Hope is in the way of progressing toward a better world. Hope feels good but it takes away our agency which is why religious institutions have used it so effectively for millennia. Without focusing on the power within us, without realizing we have critical minds and access to wise council, we become more vulnerable. Power structures like religious institutions and religion wannabees, take advantage of our hearts and reach into our open wallets.
The world is taking us down the ever-frightening path driven by overpopulation and its favorite monster-in-charge, climate change. Hope will not get us out of ever-increasing storms, drought, water scarcity, famine and everything that awaits our planet of 8 billion consumers, growing by 81 million per year, on our limited earth with its delicate biosphere. Hope did not serve the Jews of Europe well in the 1930’s. Taking action served them. Those who were the first to lose hope that Hitler was going to go away on his own were in a better position to save themselves.
Barack Obama wrote about the audacity of hope. Hope is integral to his philosophy of creating a better world. I wish to counter his message with the idea that integrity is where we need to land. Hope is sold by religion, and we know where that has brought us. Hope is why people, are still having multiple children in a world which all scientific forecasts say will make dystopian films look like child’s play. Hope is why we are giving lunch bags and bus tickets to people pouring over our borders, with complete disregard for our laws, in hopes they will have a safe landing. Hope is what male celebrities have too much of when then have children into their 70’s hoping that they will live long enough so they can see their progeny graduate high school. We need a cold bucket of ice water dumped on our heads and with it a reality check.
What we need to do is quit hoping and start looking deep into the eyes of the future which has no room for more of us and our sprawling ways. We need to live with the integrity of knowing that taking our foot off the economic and population growth pedal is the only collective act which has the power to lessen the suffering that lies ahead. It is the only thing to do which can possibly point us into the right direction. If we care at all about any kind of future for mankind and the wildlife species being destroyed by our errant ways, we must turn away from hope and turn toward integrity. The integrity of committing to the proper action also has a great dividend of creating a more compassionate world. Working to stop a development project, for instance, is a compassionate act towards those already living in the area under a cloud of scarcity.
We also don’t need to go down the rabbit hole of despair. Desperation leads to violence, and we already have more of that than we can comprehend. We need to plant ourselves in the middle of those two emotions and move forward with a mission to lessen the pain that lies ahead. We need to put on our big boy and big girl pants and quit shooting the messengers who have been warning about the dangers of anthropocentric policies for decades. We are not the problem. Hope, peppered with deep denial, is the problem. While we have been conditioned by religion to desire the discourse and promise of hope, we need to let it go. To tame our ways will be painful but it will be much easier than enduring what nature has in store for us if we continue business as usual.
We need to stop hoping and start focusing on what can be done to start moving toward a world of less. There is a laundry list of things we needed to start doing yesterday to build up our integrity. We need to do these things to lighten our footprint and help the biosphere survive, for without it we will have the same fate as the dinosaurs only this time we will be the meteor which starts the journey to our extinction.
To build integrity back into our ecological world we need to immediately stop the most egregious forms of consumption and quit incentivizing growth. Here is just some of the actions we must take:
-We have to quit building dams and take down the ones already in place for removing them improves water quality for wildlife and decreases their sediment load.
-We need to stop trying to build the tallest buildings as if we somehow win when we take all those resources of concrete and steel from the earth.
- We need to quit manufacturing luxury cruise liners, stretch limos and giant SUV’s.
-We need to stop making zip lines through the canopies of our forests.
- We need to quit building energy and resource sucking mansions and creating the class of people who can afford them with the loopholes in our tax structures and the unforgivable way we take advantage of laborers.
-We have to stop the city policies of tax increment financing, for developers and start giving tax breaks to those who live in smaller dwellings with smaller families.
-We need to stop thinking more technology is the answer to our planet crisis, for each new device takes resources and creates pollution in its wake.
-We need to override overshoot by first stabilizing then reversing population growth however and wherever it is happening within our borders for although overpopulation is a global problem it can only be solved at home. Growth happens either by birthrates which are too high for a variety of easily researchable reasons or because immigration policies are too unrestricted and unenforced. Both must be firmly and fairly addressed from a place of integrity depending on the country and each situation.
-We need to quit our religion of worshipping lottery winners and their grotesque purchases for their yachts may be affordable to their budgets, but they are too costly to the planet in both raw materials and fuel. Statistically the very rich are the largest contributors per capita to climate change, we must hold them accountable.
-We need to encourage work in the artistic sector for our creative energy is the only source of energy without limits.
-We need to start giving rivers the right to flow to the ocean and wild animals the right to live out their lives in a wilderness that must be valued.
-We need to give the natural world the right to exist for its existence is directly tied to our own.
At the end of the day, we must be on the journey of integrity as the poet Rumi once said, “As you start to walk on the way, the way appears.” To start this walk we must stop counting on wishbones and immediately begin concentrating on strengthening our backbones, I sure ‘hope’ we will!