50 Days - A GUEST BLOG "Hope…or Action?"

A friend I've made online, Janet McNeill, recently posted something on hope in the face of the climate crisis that really resonated for me. She's given me permission to repost it here. Thanks, Janet. And have a great International Day of Climate Action on Saturday!

HOPE ... OR ACTION?

I’ve been doing environmental work for 20 years now. Hoping, always hoping, that if I just worked hard enough, informed enough people, wrote enough environment columns, carried out enough projects, I’d help “save” the human race.

I’ve been in awfully fine company, I must say! I’ve had more good times than a barrelful of monkeys (several barrels-full, actually) and have made a small (no, large!) army of awesome friends. And taken part in oodles of great projects and activities I’m pretty proud of. No regrets!

Gradually, over time, hope has been harder and harder to summon up. To be honest, it’s pretty much left the building.

It’s been hard to let go of. It’s felt almost … un-Canadian, or un-sportsmanlike?? Un-mother-like? — to abandon hope.

I am thinking today, though, that as it turns out, it really isn’t hope we need. It’s determination, energy, guts, courage, hard work, passion, inspiration — and love. For this beautiful, beautiful planet — and for all the creatures on it (ourselves included).

I’ve realized recently — mostly in reference to the personal side of my life — that it really is action that counts. Thoughts and beliefs and faith and what we (often sanctimoniously) profess to believe (or feel) — or claim we will do — are not what really counts. It’s action. It’s what we do that matters. Not what we say.

Alice Walker has said, “Activism is the rent I pay for living on this planet.”

I wonder: Are enough of us really paying our rent?

Janet

P.S. There is a very brilliant Derrick Jensen essay called “Beyond Hope” that can be found at http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/170/ Take a few moments and read it! It’s pretty bloody eloquent…and very inspiring.

P.P.S. I don’t mean to discourage people who are still “hopeful.” More power to you! I’m not saying it’s an either/or proposition. I’m just saying that, for those of us who have lost hope, and/or who believe that “hope” is not really the point, we still have something left with which to occupy ourselves. Action. And that’s a good thing – in my little world, anyway….

By the way, Janet, I've decided that "stamina" needs to go on your list of the things we need in order to keep on keeping on in the fight to safeguard the planet and the future. I might have to take up a caffeine habit if we don't get a few more people helping out.

64 Days - Five Things Everyone Ought to Know

According to British author, David Edwards (as explained by Derrick Jensen, "leading voice of uncompromising dissent" in How Shall I Live My Life? On Liberating the Earth from Civilization), there are five things that everyone ought to know. I hope that Jensen and Edwards won't mind me listing them here. I've only just started reading the book, but so far it's delicious.

Here are the five things that everyone ought to know:

1. "The planet is dying." Coral reefs doomed. Sea mammals and sea birds going extinct. Global warming dooming other ecosystems.
2. "Huge numbers of intelligent, motivated people are working all out to obstruct action to save the planet." Here, Edwards quotes a mining company executive who admits, "We think we have raised enough questions among the American public to prevent any numbers, targets or timetables to achieve reductions in gas emissions being agreed here... What we are doing, and we think successfully, is buying time for our industries by holding up these talks."
3. "The death of the planet is symptomatic of a deeper, institutionalized subordination of all life — including human life — to profit." And people aren't talking about this crucial question of valuing profits over life.
4. "The same economic and political forces that profit from these atrocities also profit from the suppression of truth." And Edwards believes that the role of corporate mass media and politicians is to keep us from digging up the truth. "It only takes a moment of honest reflection to realize that when a world is being ravaged by corporations, a corporate media system is the last place to look for truth."

And then he gets so busy explaining these four that he forgets to give the fifth! But I've chosen one from the rest of this brilliant interview:

5. "It's a great kindness to be honest." In other words, telling the truth, when the money powers want to control what we know and believe, is a gift.

I would add that sometimes it's an unwelcome gift. Many people are so ensnared in the propaganda that they don't want to hear the truth, because it makes them uncomfortable. Therefore you make them uncomfortable when you speak the truth. So truth telling can be a lonely place. Edwards suggests that there is "a certain bliss that comes from telling the truth," but it's an inner bliss, an I-can-sleep-at-night-and-look-myself-in-the-mirror sort of bliss.