Hope without optimism, action without hope?

This week's Comfort for the Apocalypse reading notes

I just finished reading Srećko Horvat’s Poetry from the Future (2019). It’s a well thought-out discussion of the apocalyptic times we find ourselves living in, and an argument for the need to build a global liberation movement to resist the capitalist ideologic currently killing us.

Towards the end of the book, he lands on Terry Eagleton’s phrase (delivered during a lecture series that became a book of the same title) “Hope without optimism”. Optimism, Eagleton argues, is the naive belief that things will get better. Hope is the projection of self into a discernible future; even if that future is illusory, it provides a drive and an architecture for change. Optimism belongs to the elites, he says, hope is the political catalyst for the rest of us.

I have since downloaded Eagleton’s book to read his position in its entirely, because this discussion of hope is one I’ve I dipped into many times over my years of activism and community involvement. In particular, this week’s reading reminded me of the writings of eco-philosopher Derrick Jensen on this subject. In his book, Endgame (2006), Jensen argues against “hope” as a response to world problems, saying that, “Hope is what keeps us chained to the system….” He turns to the Pandora’s Box myth, recalling for the reader that hope was the only thing that did not fly out of the box when Pandora’s curiosity accidentally released the evils into the world. The traditional take on the story is that hope was the one thing given to humans to cope with the world’s terrible ills; our sole balm against all the unleashed sorrows. Jensen’s take is that hope is actually one of the evils, in that it serves those in power by keeping us as inert as the belief in Heaven does. He says “Hope is a longing for a future condition over which you have no agency; it means you are essentially powerless.” He says, “when hope dies, action begins.”

I have returned to this book excerpt (conveniently reproduced as the online essay Beyond Hope by Orion Magazine) many times over the years to puzzle through my own thoughts on the matter of hope in these times. I once strongly subscribed to many of Jensen’s views and he informed a lot of my personal philosophy at one time. But in the course of my activism, which included working alongside Jensen for a brief period, I came to the conclusion that he was either out-of-touch when it came to what could really be expected of people, or quite happy to see the creation of martyrs to further radical eco-action in defense of the planet. I strongly suspected the latter which is where I parted ways with him and others who exhorted activists to “do whatever it takes” while denouncing them for not holding tightly enough to the party line upon arrest for illegal activities.

I digress a bit, but it brings me back to what was problematic in Jensen’s notion that — that he has somehow transcended hope, and fear (and that’s what it took to really act in a manner that would save salmon and forests and ecosystems). Is it possible to completely unhook ourselves from basic human responses? Given the tenor of some of the arguments I saw him engage in, not to mention his dismissal of concerns people working with him had, it seems that this kind of posturing might put one outside of compassionate discourse entirely. Radical hopelessness (or the “courage of hopelessness” posited by Slavoj Žižek) is something I understand, but is it possible to have no hope and no fear and still be fully in touch with the breadth of one’s present emotional landscape?

Returning to Jensen’s writing now, I am struck by the opposition he sets up between hope and action. There is nothing in the definition of hope (“desire for a certain thing to happen”) that precludes taking steps towards that desired-for place. Jensen is correct that hope is not necessarily action-oriented, and it takes action to make change. But isn’t hope one of the orientations from which we derive vision? Optimism, no, as Eagleton underscores in his work, the belief that things will necessarily get better without doing anything at all is a position derived from complacency and a ton of privilege. It gets us nowhere. Not so hope, which is scrappier and requires that we do something about it.

Ray Bradbury was famously quoted as saying “Action is hope. There is no hope without action,” which in Horvat’s estimation, is all we have as we move on from the belief that our system will somehow save us from its worst excesses. “It is out of these defeats,” he says, “we must learn and build something different; a stronger movement. And so, the struggle goes on: from protests to general strikes, from refugee solidarity movements to cooperative markets. It is this hope without optimism that can carry us into the future, because it salvages what has passed not as something that has to be repeated, but as a potential that might lead in new directions and that can still — if we keep constantly in mind the lesson that there is no final defeat — change the present.”

The story of Pandora’s box is curious, for why should hope not fly out into the world and circulate among the sufferers? Why keep it inert, contained within the box, un-activated in some way? And why hope and not love, beauty, or meaning? These are also buoys against suffering. Hope is a very limited perspective to be sure, and in the story of Pandora it does speak to a void of action. Even so, I wouldn’t categorize it as an evil, and I do hope for a world unhooked from its current trajectory of species decline and climate crisis. What we enact towards changing our trajectory takes place within our own context and capacity, but surely we are fueled by visions drawn from the emotional complexity of our full selves.

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Three (related) things

1. Poetry from the Future by Srećko Horvat (2019) is an engaging philosophical treatise on where we stand and the essential question of how advanced our apocalypse is. He is not optimistic, but does share a vision for a way in which we can work together in a world in which there are no longer any islands to which we may retreat.

2. At Work in the Ruins by Dougald Hines (2023) is a recent work examining our place in these times. He explores the role of science in climate change and pandemics, how public policy aimed at tackling emergencies may be divorcing us from our natural ecosystems, and what clinging to modernity means for our future. One might not agree with all of Hines’ conclusions, but this is a well-thought out contribution to the apocalypse literature of our day.

3. Hope Without Optimism by Terry Eagleton (2014) is an argument about personal and political orientation in a faltering system. This is classic Eagleton: full of connections and references, backed by a deep understanding of history and politics, and making a provocative argument in support of a different future than the one on offer.

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And finally

I’m away at my (shared) cabin in the woods this week, something I would like to do more often as it helps me minimize life distractions and get down to writing. Now that everyone has left after the long weekend, the silence up here is astounding.

I’ve also recently deleted the Facebook app from my phone, which is giving me a different kind of respite. The older I get, the louder the world is, and my nervous system needs a break.

A view from an old train trestle near our cabin. This is a piece of the Kettle Valley Railway, which was comprised of some of the most expensive miles of track ever laid in the Canadian railway system. During construction, at least 100 people died, many of them Chinese and Indian workers (exact numbers are unknown). Today this is a popular rail trail which stretches from Princeton to Summerland.