I am aware that quite a lot of the time, I suggest that humankind is facing multitudinous crises, many of which might threaten our well-being.
The threat to democracy, the threat from climate change, the danger from the destructive use of AI that it seems some are likely to want to create, and the callous attitude of many ultra-wealthy people towards the rest of humanity, who they appear to consider expendable, mean I think I have good reason for having considerable concern about our futures.
I then read this article in The Guardian yesterday, in which a new book by Dr Luke Kemp entitled 'Goliath's curse' is reviewed. I thoroughly recommend the article. It discusses the potential collapse of our society and why, based upon the author's research, this could be much more devastating than any previous collapse of a civilisation in the last 5,000 years of human history. I accept that analysis. I think it is entirely reasonable.
Despite that, I live in hope.
That might partly be because I very often get my pessimism in early. I don't always think that things will work out for the best, and then I am pleased when they turn out better than I expect, which is a trait that my wife has learned to live with. The net outcome is that I am almost continuously pleased with how well life is going.
Ultimately, though, I think I have hope because I believe in the capacity of human beings to do what is right. I believe, as Luke Kemp obviously does, that human beings are ultimately altruistic, generous, empathic, and communal. They do, quite simply, care.
There are, undoubtedly, those amongst us who seem intent on amassing either wealth or power for the sake of their personal aggrandisement, which we know because that they accumulate wealth beyond anything they might need for their well-being. But the rest of us are both capable of identifying those undertaking this activity and ultimately resisting it.
We might, of course, ultimately fail in that endeavour. I accept that possibility, which is why I often express my concerns. But I still retain the hope that we can change direction. This is one reason why I've talked about storytelling recently—because I believe that the narratives that we tell ourselves and each other are incredibly important if we are to achieve this goal. But more than that, I believe that those narratives can inform our behaviour in ways which can affect change.
Luke Kemp seems to do the same. He summarises this by saying 'don't be a dick', and, to be candid, that's quite a good prescription. If you want to effect change, don't do the things that undermine it, in other words.<
So, if you believe that climate change is a threat, act in ways that mitigate it.
If you believe that there are people threatening democracy, do all you can to support it, and demand that its reach be enhanced and its functioning be improved, whether or not those power-hungry individuals in charge of the Labour Party at present agree with you or not.
If you believe that some have power based on their wealth that is inappropriate, then discuss how we can change the tax system and other forms of regulation to mitigate this concern.
But most of all, if you think that we really do live in society, and that we stand or fall altogether, behave as if you are a member of that society.
That might mean trying to get on with some you won't agree with, and seeking to persuade them that there is merit in accepting the differences that exist between us. That is because that which divides us is almost invariably smaller than what we can agree upon, because what we all have in common is our humanity, our basic concerns, and our cares, most of which, if we take time to reflect, we share in common wherever we find ourselves within the spectrum of human existence.
We can, in other words, hope if we want to. We have a right to do so. I think we should. Unless we do, we quite literally have no hope. And that is why I feel hope is so important.
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I read somewhere that evidence that people care, even if they don’t know the person to whom they are caring, is provided by the solitary glove perched on a fence post so that the person who lost it might find it again. There is no benefit to the person who placed the glove where its owner might see it, apart from a warm glow of having cared for the loser of it.
Natural selection has a strong bias towards altruism.
More formally, Hamilton’s Rule predicts that social behaviour evolves under specific combinations of relatedness, benefit and cost:
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/497114
I read the Kemp article, but didn’t find it entirely convincing. Although I myself often emphasise learning from historical parallels, and indeed I agree that among the lessons are that both too great social inequality and environmental over-exploitation lead to social collapse – a clear and present danger – I think the analysis (as represented in the article) falls down in the inverse respect: its emphasis on current differences with historical patterns.
Nuclear weapons have been with us for 80 years, over which time they have sometimes presented a much greater threat than now. Indeed, it was in part precisely the feeling of imminent danger that drove the 60s-70s youth counter-culture, the civil rights movement in ‘the west’, the Prague Spring, Paris ’68, etc… The collapse foreseen drove social progress.
Nor do I think the world is as interconnected and interdependent as it appears to an internationally mobile academic in one of the most technology-dominated heart-of-capitalism cities in the world – and that interconnectedness cuts both ways, which is another lesson of the 60s-70s counter-culture: it spread out quickly around the world.
