Reeling from the turbulence of the morning news has become a daily affliction for many of us who still feel duty bound to witness some semblance of the real world while trying to resist the impulse to duck and cover. It’s a news-sickness with no emetic.
In recent days, for instance, we’ve learned from trusted environmental reporter Laura Paskus, in NMPBS’s Our Land Weekly, of very early wildfires from Socorro to Moriarty, from Hidalgo County near Lordsburg to a small blaze on the river near Albuquerque flaring up despite our winter snows and rains. We learn as well of the possibility of tinder dry conditions this summer in woodlands in the Sandia Mountains and fears of devastating wildfires in the flammable underbrush and overgrown forests there.
In almost the same breath, we read again of horrendous killings of school children and teachers, this time at the Covenant School in Nashville, Tenn., by a shooter who authorities call a “transgender former student.” And then learn of the terrifying backlash against transgender people in Tennessee. And much like the Viet Nam era, we find ourselves confronted by daily reports of the war in Ukraine, with its photos of corpses, ravaged apartment buildings and starving, battered elders freezing in the winter gloom.
In a bookstore last week, I couldn’t help glancing at Malcolm Nance’s “They Want to Kill Americans: The Militias, Terrorists and Deranged Ideology of the Trump Insurgency.” I cringe at the thought of Trump’s New York trial on 34 felony indictments, knowing we’ll all have to endure a tidal wave of hyperbolic news reports of his antic merde and caca for weeks to come.
How do we continue, decade after decade, to take all this in? How do we even contemplate putting into action the admonishments, say, of the great French philosopher and social martyr Simone Weil (pronounced Vay) who devoted her life to expanding the common good by admonishing us not “to be an accomplice” to the depravities of power by keeping our “eyes shut”?
News-sickness reminds me of the ancient myth of Pandora’s box. Once we open it, gifts that look like boons turn out to be curses we can’t escape — guns in their millions, nuclear warheads in the air, land, and sea, continents of plastic waste, murderous racist and homophobic hate speech, the grandiose scaffolds of political deceit, technologies that can weaponize almost anything with horrific unexplored potential consequences. But the ancients knew that something’s left at the bottom of the box after all the curses scatter, something tiny and seemingly impotent at first glance. They called it Elpis. It’s the name of the Goddess of Hope.
One of the wisest people of our times, the Buddhist ecologist Joanna Macy, shows us, in her book “Active Hope,” that it’s possible to “face the mess we’re in without going crazy.” She suggests that if we can sidestep the seemingly sophisticated gospels of futility and paranoia, and animate our public lives in ways that activate hope, we have a chance to release ourselves from the whirling drain of resignation and escape.
This doesn’t require any kind of ersatz heroism. Active hope thrives on the fertile realization that we are not alone in our recognition “of the mess we’re in.” It’s not all up to us. We can steadfastly witness the world without buckling. We can educate ourselves about alternatives that make sense to us. We can engage in any immediate actions we have the strength to support. This includes something as simple minded, I think, as focusing our attention on achievements and ideas that help activate energy of hope within us.
If we can keep paying attention, we can’t help but see that news changes direction, like March winds moving through April. We learned last week, for instance, of Bernalillo County District Attorney Sam Bregman declaring schools to be “gun free zones,” promising to enforce state law forbidding guns on campus with “zero tolerance.” We’ll see how successful he is. But I consider his realization that guns must be aggressively banned from school campuses a form of “active hope.”
The same for Attorney General Raul Torrez’s idea to “create a new civil rights division, a branch of the attorney general’s office dedicated to safeguarding children, addressing dysfunction in the Children, Youth and Families Department and protecting children’s rights,” according to Ed Williams, a staff writer for Searchlight New Mexico.
