A Case For Hope

If you know me, you know that I’m an avid reader. I typically have 3-4 books going at any given time–one business related, one just for fun, and a couple of self-help/personal growth. Last weekend I finished one of the best books I’ve read in a long time. I say that because this book gave me hope for humanity’s future and I believe that hope is what gets people through dark times. So, naturally, I wanted to share this hope with you! (*SPOILER ALERT: Don’t keep reading if you want to avoid spoilers)

The book I’m talking about is a sci fi novel written by Naomi Alderman (best selling author of The Power which was made into an Amazon Prime series starring Toni Collette) about the near future of humanity. The main characters are a trio of tech billionaires whose massive corporations (fictional versions of Amazon, Facebook, and Google) have engineered much environmental destruction, mental health crises, and economic inequality. These three people have almost unfettered power and their companies manipulate the way we think and how we act in such insidious ways that most of us never realize it. 

They are entirely focused on getting more, more, more wealth and power at whatever cost. The sphere of people they care about is limited to those closest to them and the rest of humanity can burn for all they care. They have survival bunkers and exit strategies in the event of a mass extinction event, and they almost crave this world-ending moment to happen so that they can live out the rest of their days in their luxury bunkers. 

In this fictional reality, there are people in positions of power who see what is coming if the world continues down the path it’s on. They decide to work against the tycoons and imagine a future where the incredible resources of these corporations are turned to the task of solving the environmental crisis and uplifting human consciousness rather than feeding us content that divides us, scares us, and makes us self-medicate by buying more and more things. Alderman creates a vision of a future where the technologies and innovations that might have once been held tightly as proprietary corporate IP become used for the benefit of all humankind. And the changes to our planet and our societies happen rapidly. 

Something she touches on in the book, which is also mentioned in Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind–another book I’m currently reading, is that for only 0.56% of human history have we known how to raise crops and livestock. For 99.44% of our existence as a species, we have been hunter-gatherers. The idea of “ownership” didn’t exist. We lived in small nomadic bands that used what we needed and left the rest behind. Money has only existed for 0.18% of human history. Capitalism has only been on the rise for 0.06% of human history. And the Industrial Revolution during which family and community became replaced by individualism and corporations only happened 200 years ago (aka 0.008% of human history). We did not evolve to live how we’re living. Our brains and our nervous systems and our spirits are not built for modern life, and it’s no wonder that illness (mental and physical) is so ubiquitous. 

Alderman doesn’t advocate for a return to a nomadic hunter-gatherer way of life, and I don’t think that’s feasible either for most of humanity, but she does point to the fact that what we have come to see as “just the way things are” is actually a very new phenomenon in human evolution. 

What if we created a world that blended the best of human innovation with what naturally allows us to thrive? Can you imagine if we brought back some of the old practices that contribute to our wellbeing as a species (eating real food, spending time in nature, living communally, having strong networks of support, using only what we need, repairing vs. discarding) and retained the good that we’ve created since the Scientific Revolution? I can, and it seems like a pretty amazing life to me.

I saw a clip of a speech by author and speaker, Valarie Kaur, recently where she described this moment we’re in so well. She said that though it feels as though the future is dark right now, maybe it’s “not the darkness of the tomb, but rather the darkness of the womb”. Maybe we are experiencing the birthing pains of a new nation. A new America. 

I have personally gone through several such transformations in my life where some version of me had to release control in order for a new version to emerge. In the past I used to think of this as “death and rebirth”. Now I see that that imagery made the old version bad, needing to be killed. We all have shadows in ourselves and we are seeing our collective shadow represented in the leaders of our country right now. But the answer, in my opinion, is not to enact violence against those parts of ourselves. Rather it is to show them love. To let them know we understand where they come from. We know the holes they are trying to fill in themselves, the safety and security they crave, the worthiness they desire. And like a little child who has acted out to get her needs met, we greet these shadows with compassion and accountability. In my experience, when I do this, she softens. She relaxes into my arms and sighs and stops fighting. 

This birthing process may not be a quick and painless labor, or maybe it will, who’s to say? All I know is that I am ready to do my best to act as a midwife and encourage the process along with gentleness and care.