Short of the old threat of all-out nuclear war, I think it’s unlikely that collapse will occur everywhere all at once – generally, in the past, social collapses have happened slowly, though foreshortened by our historiography – so most of our world, given precisely its greater interconnectedness, will see it happening first elsewhere, and people won’t stand by and wait for the same to happen to them.
Yes an excellent article and I instantly downloaded the book, which is quite rare for me. I too think that human kind is ‘ultimately altruistic, generous, empathic, and communal’ – that human kind is fundamentally kind. Will it be enough? Have we reached the tipping point? I don’t know and at the age of 73 can only hope and continue to do whatever little bit I can and try not to be a dick!
Human problems = human solutions
Keep on buggering on.
Agreed
All you do Richard on the blog – and I do this myself to be honest – is confront the reality of what is happening and bring forward the consequences. And then, having looked into the void, you work your way back and treat the issue like a problem to address the situation – almost like a project approach, as if you use a Gantt chart or something. That is how it seems to me anyway. You are objective setting, nor crying wolf or being negative. What else can you do in such mendacious political economy?
Keep trying.
That is it.
Must disagree. I see hopeium as a cause for inaction (somebody else might act and I hope they do) whereas reality plus intelligence and critical thinking can drive the formation of a plan for a course of action. As Pablo Cassals once said: “The situation is hopeless. We must take the next step.”
Of course pessimism is also a wasted emotion. The polycrisis situation of our finite planet doesn’t care about our feelings.
Thank you for the reminder about hope.
I got some hope from Psalm 49 this morning. Even for those without faith, it speaks a lot of truth – the wealthy can’t take it with them, and they know that. It terrifies them.
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=psalm%2049&version=MSG
I’m currently reading reflections on the Psalms by a Palestinian Israeli Arab Christian academic, Yohanna Katanacho, working in Nazareth, an Arab Israeli town I have family connections with, who, at a very dark time, found hope in the Psalms.
Thiel, Bezos, Zuckerman, Musk – they will all die and they have to face that certainty, death, the 100% tax on living that faces us all, without their wealth, and knowing that they helped make the world a worse place while they lived. What a horrible way to go!
It’s the same with power – it all evaporates, as the heart of the dictator fails and i
their power leaves them along with their final breath.
Trump, Putin, Xi, Erdogan, Netanyahu, Khameini, Modi, Kim Jong Un, Mohammed bin Salman, Starmer – those who have unjustly gained and held on to power, will all lose it, and eventually go alone to the grave with only their own consciences for company. I pity them.
Knowing this truth also helps keep my own hope alive, and motivates me to do something however small, in the here and now.
I wonder what it’s like to be surrounded by greedy, selfish, dishonest people, who fear me, hate me, and are plotting to take everything I have? It must be grim.
I DO know what its like to be surrounded by people who want to make the world a better place, who offer support, material and spiritual encouragement, and to know that, is to be truly wealthy. The power-hungry and the billionaires know nothing of this, and I pity them their lonely and hopeless fate.
Best wishes to all, and stay hopeful.
Thanks
As a fellow practising Christian that chimes immensely with me. Amen.
I’m a devout atheist and I have also been gaining significant comfort from the Bible.
The wisdom of Jesus transcends even faith.
Goliath’s Curse (which I will read) seems to be building on previous research at Cambridge by Dr (now Prof.) Joseph Tainter, published in 1988: The Collapse of Complex Societies. Tainter argued that societies collapse when the marginal cost of increased regulation exceeds the marginal benefit. It’s a fundamental point.
An interesting point.
Write a review for here.
Seriously.
I did read his book at the time. Must revisit
Tainter’s book is excellent and interesting… I read it years ago and synthesised it ‘message’ into why organisations and corporations fall apart despite their good intentions (I worked for a Nordic telecom company for over 20 years).
I plan to read Goliath’s Curse but hope is something we need to cling to.
Thank you, Richard for providing a thought provoking forum,
Craig (University of Sheffield in the 80s)
Tainter’s book is excellent. A particularly important point he makes (pages 124-126 and 214-216) is that energy resources are critical to addressing the issue of declining marginal returns. As he says (p 124):
“For human societies, the best key to continued socioeconomic growth, and to avoiding or circumventing (or at least financing) declines in marginal productivity, is to obtain a new energy subsidy when it becomes apparent that marginal productivity is beginning to drop. Among modern societes this has been accomplished by tapping fossil fuel reserves and the atom. Among societies without the technical springboard necessary for such development, the usual temptation is to acquire an energy subsidy through territorial expansion. The occurrence of this temptation runs the gamut from simple agriculturalists to great empires. … Such expansiont, where successful, has at least the short term advantage of providing the subsidy sought, as the accumulated reserves of the subject population, and a portion of their yearly productivity, are allocated to the dominant polity.”
