Post hope?
I started this newsletter on hope. Hope that it would find others feeling the impossibleness of giving up, despite the mess we are in earthwise. Would hope work?
Monday morning I was prepping my porridge absentmindedly, grating ginger and warming frozen strawberries. Swirling the oats I logged into my dashboard to check signups and data, to see what was working. I’m used to starting things from scratch and I know that the data doesn’t match my energy and vision for quite a while.
This is the point where giving up feels like an invitation. Where the “this won’t work”-voice pops up frequently. Because I have no clue where to find those resilient souls. Those in agreement that growing up ≠ giving up. The newsletter keeps growing, but in trickles, not in streams. We are compounding, but slowly. Then I burnt my oats.
Because what I saw wasn’t naïve, nor wishful thinking. The numbers staring at me were real. My opening rate over the last 4 weeks is 82,61%. You are thinking this too!
Fuck. It’s possible.
Despite everything everywhere all at once, you are proof that we haven’t all given up. That we still care, that we are in this together. What I am thinking is actually resonating.
It’s just a question of how to untangle those problems, snarled at our feet.
Can you sit with the word polycrisis and tell me that you don’t feel paralyzed?
I’ve been eaten up by the Angst of looking at all the POLYs, feeling the despair of climate change to the bone. Listening to those at climate conferences telling us that we can't use the hard facts because people would get scared didn't do it for me. It scared me more. Then Covid hit, patriarchy regrouped its power, floods, Russia, Ukraine, wildfires, Gaza, Iran.
This is too much for anyone to hold alone. And the reason why simple solutions sounds so sweet. I have been in limbo for ages now, stuck with the ask to either fix everything or admit that I’m not trying. I can’t tell my 8 year old son I’m not trying. But I can’t fix everything either. Too big, too entangled = stuck. The too high shelf, remember?
So I went looking for those who have been dismantling this shelf. And I found Sarah Wilson. She has sat with the polycrisis for three years, has interviewed countless experts and has come up with a really good synonym. She refers to the polycrisis as a clusterfuck. Sarah also has admitted that it scares her deeply and I’ve got the feeling she also knows about the we-feel-alone-in-caring part.
In a TEDx talk, Sarah aptly tells the story of a four-year-old who is unable to clean her room because the task is too overwhelming. In terms of the polycrisis Sarah argues that we are the four-year-old kids. We can’t clean up this mess. Again: too big, too entangled. Sarah has made peace with this fact. Understanding that our systems are too complex and interdependent to remain stable, and will therefore inevitably crash, makes it easier for her to feel truly alive.
This seems really counterintuitive, but she has a point: we need to stop trying to fix everything. For her this means focusing on: connection, collaboration and community. It means climbing up trees and going for a run and ending up dancing in the woods. She also declares the acceptance so liberating, that she finally feels she has reached the level of adultship, that she was looking for. The word she uses is Leadership.
What confused me at first was the T-shirt she was wearing during her talk. In big bold letters it read: POST HOPE. This is where it get’s fuzzy, because connection, collaboration and community are the key ingredients of hope used as structure. Why is she saying that we are beyond hope?
What she is explaining well is that we have exhausted all possibilities for maintaining the old world structure. She also states that using all our resources to maintain it, is simultaneously causing us the most harm.
I don’t want to keep the old systems upright. I’m already orienting myself outside these structures. Reimagining the future as post-fossil, post-capitalist, post-patriarchal lights me up. It gives me hope. We can rebuild. I, like Sarah Wilson, feel more alive when I imagine this collective future. For all I care, Thiel can colonize the moon. That’s out of my control. But I can change the story I’ve been standing in and regain my control. I’ll be in my communal vegetable patch, sharing seeds and homemade bread while gossiping about the idiocy of the moon colonists.
I think Sarah’s T-Shirt is a goodbye to hope used to describe a feeling held individually. She needs a new T-Shirt to declare her point better. Because her talk lands on simplification as a form of homecoming. Done collectively.
This is the definition of hope as a structural force.
Because the logical psychological response to the inability of holding everything all at once? Right, is to hold nothing. What my opening rate proves? That starting somewhere works. 82,61% of you were waiting on the other end.
So, instead of holding everything or nothing, why not pick up a loose end and turn it into something beautiful? Looking for you has made me feel so much more alive and so much less lonely in caring. I’m practicing connection, practicing how my truths work when spoken out loud. And I feel much lighter than I did before.
If we keep on using hope individually, nothing will move. Not because hope doesn’t work, but because being alone isn’t working. We’ve gotten used to being alone. It’s our culture’s comfort zone.
You’ve already noticed the loose ends that need tugging.
Doesn't the idea of sharing a pot of spaghetti with friends to discuss the need to write a petition about domestic violence, where you use your marketing skills and your friend brings tiramisu for dessert, sound better than avoiding the news about the Epstein files because it makes you feel bad?
You could go out and buy 1 kg of clover seeds for 15,84 €, mush them with clay and earth and sprinkle them in the concrete cracks that annoy you so much, instead of feeling upset about the lack of care in your neighborhood.
My friend Tine called me a day-after-tomorrow-person a few days ago, which felt like a description I’ve been waiting for. This was a response to the loose end I picked up. She has also picked up a loose end. It looks different than mine. The result is the same though. She created proof that she cared.
Pull that loose end.
Stay curious. Stay courageous.
Written by a human. Unpolished. On Purpose.
