No Future Without Radical Hope: Actions for 2024
If, like me, you find the current media landscape with its sensationalist headlines about seemingly unsurmountable crises coupled with unrelenting violence a terrifying, overwhelming, anxiety inducing thing to engage with, then please keep reading. This one is for you. It’s also for me, a little note-to-self.
I hit pause on this blog and took a break from social media in general towards the end of 2023 while finishing my term papers for my masters. Apart from the very welcome dopamine baseline re-set, and giving me the space to focus on my work without distractions (I wrote just shy of 11,000 words in two weeks, on climate fiction as a means of public engagement in the climate crisis, bias in media reporting of the ongoing genocide in Gaza, and the dangers of censorship of social media — all super fun, lighthearted topics!), that break also gave me time, at the perfect moment, to reflect on the year just gone.
I felt conflicted between two stories of 2023, the political and the personal. It didn’t feel right to reflect on the personal without acknowledging the state of the world, but my personal experience is also the only place I can reflect from. I spent the first part of 2023 bathed in sunshine, travelling, writing, studying permaculture and living in the jungle in Costa Rica. I moved to Barcelona in summer, and started a masters in Autumn, where my attention shifted towards the political landscape, a far cry from the first half of my year, a remarkably darker space but something I feel deeply called to engage with. It is, after all, what I chose to study, and it is part of my life philosophy to embrace the depths of the shadow side of humanity, to confront the uncomfortable as well as revelling in the joy and the beauty of life.
So in deciding what to share as a nod to the end of 2023, I figured I’d share a bit of what my personal experience in the last year can offer in terms of insight on the wider political environment. The proposition I have is a rallying cry for 2024, a call for radical hope in times of multidimensional violence. A light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel stance, if you can excuse the cliché. Let’s start at the dark end.
My masters is in communications; international studies with a focus, among other things, on media. What I learnt in the last semester, maybe unsurprisingly, is that violence, fear and negativity sell, dominating the mediascape with (perhaps) unintended consequences. I don’t know about you, but there’s only so much violence a human can take, even when it’s second hand, before we look for ways to numb ourselves, seeking distractions, hedonism, escapism or engaging in simple denial. It’s a survival mechanism; understandable, but not necessarily healthy, and certainly not helpful. I believe it’s what recent Netflix release Leave The World Behind is pointing to, reflecting on our current predicament that the world could be ending right in front of us and we’d continue acting as if everything is fine, seeking to fill our hungry ghosts with nostalgia for times that never existed. There are several problems with this dominant approach to media:
We will believe — and behave as though — our world is a violent, dangerous place when we only ever hear stories that depict it as such.
When we are presented only with violence, we falsely come to assume that violence is the only solution to the problems we are faced with.
The elicited feelings of guilt, shame or disgust that arise from this kind of media exposure for many of us act as inhibitors as opposed to motivators of behaviour. They shut us down and turn us away.
I’ve found two insights from my research for my term papers helpful in imagining an alternative. The first, the concept of the fear-hope battery, I stumbled across while researching for an essay on the potential for fiction as a method of climate communication. Arising from psychology and behavioural science, this theory states that hope must be present where there is fear, triggering a disconnect between the way things are and the way things could be, to motivate an individual to engage in behaviours that seek to secure a better future.
In my paper, this formed part of my reasoning for ditching anxiety-evoking dystopian visions of apocalyptic futures in favour of narratives that centre the potential for various solutions. I can recommend Ministry for the Future, the novel I used as a case study for this paper, if you’re looking for a climate fiction novel that won’t leave you feeling helpless. It’s a girthy book, but even reading just the first third should do the trick.
The second discovery I made, the discipline of peace journalism, surfaced in two of my classes last semester. As an alternative approach to the news, peace journalism seeks to dismantle everything that’s wrong with mainstream, fear-based war reporting. The characteristics of peace journalism include centring non-official sources, those experiencing conflict first-hand, highlighting the context of conflicts to give a fuller picture of what’s happening, and spotlighting solutions and alternatives to violence, providing the hope required for people to believe that an alternative to violence is possible.