Analysis of the dependence of economic growth on energy resources has been undertaken by several individuals and groups, of which Slesser and King’s “Not by Money Alone” and “The Management of Greed” are excellent products from 20-30 years ago, and Tim Morgan’s blog “Surplus Energy Economics” https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/ is an excellent current example.
The decline in our access to fossil fuels, combined with the need to reduce their combustion to keep our systems functioning, and the lack so far of any scaleable alternatives (e.g. commercial fusion is always 40 years away) with comparable or better energy densities, means that marginal returns will decline. As I’ve commented before, think of this as “doing less with less”. Which means forget about the next great innovation that will produce a financial unicorn, instead concentrate on using the resources for we have access, to provide the essentials (and some non-essentials) to as many people as possible. This of course means drastically reducing inequality, and is a technical counterpart I think to Richard’s concept of the economics of care.
I read the Guardian article about Kemp’s work with great interest and will likely buy his book. Whether we can organise ourselves to do what is needed is indeed an open question. There are positive signs all around – for example the South Australia state government https://www.agd.sa.gov.au/news/sas-world-leading-political-donations-ban-now-in-force recently banned political donations in the state, and the Scottish Government’s Child Payment https://www.mygov.scot/scottish-child-payment has significantly reduced child poverty in Scotland. Of course there are also signs of failure all around – the USA, lack of action around Gaza, repression of freedom of speech in the UK. But it’s an open question as to whether we will succeed, and we should all just do what we can and support each other in doing so.
Thanks, and apologies for delay. It has been quite a day.
“History is best told as a story of organised crime,” Kemp says. “It is one group creating a monopoly on resources through the use of violence over a certain territory and population.”
I like this extract from the article. You can tell it’s right because the UK’s mainstream media puts so much effort into pretending there’s no Class War going on in the UK economy let alone in global trade (See the book “Trade Wars are Class Wars”) which results in the naive support for free trade and ultimately gave us Brexit.
I explained this in the wealth series.
Tom Holland: Millenium. Examines events around 1000AD. In it he examines the orgins of castles (they did not exist in Roman times) which emerged, initially in Italy around mid700AD (castelli). They provided refuge for cnichts that preyed on local populations. They were adopted in France in the 800s & used to subjugate peasants. Castles did not exist in England until William the Bastard arrived. Villages? ah that would be an early form of concentration camp (gotta keep and eye on those bloody peasants etc).
Organised crime – quite. Nothing has changed, apart from names/lables with most organised crime now being undertaken by the finance sector & its wholly owned subsidiary: the UK government.
I also like Luke Kemp’s idea that wealth be restricted to a maximum ownership value of $10 million (approximately £7.5 million).
As he says, no one needs more.
One thing I do think’s well on the way to destruction is democracy in the US – though I note that the vast majority of commentators there are still banging on about the 2026 mid terms, and how that’ll turn everything around. Oh deluded fools. And if you think otherwise just follow this link to an article in The New Republic, about well advanced plans to use the US military along with ICE to ‘control’ what the author’s of the memo to which the article relates call ‘internal terrorism’ (ah, ha, the dreaded threat from within), and the resulting protests against militarising law enforcement. https://newrepublic.com/article/198708/trump-military-anti-immigration-dhs-leaked-memo
Meanwhile I also note from other OSINT sources that unannounced talks between Russia and the US are ‘ongoing’. Well fancy that! If I were a betting man I’d be happy to place £1000 on the likelyhood that the US has been turned into Putin’s Russia 2.0 by no later than the third year of Trump’s Presidency, and more than likely it’ll only take two years.
I just can’t see those mid terms happening
There will be a security crisis requiring their calculation, according to Trump.
Agreed.
Engineered, if necessary – California was a dry run.
There’s also election fixing – District boundaries in Texas are being re-drawn ‘on the orders of Trump’ (I’ve seen this a couple of times today).
He’ll use whatever works, however dirty.
