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Beyond Hope
By Derrick Jensen
The most common works 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.
To start, there is the false hope that suddenly somehow the system may
inexplicably change. Or technology will save us. Or the Great Mother. Or beings
from Alpha Centauri. Or Jesus Christ. Or Santa Claus. All of these false hopes
lead to inaction, or at least to ineffectiveness.
Does anyone really believe that Weyerhaeuser is going to stop deforesting
because we ask nicely? Does anyone really believe that Monsanto will stop
Monsantoing because we ask nicely? If only we get a Democrat in the White House,
things will be okay. If only we pass this or that piece of legislation, things
will be okay. If only we defeat this or that piece of legislation, things will
be okay.
Nonsense.
Things will not be okay. They are already not okay, and they’re getting worse.
Rapidly.
The more I understand hope, the more I realize that it serves the needs of those
in power as surely as belief in a distant heaven; that hope is really nothing
more than a secular way of keeping us in line.
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.
I do not hope coho salmon survive. I will do whatever it takes to make sure the
dominant culture doesn’t drive them extinct.
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 we stop hoping for external assistance, when we stop hoping that the awful
situation we’re in will somehow resolve itself, when we stop hoping the
situation will somehow not get worse, then we are finally free — truly free — to
honestly start working to resolve it. I would say that when hope dies, action
begins.
Many people are afraid to feel despair. They fear that if they allow themselves
to perceive how desperate our situation really is, they must then be perpetually
miserable. They forget that it is possible to feel many things at once. They
also forget that despair is an entirely appropriate response to a desperate
situation. Many people probably also fear that if they allow themselves to
perceive how desperate things are, they may be forced to do something about it.
A Wonderful thing happens when you give up on hope, which is that you realize
you never needed it in the first place. You realize that giving up on hope
didn’t kill you.
It didn’t even make you less effective. In fact it made you more effective,
because you ceased relying on someone or something else to solve your problems —
you ceased hoping your problems would somehow get solved through the magical
assistance of God, the Great Mother, the Sierra Club, valiant tree-sitters ,
brave salmon, or even the Earth itself — and you just began doing whatever it
takes to solve those problems yourself.
When you give up on hope, you turn away from fear.
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
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