This is vital in cases of protracted conflict; I wrote about this in a paper exploring bias in media reporting of Isreal-Palestine. Peace Journalism has the potential to offset the dominant fear-based narratives with hopeful solutions, helping us envision a way out of what seems like an impossible situation. While intended to apply to war journalism, the same goes for reporting on the climate, which makes sense if we recognise the ongoing pursuit of climate destructive endeavours as the violence that it is. Since becoming aware of this concept, I’m noticing peace journalism much more clearly in mainstream media, however we still need more of it to offset the dominant mainstream approach.
Earlier in the year I attended ‘Fixing the Future’, a conference contributing to this effort by spotlighting climate solutions through a variety of talks and workshops. There were a number of notable speakers and promising initiatives, we heard from indigenous groups, youth activists and artists among others. Three common themes I observed over the conference were an emphasis on the importance of:
Community building and collaboration
Youth engagement and activism
The role of storytelling in cultivating imagination.
Events like this that bring together a range of experts, cultures and perspectives are a demonstration of that hope in practice. There’s a way forward to a liveable future that integrates all of these elements. Even just the simple act of coming together to listen and speak about it makes it feel feasible. Reflecting back to the start of the year, my time in Costa Rica provided a backdrop for this event, having seen some of those possibilities in action — permaculture in practice, circular economies, community living, youth education initiatives at a cooperative in Osa — I know that it’s possible to secure a liveable future for generations to come, it’s just going to take radical action, and a lot of re-structuring of the current system. According to both the constructivist perspective of international relations and my approach to yoga philosophy, our world and our reality is constructed by words and actions, and if that’s the case, we can bring about change through words and actions too.
For justice of all kinds, climate justice and social justice, for peace and freedom for Palestine, we need to remain grounded in hope. If we have hope there’s a potential for change. If hope is lost, so is that potential future. If we had abandoned hope entirely, there would be no COP summits (however imperfect they may be) and we would not be witnessing the ICC case against Israel. These efforts towards justice would not be occurring if we collectively gave up hope that dismantling institutionalised violence is actually possible. Our hope is evident in our voices and actions. It is an act of radical defiance against the mainstream media’s mission to evoke fear and inspire apathy to stand up for an alternative vision of the future.
Mikaela Loach emphasises the use of this term in It’s Not That Radical. Radical in the truest sense of the word means to get to the root of something. And so a radical hope is not surface level. It’s not the offhand comment of ‘I hope things get better’, but a hope grounded in action. It’s a firm belief that a better future is possible, bolstered by the action required to achieve it.
So, what can you do to feel more hopeful about the state of the world?
Read the media critically — It’s good to stay informed, but remember that what you read is not the full picture of reality. Keep an eye out for peace journalism in practice; look out for sources, solutions and context.
Cultivate your echo chamber — follow outlets that focus on solutions. I recently subscribed to Grist newsletter which does exactly this, spotlighting climate crisis solutions.
Seek experiences that affirm that vision of a hopeful future. Start bringing it into reality.
Put your words into action — get involved in local movements, community groups, protests, demonstrations. To rally against the system requires us to come together.
I’ll close here with an excerpt from the essay I wrote on climate fiction, referencing Ministry for the Future; it seems like a fitting note to end on.
In life there are no heroes, and waiting for one to come around could prove deadly. Rather, what Robinson describes through what might be perceived as a disorganised storyline, with multiple snapshots of different characters’ perspectives arranged disjointedly in short chapters, is a reflection of the reality that we are faced with. It will take a multitude of people coming together, utilising their own unique skills, experimenting with new ideas to figure out what works and what is possible to avoid climate collapse. That won’t happen in a neat, organised manner, but in a patchwork of efforts across the globe.
In sum, a future is possible. Hope is vital. You are part of the solution. Welcome, 2024.