Trump and the Republican party have now done so much damage they prisoners of power. This is one of the things democracy is meant to prevent, having someone in power with no safe options to leave, and therefore no option but to cling onto power. The GoP and Trump will be fighting for their lives (or their wealth and freedom at least) at the next election and will do anything to protect themselves. 60,000 dead in Gaza is primarily because one horrible bastard doesn’t want to go to jail. What will Trump do?
If the negative effects of his tariff policies are hitting people hardest as those elections approach, which many economists are predicting, you can well imagine Trump engineering a reason to postpone or cancel them for some spurious reason, such as the country does not have the time for campaigning or he’s the only one that can fix the situation.
Pete Hegseth and his younger brother Philip (of Homeland Security) literally working together on how to coordinate putting the troops on American streets. And if they fail to pull it off, Republican state representatives will continue with their gerrymandering attempts and voter suppression.
It’s the Laws of Thermodynamics, after all. Watkins is persuasive.
https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2025/08/03/if-only-wed-read-soddy/
I recommend to all a read of the article. It ends on a very somber note. That said, the writer is not an engineer (unlike the person – Snoddy – who he refers to). There is no shortage of solutions, work arounds, ideas. The problem is that the systems that afflict us, now, make sure that these are not mainstreamed.
Agreed
Technology is easy. It’s the politics, the vested interests, the people who profit from the status quo that make progress so difficult
“Get my pessimism in early”. That’s a good way of describing my outlook. I’m rarely disappointed.
We must hope for the best and plan for the worst.
It is important for us to realise that it is our own strength that will see us through to the other side, we cannot rely on others to protect us, that’s how power structures start to form. If we have strength then we can help others and if we would help others then surely they would also help us?
Any recovery must grow like a flower through the gaps between the paving slabs of oppression laid upon us by greed itself. We must rise from below and seek to establish institutions and structures that aim to prevent the formation of oppressive hierarchy and always act to counter exploitation. Solutions cannot be imposed from above, there is no “higher” wisdom to guide us, we must find the path ourselves.
It is reassuring that the greed coursing through our culture needs to be sustained by advertising, as noted in Richard’s other post today, I’m sure we can learn again just how poisonous and corrosive greed can be once the barrage of propaganda is stemmed.
Hope came up this morning in the ‘afterword’ at my Quaker meeting ( I have only been attending this year although I have been a few times in the past )
I hold out hope, expressed a few times here, of a positive tipping point in favour of the views this blog’s community hold. But not just us. There are many of like mind out there.
Agreed.
We discussed hope in a reeves this morning.
‘That might mean trying to get on with some you won’t agree with, and seeking to persuade them that there is merit in accepting the differences that exist between us. ‘
Agreed, that means talking to right wingers, reform voters and many many other people we all may have disagreements with. It’s why we need to coalesce around issues and also why we need to debate ‘contentious’ issues (there should be nothing beyond discussion in a democracy) like tax, immigration, house building etc. Silencing debate usually just means the screechers and screamers on the extremes shout at each from entrenched positions and the only people who really benefit from that are those who make political capital out of them, like Farage. But regardless, we must present a unified whole that coalesces around important issues that affect the majority, imho.
Not everyone agrees as to the origins of ‘if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again’. Legend says that Robert the Bruce, while hiding in a cave, observed a spider repeatedly trying to spin its web, even after failing multiple times, and this encouraged him to persevere. That, as PSR states is confronting the reality of what is happening and bringing forward the consequences – in Bruce’s time that was fighting for Scottish independence. But then W C Fields said “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then quit. No use being a damn fool about it”. Robert the Bruce was a warrior – what weapons of war would he now use? It is fine to disagree whilst accepting another’s opinion, but act peacefully and, moreover, care about others. Mahatma Gandhi said “No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.”
Thanks
And I agree with Ghandi
“It will be the silence, where I am? I don’t know, I’ll never know: in the silence you don’t know. You must go on. I can’t go on. I’ll go on.”
Samuel Beckett, The Unnamable
Yes the Damien Carrington article about Kemps was very good, and I too might now buy the book. I read the brilliant book “Collapse – How societies choose to fail or survive” back in 2005 when first published. Still a very good read I believe. And I too have some hope, but it will be a very fine line between that hope and a mega horrific collapse.