I’m heartened by hearing from Hannah Grover of NM Political Report that New Mexico Senator Martin Heinrich has “introduced legislation that would require net-zero agricultural emissions by the year 2040.” This is a massive assault on CO2, the principal cause of climate-change. The EPA estimates that “agriculture accounted for about 11 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in 2020,” Grover wrote. The Union of Concerned Scientists supports Heinrich’s bill saying that it “would provide a science-based roadmap to build a stronger, more resilient and sustainable food and farm system at a time when the climate crisis is devastating farmers and ranchers.”
My sense of hope was further bolstered when I learned recently from CNN that the Vanuatu chain of islands east of Australia had a “win of epic proportions” in the United Nations. The General Assembly empowered “the world’s highest court,” the UN International Court of Justice “to provide an ‘advisory opinion’ on the legal responsibility of governments” to find solutions to the climate crisis, arguing that “climate change has become a human rights issue for Pacific Islanders.” An advisory opinion “will carry significant weight and authority … (in) future climate lawsuits around the world,” CNN concluded.
And here at home, Deadline, a Hollywood news outlet, informs us that New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed into law last month a bill that allocates $40 million to fund a “new film, TV and digital” vocational school in Albuquerque. It will be called the Next Generation Media Academy. It has a goal of admitting 1,000 students a year and equipping them with the skills to join the other 9,000 or more New Mexicans employed by the state’s booming TV, online and movie industry. What a hopeful move that is for New Mexico’s creative community.
Active hope. I can’t help but believe Joanna Macy is a clear-eyed visionary when she says, “If the world is to be healed through human efforts, I am convinced it will be by ordinary people, people whose love for this life is even greater than their fear.”
*Nullius in verba: take nobody’s word for it
Whether or not we, as individuals, pay attention, our communities, country, and the world is in the dangerous state it is in right now because not enough of those with the power to effect change paid attention in decades past. If active hope is what we need to garner in order for each of us to do our part–large or small–to retrieve ourselves from the brink, then we must nurture that. I feel it is a mistake to assume we have it worse than other generations. Those who who experienced the Nazi near-takeover of Europe, the Dirty Wars of Latin America, or our own Civil War must have believed their time was the worst history had to offer. The only rational response, from my point of view, is to take in as much as we can without allowing it to make us ill and then to do what we’re capable of to get back on track. I so appreciate these columns, V.B., in which you give specific examples of efforts aimed at a humane and viable survival. They not only give me hope, but something to build on.
Good people unite in active hope–you have nothing to lose by the chains of despair! Well written, important column here, very appropriate for the Easter and Easter Rising time of year, V. B.!
“We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead;
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died? ”
Thanks.
Another of many important messages from V.B. The key word in his term “active hope” is of course “active,” which is similar to what Augustine said: “Hope has two beautiful daughters; their names are Anger and Courage. Anger at the way things are, and Courage to see that they do not remain as they are.”
Just sitting back and hoping things change for the better is a fatuous cop-out. The positive aspect of reading about current events from a variety of sources (don’t rely only on the corporate [legacy] media), and this includes ALL perspectives, is to arrive at a relatively objective and balanced view of the reality we face. It is also crucial to get away from the screen as much as possible. Read books–literature, politics, philosophy, science, etc. Overcome our fears of each other and have face-to-face, constructive discussions, not about divisive partisan, tribal issues, but finding common ground. From there solutions and alternatives to the toxic status quo might be uncovered. If one is truly angered, as any rational person should be, the courage must be summoned to do something about it. From this comes V.B.’s “active hope.” There is an inertia of the spirit in this culture. We have ceded our active energy, indeed, our humanity, to something that seems all-powerful and irresistible, though it is not. We can, as V.B. says, “… educate ourselves about alternatives that make sense to us.” The focus on alternatives is critical. The system isn’t working. Talk to your neighbors. Find common ground. Throw away labels and knee-jerk, Pavlovian suppositions and responses. We are all human. The overwhelming majority of us are decent and want the same things from life.
Superb. Thank you, Barrett. Active hope. I am taking that on board.