16. Conclusion Part 2: Beyond Hope for the Future: Compassion and Resolve

AfterThought

We begin with where the podcast started: one of the characteristics of the contemporary world, which is both an active contributor to, as well as a passive reflection of, its being in crisis, is that in contrast to the modern worldview’s ideal of some magisterial overview, our current moment refuses any such overview. Such an overview appears now as impossible and implausible; part of the modern-Western-cum-ultramodern-global mythology we need to put behind us. Instead, we are all caught up inside this global moment, caught up in a plurality of incompatible worldviews and contradictory stories, incapable of escaping our inherence in this complex diversity and forced to make our way with great uncertainty. How to live in this moment, without resorting to either hopelessness or despair or inauthentic hope, with the courage, resolve, and above all, the compassion, that is needed? And beyond living in this moment, how are we to transform ourselves in the midst of the ending of the world such that a new human being emerges, ready to live – viably, sustainably, resiliently - in the new world that will come after the ending of the old?

(Note: many of the references made to hope and the psychology of climate change in this episode were already given in the notes accompanying Episode 5.)

A couple further references on hope:

Joanna Macy (who was mentioned in Episode 5 as well) remains a psychologist of global climate change par excellence: https://www.joannamacy.net/ .For some of her work on “active hope”, see https://www.activehope.info/joanna-macy.html

Jonathan Lear’s analysis of hope for the Crow nation as it struggles to survive is rich, deep, and pertinent: Jonathan Lear. (2006). Radical hope: Ethics in the face of cultural devastation.

Relative to references made to a non-ego actor invokes the work of Bruno Latour and “actor-network” theory, Donna Haraway, and others, that helpfully focus on breaking down nature-culture, passive mechanical natural subject vs active conscious human agent, dichotomies.

For example:

Latour, Bruno. (2017). Facing Gaia: Eight Lectures on the new climactic regime.

Haraway, Donna. (2008). When species meet.