I have friends and also read all the time that altruism just isn’t real blah blah etc, but having worked for some months on a closed aboriginal settlement in the Northern Territory, Australia in 1997, I saw the classless sharing society at first hand. But it was also very tribal and a constant repaying of debt type obligations. One downside though ( and in the end an almost hilarious capitalist disaster) was the shop. This was restocked fortnightly by boat from Darwin, an eight hour rough dirt road trip by land. The shop was set up with an aboriginal manager and workers, with each language group (tribe) represented. Because of the debt obligations the cashier at the “till” never took any money as aunty Jo or uncle john of that cashier would be sent to do any “shopping” that day. After a short while the shop was totally bankrupt and in debt and a balander (white man) had to be installed as manager.
But the rest of the time when I was out with whichever group, everything was always truly shared, and the hierachy was based on age, so any “rulers” constantly just faded away.
No facility to edit, ” Collapse – how societies choose to survive or fail ” by Jared Diamond
Kemp’s case looks very persuasive:
“It’s always been easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of Goliaths. That’s because these are stories that have been hammered into us over the space of 5,000 years,” .“Today, people find it easier to imagine that we can build intelligence on silicon than we can do democracy at scale, or that we can escape arms races. It’s complete bullshit. Of course we can do democracy at scale. We’re a naturally social, altruistic, democratic species and we all have an anti-dominance intuition. This is what we’re built for.”
I find it very difficult to imagine how ‘we’ – ie the overwhelming majority of the population – who , as he says, are altruistic and inclined to fairness and cooperation, can actually organise in practice to achieve the large-scale democracy which he says is needed.
Even just getting fair voting system and limiting the power of money in UK politics looks nigh on impossible without what would be effectively a mass revolutionary movement , which could physically resist the overwhelmingthe concentrated legal, political, economic and communication power dominating us.
What we discuss in Richard’s blog is part of the resistance – but ……hope????….
Not sure.
It would be interesting to see his justification for the claim.
But the answer is, we have to want it, and act as if we can have it.
As I keep saying, democracy is not a spectator sport, but is a participatory one.
But don’t you argue elsewhere (against citizen’s assemblies) that most “ordinary hardworking families” (etc) don’t have time or inclination to put in the effort for participating? They just want to get on with everyday life, coping with its struggles and enjoying a break as and when they can…
Isn’t that a fundamental problem: ‘TLDR’ and easily taking simplifications of complex issues, or even swallowing conspiracy theories wholesale, disinclination to engage, lack of critical faculties…?
I am sure there is an argument in there. I am not entirely sure what it is. Can you explain in another way?
Richard, my viewpoint is based on three experiences (ok, anecdotal data, so open to other evidence!):
1) My personal networks and political engagement as an activist in mostly local politics and ecological and alternative ‘models’, environmental/wildlife charities, food system justice/waste/foodbank and similar; where my friends and coworkers are engaged (and progressive, of course); but very much a minority, with a tendency to become an echo chamber.
2) My wider family, church and social circles, where there’s often an awkward level of disinterest in anything political; or being dismissive or negative about politicians and the whole process of government; and a desire that ‘they’ would just leave us alone to get on with our lives. And perhaps finding me a bit embarrassing (that could be my personality of course!)
3) The lack of interest on the doorstep when I do the legwork of door knocking, asking people’s opinions in surveys or actual electoral canvassing. Of course, that can be because they disagree with my specific party, but often there seems to be a general disillusionment with the idea that private citizens can have any agency – so why bother? Hence low electoral turnouts.
This all despite the huge volume of noise and chatter in the media about the latest ‘issues’, interviews with politicians and TV shows like Question Time (which I abhor): but that’s your ‘politics as spectator sport’, rarely engaging with in-depth analysis or practical, positive actions.
Noted
It’s certainly a corner from which to fight! Understanding Geopolitics and main stream media is quite challenging for many… Generally both the youth and the elders in society, do not understand that they are willing to be duped by hidden beliefs and msm? With little understanding of modern/new politics and recent history, even when presented with facts.?
There is only hope when we challenge the present, with these regards and our only hope is transformation in a positive outcome. These are achievable!
Drop a stone in a pond and watch it’s ripple!
Hope takes another downturn:
“Rayner declares war on allotments” (2 Aug 2025)
Angela Rayner has given the green light for cash-strapped councils to sell off allotments to raise funds.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/rayner-declares-war-allotments-144159010.html
Defund public services until you break them, privatise them, profit from them.
Profits before people.
That is very bad news.
It’s very bad news for Rayner and Labour.
Allotment holders are already well organised, with associations, and a passionate community spirit. Many are linked to community food schemes.
