At 73: Further Thoughts on Hope and the Future

There is no possibility of true culture without altruism."
Susan Sontag

"The absurdity of a life that may well end before one understands it does not relieve one of duty...to live through it as bravely and as generously as possible."
Peter Matthiessen
The Snow Leopard

“It is important to work for future generations, for our descendants. We must be proud to do something, even though people do not usually know its value.”
Shunryu Suzuki
founder of San Francisco Zen Center

We live in many kinds of time. We experience time differently, especially according to our age,  and the contexts of our experience are shaped by cycles we know, and that we don't know.  So any speculation on the future is bound to be vague, provisional and a bit of hit and miss.  But this is what I feel about the relatively near future, beyond my time.

As outlined in my previous post, the context of coming decades is likely to be dominated by the effects of the climate crisis, named or not.  Those persistent effects and the new contexts they create will change what people do and how they live.

When that happens in a widespread way (for it is already happening in relatively ignored parts of the world) depends on the climate.  What happens, and how it happens, depends to a great extent on future generations--probably beginning with those who are now young, who are now children.

Right now the impetus for efforts to address the climate crisis--such as the proposed Green New Deal in the US--is coming largely from the young.  Their leading edge is represented in government, and presumably in other influential institutions.  If their awareness becomes the standard for future generations, then responses can become more conscious and deliberate.

 But one way or another, the climate crisis will change just about everything, perhaps in the next few decades, probably by mid century, almost certainly by the end of the century.

There are two major aspects to the climate crisis: there are the causes, and there are the effects.  Societies may choose whether or not to address the causes of future global heating, such as greenhouse gases.  There will be less choice in whether or not to deal with the effects: the sea level rise, heat waves, droughts, floods, shortages, disease outbreaks, and the likely secondary effects of relocations, mass migrations and armed conflicts will demand attention--first local, and then as resources stretch and more people are involved, beyond that. Yet how societies and especially individuals choose to deal with the effects will make all the difference in how people live their lives.

There are those who imagine possible futures, mostly as stories.  While these stories may be visions that include new technologies and/or old forms of human society, or they may be mostly "what if?" explorations, cautionary tales or metaphors of the present, they offer a range of possibilities that cannot be dismissed.  I offer here only a few elements of a future I can imagine and foresee.

There are aspects of that future that can begin right now.  The young can prepare for the meaningful work of that future.  Many of the concerns of today will evaporate.  The consumer economy cannot be the focus of so many lives.  The emphasis will be on meeting needs, rather than in inciting and manipulating wants.

There will be increasing interest in finding technical means for addressing both causes and effects of the climate crisis.  The young can prepare themselves to participate in such research and development.  If I were advising adolescents today, I would suggest examining areas of study and possible occupations by asking the question, what will a climate crisis society need?

At this point, a stubborn refusal to surrender to some sense of the inevitable is healthy for the young. But denial is not.  They can dedicate themselves to possible means of addressing the causes as well as effects of the climate crisis.  But developing means to address future effects is also worthy and important.  In this way--the only meaningful way--they enact hope.  Hope is no longer principally a feeling.  It is a commitment, a set of activities, a life.

In terms of anticipating and dealing with effects, my guess is that the future will need managers of teams and resources responding to individual problems, and to develop strategies to address problems before they occur.

The future will need a greater proportion of dedicated individuals with skills for actions that today are often grouped under the name of first responders.  The future will need engineers and others in specific areas not yet prioritized by society's reward system.

The future will also need dreamers and storytellers, visionaries and critical minds, but using means and applying themselves in incalculable ways.  More broadly, when many occupations that today seem important eventually fall away as useless and wasteful, the need for currently undervalued skills will come forward.

Other needs will become the focus of more jobs, and even with increasing difficulties, those jobs can be more meaningful to communities and the individuals who do them. The perils and pains of this future may be great.  But individuals may find new purpose. Life may be harder, but less absurd.

This future, when so much that seems unavoidably important today fades into the sodden inventory of this failing period of history,  offers new opportunities for individuals to make basic commitments.  Some of these will be instinctive, but many personal commitments and choices will need to be made consciously, because they will be hard to make.  It will even be hard to know they can and must be made.

"To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives."
Howard Zinn

“Such hopelessness can arise, I think, only from an inability to face the present, to live in the present, to live as responsible beings among other beings in this sacred world here and now, which is all we have, and all we need to found our hopes upon.”
Ursula LeGuin

"…the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise."
F. Scott Fitzgerald

There seem to me to be two essential mysteries about humanity and its history.  One is whether humanity as a whole would develop in time to meet challenges of the changing present, particularly those very large ones that humanity itself has set in motion.  So far, when applied to the climate crisis, the answer seems to be no.

The other in some ways underlies the first.  It is the nature of human nature.  Is human nature based on selfishness, greed, lust, fear, envy, anger, the will to dominate and the passion to destroy and to kill?  Or is it based on understanding, a moral sense and sense of justice, compassion, empathy, courage and generosity?  Or is it an uncertain mix of both?

That last view is expressed in a fable, attributed to several Native American peoples, and may be familiar to some from the under-rated film Tomorrowland.  A version of it goes like this:

A grandfather talks to his grandchild. "A fight is going on inside me," he said. "It is a terrible fight between two wolves. One is evil - he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego." 

"The other is good," he continued. "He is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith."

 "The same fight is going on inside you," grandfather said, "and inside every other person, too."

The grandchild thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, "Which wolf will win?"

 "The one you feed." 

Under greater pressure and in starker terms than perhaps we can imagine, people of the near future will face this choice.  Their choice may not alter the ultimate future that comes after them--perhaps centuries later-- but it will help characterize their present.  Human civilization is some ways has been a struggle to inculcate a fair degree of personal freedom and justice for individuals while meeting the needs of community.  Freedom is based on choice, and community is based on a sense of common humanity, fairness, decency and shared fate.

 How the needs of the individual and society are both met is an ongoing test of humanity as a social species.  Individuals need the support of community, as community needs the commitment of individuals.  Apart from institutional constraints, the balance is achieved by a sense of responsibility, empathy, compassion, generosity and kindness.  The ethic of "you'd do the same for me" is perhaps the most basic human statement.

Even in his bleakest scenario for the future, HG Wells kept reminding readers than nothing will prevent at least individual human beings from exhibiting qualities of courage and love.  In adverse times, the need becomes even greater for "mutual comfort and redeeming acts of kindness."

Redemption is a curious concept in this context, but there is something to it.  If humanity can't quite redeem its past by fixing its future, it can at least to some extent redeem itself.  Wells expressed his preference that, if the end is truly coming, he "would rather our species ended its story in dignity, kindliness and generosity, and not like drunken cowards in a daze or poisoned rats in a sack."

Humanity can go down fighting, and it can go down loving, both.  Perhaps it will even endure.  But its time of testing need not be one of unremitting pain and degradation. It can be a time that includes creativity, challenge, commitment and character, in which life is lived to the fullness of the moment.  For we live in many kinds of time.