanaugh defended themselves very poorly against credible claims of sexual harassment (Thomas) and sexual assault (Kavanaugh). Barrett was confirmed on October 26, 2020, less than two weeks before the November 3 election—but for these same Senators, March to November, 2016, was too close between nomination and the election.
In other words, the Republicans have not earned their 6-3 SCOTUS majority. The consequences of their cheating their way to a majority will be felt for decades unless we find a way to stop them. If we can limit their power through steps 1-3, maybe this “nuclear option” is unnecessary. But given this Court’s avid willingness to throw away settled law, undermine both the legislative and executive branches, and not even bother to justify their decisions with written opinions, I’m expecting we will have to move on this.
Marchers at a rally for racial justice and immigrant rights, Holyoke, MA. Photo by Shel Horowitz.
I’m in Week Four of an 8-week training program from Pachamama Alliance, an environmental and social justice organization that promotes holistic thinking across all sectors while elevating indigenous voices, even in the corridors of power and commerce.
The course has been great so far, and useful even to someone like me with more than 50 years as an activist. And I am so loving this week’s focus, “Grounded Optimism,” that I need to share highlights with you:
Maybe in each one of these breakdowns — And I assert that it’s true — is the seeds of the greatest breakthroughs that we’ve ever seen. We have the opportunity with the pandemic in particular to rethink, reimagine, recreate, reset, reboot life — our health, our relationship with one another, our understanding of what it means to be at home, home in our homes or home in our hearts, home in ourselves. We have the opportunity to see how we want to be governed, how we want to be educated, how we want our children to live. We have such a huge opportunity in the breakdowns that are taking place now on this planet, which are bigger than I’ve ever seen in my lifetime, to recreate life.
From historian Howard Zinn, author of A People’s History of the United States:
It’s clear that the struggle for justice should never be abandoned because of the apparent overwhelming power of those who have the guns and the money and who seem invincible in their determination to hold on to it. That apparent power has, again and again, proved vulnerable to human qualities less measurable than bombs and dollars: moral fervor, determination, unity, organization, sacrifice, wit, ingenuity, courage, patience.
From Alex Steffen, author of Worldchanging and Carbon Zero:
Optimism, by contrast [with cynicism], especially optimism which is neither foolish nor silent, can be revolutionary. Where no one believes in a better future, despair is a logical choice, and people in despair almost never change anything. Where no one believes a better solution is possible, those benefiting from the continuation of a problem are safe. Where no one believes in the possibility of action, apathy becomes an insurmountable obstacle to reform. But introduce intelligent reasons for believing that action is possible, that better solutions are available, and that a better future can be built, and you unleash the power of people to act out of their highest principles. Shared belief in a better future is the strongest glue there is: it creates the opportunity for us to love one another, and love is an explosive force in politics.
From essayist Rebecca Solnit (latest book: Recollections of My Nonexistence):
The organization Carbon Tracker, whose reports are usually somber reading, just put out a report so stunning the word encouraging is hardly adequate. In sum, current technology could produce a hundred times as much electricity from solar and wind as current global demand; prices on solar continue to drop rapidly and dramatically; and the land required to produce all this energy would take less than is currently given over to fossil fuels. It is a vision of a completely different planet, because if you change how we produce energy you change our geopolitics – for the better – and clean our air and renew our future. The report concludes: “The technical and economic barriers have been crossed and the only impediment to change is political.” Those barriers seemed insurmountable at the end of the last millennium.
A little later in the same essay,
One of the things that’s long been curious about this crisis is that the amateurs and newcomers tend to be more alarmist and defeatist than the insiders and experts. What the climate journalist Emily Atkin calls “first-time climate dudes” put forth long, breathless magazine articles, bestselling books and films announcing that it’s too late and we’re doomed, which is another way to say we don’t have to do a damned thing, which is a way to undermine the people who are doing those things and those who might be moved to do them.
From Christiana Figueres, chief negotiator of the 2015 Paris Climate Accord (and daughter of the Costa Rican president who abolished his country’s army):
Optimism is not about blindly ignoring the realities that surround us, that’s foolishness. It’s also not a naive faith that everything will take care of itself, even if we do nothing. That is irresponsibility. The optimism I’m speaking of is not the result of an achievement, it is the necessary input to meeting a challenge. It is, in fact, the only way to increase our chance of success. Think of the impact of a positive mindset on a personal goal you have set yourself. Running a marathon, learning a new language, creating a new country, like my father, or like me, reaching a global agreement on climate change.
And…
Many now believe it is impossible to cut global emissions in half in this decade. I say, we don’t have the right to give up or let up. Optimism means envisioning our desired future and then actively pulling it closer. Optimism opens the field of possibility, it drives your desire to contribute, to make a difference, it makes you jump out of bed in the morning because you feel challenged and hopeful at the same time.
But it isn’t going to be easy. We will stumble along the way. Many other global urgencies could temper our hope for rapid progress, and our current geopolitical reality could easily dampen our optimism. That’s where stubbornness comes in. Our optimism cannot be a sunny day attitude. It has to be gritty, determined, relentless. It is a choice we have to make every single day. Every barrier must be an indication to try a different way. In radical collaboration with each other, we can do this.
From Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone, authors of Active Hope:
The word ‘hope’ has two meanings. The first involves hopefulness, where our preferred outcome seems reasonably likely. If we require this kind of hope before we commit to an action, our response gets blocked in areas where we don’t rate our chances too highly…
The second meaning of hope is about desire…This kind of hope, where we know what we’d like or love to take place, can start us on a journey. But it is what we do with this hope that really makes the difference. Passive hope involves waiting for external agencies to create the future we desire. Active Hope is about becoming active participants in the story of bringing about what we hope for.
Active Hope is a practice. Like t’ai chi and gardening, it is something we do rather than have. It is a process we can apply to any situation, and it involves three key steps. First, we take in a clear view of reality; second, we identify what we hope for, in terms of the direction we’d like things to move in or values we’d like to see expressed; and third, we take steps to move ourselves or our situation in that direction.
Hope is not to be confused with delusional optimism. Hope and action confidence are grounded in radical realism: a realism that is not only in touch with what currently is, but also in touch with a field of possibility that needs us to manifest. In short: Action confidence is an “inside job” that requires us to tap into our highest (future) Selves.
From Frances Moore Lappé, food and democracy activist, author of Diet for a Small Planet and many other books:
The only choice I don’t have is whether to change the world. Because every choice I’m making consciously, or not making, every single choice is changing the world around me. And so the only choice I have, then, is whether I’m making conscious choices, choices to align, consciously align with nature and human nature. So that’s very freeing to me, to realize then, the power.
And…
So if we see the world through this frame of scarcity and limits, and the bad guys and fear, then that’s all we will see. And if we see the world through this mental map of possibility, of this sense of connectedness, continuous change, and cocreation, then the possibilities open for us. So I think of this as so foundational. We see what we look for. And if we’re not looking for what is life-serving, then we’re really, really not going to see it. And so that is why I try to take so many messages that keep us trapped in a fault filter, if you will, and try to open us to this worldview, mental map that is ecologically aligned…
We know what the solutions are. They are either right here showing up someplace, or they’re just around the corner. I just attended a brilliant conference with scientists from around the world talking about renewable energy. Scientist after scientist said there is no physical obstacle to a hundred percent renewable energy in the next few decades, no physical obstacle. We know how to do this. Germany, cloudy Germany, the size – about the size of Montana, produced half the solar energy in the year 2010. So if Germany can do that, come on already. We know how to do this. So solutions are known, whether they be to hunger or to renewable energy. We know how to do this. And also, I’ve realized that a lot of people care. We think in the United States that we’re so divided on such basic issues like climate change. And yet, when you ask people, the vast majority want more action on the part of the public sphere on climate change, for example. The vast majority want more solutions coming forth on the part of the public spheres for poverty eradication, for example. So there’s a great deal of unity, actually. Beneath all of the images of division, there’s a great deal of unity in view, and a lot of people really care and want to make a difference. I think the problem is, most of us don’t know how. And that’s really why I love this kind of program, because it’s allowing people to say, oh yes, I could do that. I am not powerless.
From psychology-of-positivity researcher Jacqueline Mattis:
Hopeful people do not wish – they imagine and act. They establish clear, achievable goals and make a clear plan. They believe in their agency – that is, their capacity to achieve the outcomes. They recognize that their path will be marked by stresses, roadblocks and failure. According to psychologists such as Snyder and others, people who are hopeful are able to “anticipate these barriers” and they “choose” the right “pathways.”
And for activists involved with long-shot causes?
Research demonstrates that for people working to bring social change, particularly anti-poverty activists, relationships and community provided the reason for hope and ignited their conviction to keep fighting.
Connection to others allowed activists to feel a sense of accountability, to recognize that their work mattered and that they were part of something bigger than themselves…Hopeful people stake their trust in data, particularly in the evidence of history. Research demonstrates, for example, that anti-poverty activists drew hope from knowing that, historically, when people joined together in resistance they were able to create change.
I can validate and add to Mattis’s conclusions about lost causes. I’ve been involved in quite a few that seemed hopeless on the surface, including stopping a development project that was “supposed to” steamroll through the permitting process and ruin a local mountain. Community was extremely important in that effort–and so was mindset. I always knew we would win, even though the “experts” were moaning variations on “this project is terrible, but there’s nothing we can do.” And I’ve seen a lot of the causes I’ve worked on these past 50+ years go from fringe to mainstream to successful. I never imagined when I went to my first meeting of my college’s gay-lesbian student group that same-sex relationships would be normalized and same-sex marriages legalized within just a few decades. I never imagined when I took part in the Seabrook occupation of 1977 that we would almost instantly create a national safe energy movement that helped to vastly reduce the risks of nuclear power because no new plants would be built for decades. And I certainly didn’t think that catastrophic climate change would jump out of the scientists’ silos and build an international mass movement.
Lynn Margulis,2005. Photo by Javier Pedreira, Creative Commons license.
I love this quote from biologist (and Carl Sagan’s wife) Lynn Margulis and her son Dorion Sagan: “Life did not take over the globe by combat, but by networking.”