They also have very photogenic collections of sharp tools and smelly compost heaps, and piles of soft rotten veg ready for ballistic “donation” to local politicians.
They have usually got experience of fighting off councils in the past.
They will not go quietly.
If Labour are determined to crash and burn in the May 2026 locals, then this plan of Rayner’s is definitely a great idea.
Now, who will get their wellies on first? Fa***e (spotlessly clean green wellies with buckles) or YourParty (black wellies with real organic allotment mud on?).
Corbyn of course already has form, as a commie jam-maker and allotment tenant – a most dangerous opponent if Rayner is plotting to grab the people’s plots.
This could be fun!
Carrots or condos?
Hands off our veg!
Here, have some compost!
I can see Yvette Cooper will have to proscribe a lot of “allotment associations” as terrorist groups… and make “going equipped for gardening” subject to 14 years in jail.
Has it not occurred to Ms Raynor that a bit of creative government investment in local authority housing finance could kill an entire menagerie of birds with one stone?
I have had an allotment in my time – for several years in London and loved it and learned masses plus met some really interesting people.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/jul/28/man-allotment-gardening-tools-arrest-armed-police-manchester
This is the state we have reached
No one is protected by such stupidity on the part of the police.
At least he wasn’t found in posession of a watermelon…
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/activists-use-watermelons-to-protest-police-crackdown-on-palestinian-flags/
or a sheet of cardboard, or a Sharpie (other subversive pen brands are available).
it’s easy to look at life in its current context, it’s worth remembering how many civilisations have come and gone in history – humans will still survive
You are ignoring scale.
Change the way governments do political economy via a fiat currency understanding with regard to knowledge of the operations of money/private debt throughout history as Michael Hudson explains https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pplrFx0ThYY again and again https://michael-hudson.com/2010/07/from-marx-to-goldman-sachs-the-fictions-of-fictitious-capital1/ and maybe, just maybe there can be something called hope.
I don’t think the question is whether societies will collapse or not. I feel it has already started. The question is what we can do mitigate the worst effects. I am with you all the way on this. We don’t know if we can make a difference at this stage or if we can how effective it will be but try we must.
I listened to a podcast Luke did with Nate Hagens in December, where there is a lot more detail and back and forth about existential risk, would recommend giving it a listen: https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/153-luke-kemp. The podcast has also interviewed a few others who have made similar predictions, Tainter: https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/27-joe-tainter and Turchin: https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/164-peter-turchin.
One for later.
Thank you.
Thanks for this timely post, Richard. A couple of points:
1. Another relatively recent, powerful book on the subject is Rebecca Solnit’s ‘Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities …’ (2016 and since updated I think).
2. I distinguish between passive hope (e.g. I hope to see a UK economics as if people matter in my lifetime – I’m 79), and active hope where one strives to fulfill one’s hopes and dreams. Active hope springs from a refusal of the world such as it is (the phrase is from my favourite author/philosopher Albert Camus). It can be purposeful political activity, but also through demonstrating common decency to one another. The latter chimes with a previous post of yours, and also to your words above: if you believe in society, ” behave as if you are a member of that society”.
You interpret hope as I do, and as Camus did.
co-incidentally was just reading another view of hope just before I read this by the excellent Jessica Wildfire on substack. https://www.the-sentinel-intelligence.com/p/something-stronger-than-hope.
It sums up, better then I could, how I feel about hope. I think if you can free yourself from hope and continue to move forward, you can find some peace as you watch our civilisation collapse. Its easier said than done!
Here is a quote from the article;
”Philosophers cautioned us against hope. According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, philosophers saw hope “mostly as an attitude to reality that [was] based on insufficient insight into what is true or good.”
Here’s Seneca:
“Cease to hope and you will cease to fear… the two of them march in unison like a prisoner and the escort he is handcuffed to. Fear keeps pace with hope… both belong to a mind in suspense, to a mind in a state of anxiety through looking into the future. Both are mainly due to projecting our thoughts far ahead of us instead of adapting ourselves to the present.”
Cease to hope and you will cease to fear.
Adapt yourself to the present.
I love it.
Plato didn’t get everything right, but he remains one of the most widely studied philosophers in western history for a reason. In Book IV of The Republic, he discusses the four cardinal virtues. Hope didn’t make the list.
