By Average Joey
Things feel fucking hopeless. The wolves of fascism are no longer at the door — they are ravaging the house. And the house is on fire. The climate collapse is in full swing, secret police murder and abduct people in broad daylight, it is a matter of verifiable fact that our rulers are all sociopathic pedophiles, genocides have become integrated into our daily scroll, and the economic precarity of late-stage capitalism makes everyday life for working people untenable. The mundane brutality is unbearable.
Despair, grief, and rage are all rational reactions to these conditions. In this moment, the concept of hope feels naive, even cruel. When basic survival and psychological well-being are such a struggle, the idea of salvaging a future seems unthinkable. The distress we are all experiencing stunts our ability to care for ourselves, connect with our communities, and join up in action, but when distress is processed communally and channeled into collective action, it can deepen our resolve and ignite a sense of purpose.
The capacity to imagine a better world is a necessary step towards bringing it into being. This imagining requires a radical hope. Hope, in this context, is not simply optimism. Unthinking positivity denies the gravity of the moment and relies on individual behavioral solutions to global crises. Radical hope does not turn away from the truth, however bleak. Rather, hope calls us to unite around shared interests despite the challenges we face. “Hope,” Mariame Kaba tells us, “is a discipline.”
The horrors at hand are the direct consequence of a colonial capitalist global order whose violent structures and ideological foundations shape our reality. Any attempt to confront the current crises without dismantling capitalism as the predominant economic and social paradigm is to make meaningless reforms and marginal adjustments to a death machine. Radical hope guides us towards a world free from domination: one founded on interdependent relationships, meaningful connectivity, and authentic communities.
As the fallouts and crises of this collapsing empire worsen, it will be communities of people we are in physical relationships with — whose well-being we are invested in, and who are invested in our well-being — which will be the most important resources of all. You can take all the firearms classes you want, learn to garden to perfection, or have the sharpest articulation of theory — none of this will matter in isolation. Confronting the upheavals we face can only be done meaningfully through the processes of interdependence with trusted, embodied community.
Human nature is one of cooperation, and disaster brings this out in us. We may find in this great unraveling the kinds of acts of solidarity which are inherent in human communities under tragedy or crisis. Interdependent communal relationships in which one’s personal well-being is inextricably connected to the well-being of other members of the community is the basic social structure under which human beings have lived for nearly all of our species’ history — imperialist capitalist social relations are a mere blip on the timeline. A return to this collectivist nature may be revealed through the terrain of crises as we all turn towards each other in order to survive, meet our needs, and maintain dignity as the bottom drops out beneath us.
This will be far from romantic! Grief and loss and anguish and tragedy are sure to come, and we can’t downplay the resulting disorientation or assume it will automatically bring about more egalitarian social conditions. We cannot simply skip over the mourning and anger at the injustice and needless suffering surrounding us. But grief and joy, hope and rage are not opposite ends of a swinging pendulum; they are entangled sentiments which occur in relation to each other. If we can collectivize our grief, rather than suffering it individually, we might garner further resolve in our movements, and stronger connections with one another. Despair is individuating. Hope orients us towards the other.
The harsh reality is that we’ve already been defeated. The biosphere is degraded, the violence becomes ever more blatant, the fascists are empowered politically and culturally, and nobody is coming to save us. While we have historical reference points, this moment is in many ways unknowable and unprecedented. So, with that being the case — now what? Knowing we cannot “win,” what will we do?
How we answer these questions should not affect our willingness to, as best as we are able, embody our ethical principles, engage in collective struggle, and insist that the current social order is not inevitable. If we remain steadfast in these values, the sacrifices and dedication required to make revolutionary change are experienced not as a begrudging duty, but an irresistible desire. We fight for a radically different world because we cannot help it.
Hope is not a prediction, it is a vision. To hope is to be prepared for that which does not yet exist, to be willing to fight for it. Now is the time for this preparation.
What do you know how to do?
What are you good at?
What makes you feel alive and embodied?
How can you do those things in service of other people?
How can you use these skills to contribute to larger movements and to improve the lives of those around you?
When we’re feeling hopeless and powerless, these are good questions to return to.
Like it or not, dramatic shifts to the world as we know it well underway. We are facing the end of the world, in a sense, but this current global order should be ended! Our rage is justified, we are right to grieve — these are evidence that our hearts and minds still function. These emotions, though, cannot be detached from our desire and willingness to struggle for a better future. The contempt we feel for this world must come from a place of longing and love for the world that could be. Hope charges our disdain and anger with an imagining of something better and an insistence that we build it together. With these values as our guidepost, we take the crisis as it comes with a willingness to figure things out together, accepting failure with grace, and recognizing that the chaos of what is to come leaves no guarantees.
What is important is not anticipating exactly what will happen but retaining our humanity regardless of what happens. Living with radical hope, acting collectively and in service to the social good — even if it is futile — is far more likely to create a meaningful life full of loving relationships than being possessed by impotent rage or passive detachment. If fear and nihilism are our motivating forces, we become paralyzed and prone to alienation and distrust. Hope arms us with a closeness — a belief in each other and our collective power.
The future will not be fully utopian or dystopian — it will be neither heaven nor hell on earth. It will be an intermingling of grief and love, intimacy and tragedy, confusion and resolve. Regardless of what humanity faces, no matter what tragedies our communities are subjected to, if we confront them collectively, rather than in isolation, we experience them not as hellish agony but as opportunities for solidarity, social connection, and mutual care.
A faith in people (including yourself!) is required to embody radical hope; a trust in people’s ability to figure things out together if given the proper support and conditions, and a willingness to participate in that process collectively. Faith, in this context, requires sustained focus, critical thinking, and principled commitment. It recognizes that hope for a better world requires extending a helping hand rather than turning away in judgment.
We have to embrace messiness, failure, uncertainty, and contradiction. We have to believe that compassion and rage can coexist and empower each other. It is worth every bit of effort and energy we can afford to try and make our world as dignified, humane, and caring as we can.