The austerity of hope

It seems a lifetime ago that Barack Obama wrote The Audacity of Hope. Ok, it was 2006. Unfortunately I can’t recall much of it. Blame audiobooks, they entertain me, but don’t stick in my head like read books. 

Today, I think hope needs a reset. Trump just won a 2nd term. The Netherlands, my current home, have a dysfunctional right to far-right coalition government. Germany is on the brink of political collapse and will likely fall into the hands of the center to far-right. We still have war in Ukraine and Gaza. And our climate is very soon beyond hope. Refugees are drowning and starving while seeking a life worth living. Billions of lives are very literally at stake.

Am I annoyed? Very much. Am I surprised or even shocked? No, because I ran out of that capacity a long time ago.

If I learned anything since 2016 (the infamous year of the Brexit referendum and the first Trump victory), then it is this:

If things can end badly, they will.

I used to preach that hope is not an emotion, but a rational, inevitable and unshakable foundation of my existence. The moment I stop hoping, I stop living. And this hasn’t changed the slightest. This may be different for others, but for me, the alternative to hope is just too frightening and unempowered to consider. And the worse things get, the worse the perspective of giving up hope.  

But recent events on the large political stage and in my personal environment mean that this hope needs readjustment, both around objectives and timelines. And while I remain hopeful, I am also under no illusion that hard times are ahead. 

On a personal level, I had to face open, hateful and unfiltered queerphobia for the first time in my admittedly sheltered life of very liberal upbringing and cis-het passing for years.

Our next door neighbour decided to respond to us displaying the pride flag on our own property (during the local pride celebration period) with an openly hateful and threatening set of text messages. He then went to allow his reactive and uncontrollable dog to lunge at us.

This came out of the blue and ended 5 years of peaceful neighbourly relationships. We weren’t friends, because we knew we would not see eye to eye on almost everything, but you don’t need to in order to have pleasant neighbourhoods. He put an end to what benefitted all of us in favour of something that is very unpleasant, just because he was unable to regulate his behaviour. Hate is that irrational.

One of my favourite quotes is:

"If people act in an unexpected way, ask yourself what they are afraid of."

It is pretty clear that he finds social change in the world threatening, and he finds a lot of things utterly threatening. He is a frightened person who hides behind strong statements. The fact that he calls woke people weak is a clear giveaway that his world consists of strong and weak people. His armour are fences, security cameras, 2 big petrol-guzzling SUVs, rip off business models and, of course, right wing ideologies.

And just like most right wing voters, he isn’t well educated. Unlike most of them, though, he seems to do economically rather well. But that just makes him the real right wing benefactor. Small state, low taxes, no solidarity. The individualist, narcissist dream of a society where the few winners reign over the less fortunate. 

The common link between our neighbour, Trump voters, Brexiteers and other right wing agenda peddlers is that they are caught in a circular mental model of the world. Every attempt to argue with them has been predicted and a narrative has been implanted that makes any conversation futile.

Yet, for years, the center and left argue that we need to seek conversations, encounters, understanding and reasoning with these people in order to win their hearts and minds. All of this, while the level of open hate on social media platforms and in our real lives keeps increasing - and the bar for what is acceptable to say out loud keeps dropping daily. 

Social media and other tech is not just a random outlet. Meta, X, TikTok are either directly or indirectly part of the global system change. They are owned by those in favour of fascism. Or their economical interests make them happy co-conspirators. All too often, both is the case.

So what can we do?

My take: Abandon them. For your own sanity. Cut ties that hurt you and validate them. Seek the company of like minded people. Consciously build bubbles. Connect bubbles. Build community. Set examples not by how smart and sensible our arguments are, but how we treat each other. How we care for each other. How we show solidarity with those who suffer. The inflationary use of "Love is the answer” makes it a statement easy to discard, but it’s true. Just in a far more practical way than we may have understood so far.

This also means we have to let go of the illusion that quick solutions are possible. They aren’t, I believe. Things will get considerably worse before they can get better. The main reason is that more than half of the population in those “democracies” at risk won’t change their mind until they realise their own mistakes. This will eventually happen, but likely requires more than a generation. As one of the main goals of right wing system change is making as much profit ahead of the advent of climate meltdown, in order to be among the elite who can survive a global catastrophe, this also means little hope for large scale human survival on this planet. 

Yes, we owe it to future generations, but so do those who ignore this basic human responsibility, and we can’t balance their lack of giving a fuck by giving extra fucks to the point where eco-anxiety and depression eats us alive. Because when that happens, we can’t set examples in love and caring anymore. And this is our only hope: living the idea of a better world. 

we can’t balance their lack of giving a fuck by giving extra fucks to the point where eco anxiety and depression eats us alive

So my new flavour of hope will focus on relationships, communities, humaning with those who care. Relationships first. It is a much more inwardly looking perspective. One that seeks meaningful connections over meaningless campaigning. 

We can’t beat their closed ideologies, tech multipliers and billionaire funding. We can't rely on the executive and judiciary either, because they can all be bought or rendered meaningless. 

But money and hate can’t produce human connection and love. And love will win in the long run.

Time is on our side.