Here they are:
Wisdom (or prudence)
Self-control (or temperance)
Fairness (or justice)
Fortitude (or courage)
These four virtues feed a healthy society. We’re supposed to teach them to our young and practice them every day. Hope stems from an insufficient knowledge about the world, but fortitude grows out of wisdom.
We’re long on hope, but short on fortitude.
Fortitude gives us the ability to confront fear and uncertainty. It keeps us going when we don’t know what to do. It motivates us when we feel like we’re losing everything and we have no idea what’s going to happen next.
Here’s Maya Angelou:
“You can be kind and true and fair and generous and just, and even merciful, occasionally. But to be that thing time after time, you have to really have courage… what you have first is your courage.
You may lean against it, it will hold you up, you have that… It is upon you to increase your virtue, the virtue of courage—it is upon you.”
For Angelou, fortitude (courage) was the foundation for everything else. It’s simply the decision to keep getting up every time you get knocked down. It’s the decision to keep trying even when you think it’s hopeless. It’s the strength to march through the mist, because it’s everywhere you look.
That’s what we need.
You can have all the hope in the world, but you won’t get very far without fortitude. At every low point in my life, hope didn’t keep me going. It was fortitude, the ability to dig through my sadness and despair. Fortitude keeps us going now, in the face of never ending crisis. It’s not the hope that things will get better. It’s knowing what will happen if we don’t keep trying.
You don’t have to believe in fairy tales about the world when you have fortitude. Put them together with the other cardinal virtues, and you have everything you need to face the abyss, no matter how hopeless it feels or how dark it gets. You know the right thing to do, and you do it. You do it no matter who judges you, no matter who laughs at you, no matter who attacks you. You do it even if you know it might never make any difference. You do it even if you’re terrified on the inside.”
There are very few human beings who ”are ultimately altruistic, generous, empathic, and communal”, if most people were, then millions would be on the streets every day to stop a live streamed on going genocide, millions would be striking until their governments took action, but its only a few hundreds of thousands and all the rest? Just get on with their lives. Israel is showing us in real time(not that we don’t have multiple examples from history) that humans are not inherently good. The minute most are given permission and encouragement, they turn into murdering, torturing monsters.
The only thing stopping any group or country behaving like this are laws and expectations from society and once that is being eroded terrible things happen. We are already seeing riots here in the UK again, calling for the burning/killing of asylum seekers as well as arrest and excessive imprisonment of those brave enough to peacefully protest, in the US ICE are removing ‘disappearing’ everyone and anyone that the government doesn’t like the look off, combined with horrific cruelty. All over the world society is breaking down, faster then almost anyone could have believed.
I note this:
Cease to hope and you will cease to fear.
Adapt yourself to the present.
I love it.
Pure neoliberalism then: ignore everything but now.
And then I note:
Humans are not inherently good
So, which you seem to use as justification for not worrying about Israel.
If you think hope is an escuse for inaction, I agree with you. But I don’t, as I show every day. Hope is a verb, not a noun. And as a verb it requires action, of course. How could you think otherwise?
So, I hope because I care about the future.
And I believe in people.
And it looks as if you are in the wrong place commenting here.
And your email address also suggests you are in the wrong profession.
A timely article and food for thought.
The biggest problem that we have is the relatively low attention span and headspace of many modern humans! The people writing on blogs such as this, and those who subscribe to things like Novara Media, Double Down News, listen to The Today programme, watch Newsnight, listen to Political Currency, the News Agents and listen to/watch The Rest Is Politics are outliers.
Similarly those who are active members of Political Parties or policy advisers are a highly selected group of well educated and articulate usually middle class individuals. We are all relative nerds and a tiny minority of the population.
Most citizens are quite bored with modern politics and do not want to find the time or cognitive bandwidth to deal with the issues. Simplistic solutions are appealing because they require the least energy and cognitive load.
I have a serious concern about average cognitive function and a progressive decline over the last two decades which seems to have been identified in highly developed nations. Of course, there are many reasons why people perceive this including – the decline in general reading for pleasure, the hegemony of the Internet, the rise of Smartphone use, the collapse of print newspapers, the effect of Microplastics, the COVID-19 pandemic, ageing demographics and the gradual degradation of education.
There is a genuine worry that Microplastics which are present in minute amounts all over the planet and have been detected in human tissues are lodged in our brains so theoretically could be affecting how we think and behave.
The Lancet has published a review article about Microplastics and the subject was features on BBC Radio 4.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(25)01447-3/fulltext?utm_source=Sailthru