Beyond Hope and Fear

Who out there shares my observation that there seems to be an awful lot of despair being expressed in the world at the moment, and that it’s not leading to much in the way of informed and inspiring action? Whilst I understand there have been exceptions – notably the Women’s March in the United States, UK and other parts of the world in January – I have felt that, in the UK at least, people appear to still be in a state of paralysis and shock following the tumultuous political events of 2016. And meanwhile Trump and Brexit march forward….

The discourse of fear that has apparently triumphed in both the UK and the US has prompted many to lose hope and feel powerless to change anything. The notions of ‘hope’ and ‘fear’ that guide much political change are discussed in an interesting article from the US based Berkana Institute, entitled ‘The Place Beyond Hope and Fear.’ The article was written in 2009 but is still relevant – even more so in fact – today.

One of the key messages from this article that resonates with me is that in order to resist a culture of fear we sometimes have to step back completely, so that we gain some perspective and clarity on the true nature of things – about what is going on right now, in our bodies and in our mind. This approach may be seen as a withdrawal – as the author acknowledges – but it is also a way of connecting with ourselves more deeply before responding to our environment. In doing so, there is the possibility of finding a response to events around us that is more compassionate and more understanding of what we see.

Parallels can be drawn here with the world of humanitarian and social justice activism. When faced with powerful political forces whose oppressive actions seem impossible to counteract, it is not uncommon for humanitarians to lose hope, and to withdraw. It is what I and many others have indeed done on certain occasions, and often with a heavy heart and a strong sense of guilt. This withdrawal has been called by another name – burnout.

Yet whether you are a seemingly jaded social justice activist responding to events in your own country, or a humanitarian or human rights worker responding to situations in Syria, Yemen, Nigeria, South Sudan or anywhere else, the decision to withdraw may be seen as more than just ‘giving up’, ‘shirking responsibility’, or ‘being selfish.’

As the author of ‘The Place Beyond Hope and Fear’ puts it:

I didn’t give up saving the world to protect my health. I gave it up to discover right action, what I’m supposed to be doing. Beyond hope and fear, freed from success or failure, I’m learning what right action feels like, its clarity and energy. I still get angry, enraged, and frustrated. But I no longer want my activities to be driven by these powerful, destructive emotions. I’ve learned to pause, come back to the present moment, and calm down. I take no actions until I can trust my interior state—until I become present in the moment and clarity emerges undimmed by hope and fear. Then I act, rightly, I hope.

There is something very relevant in this for aid workers. From my own experience of working on advocacy campaigns in the aid sector, I have seen that there is a tendency to engage in an ‘us and them’ rhetoric – where ‘we’ are the righteous and heroic and ‘they’ are the evil and villainous. Certain individuals – government officials, police, insurgents, church leaders, etc. – are often labelled as ‘the perpetrator’ in one form or another. Yet this labelling imposes a very black and white narrative on what is in fact always going to be a murky, complicated situation with complex characters involved; because that is the reality of life, where nothing is ever that clear-cut. This ‘us vs them’ mentality is not all that different from the language of fear that was so successful for both Trump and the Brexiteers, and which has had such a divisive impact on our societies.

I had an interesting conversation the other day with a Kenyan guy about how we deal with the judgements we make about people we disagree with. He was giving the example of people in his workplace who he realised were corrupt and how he had concluded that, when they lost their jobs, ‘they deserved it’. This is of course a natural judgement to make of someone who has committed what we see as a moral crime of one sort or another. Yet is it always healthy to see an individual only in those terms, whether it be as a corrupt person, an abuser, a perpetrator or any other such label?

We are all born into this world without any of these labels, and even though we may embrace or be ascribed many identities throughout our lives, they still do not necessarily reflect our entire personalities. Wouldn’t it help humanity, and help our ability to dialogue and debate the moral issues of the day, if we could see people in a more holistic manner that goes beyond this rigid labelling?

If we want to move beyond hope and fear, whether as aid workers, activists, or Joe Bloggs who is trying to make sense of the political upheavals of our time, perhaps the starting point is indeed to be present with our own emotions that are arising; to not dive into worrying about or reacting to the uncertainties of the future but to see what is happening in this moment. What do our reactions tell us about ourselves, and are these reactions helpful and conducive in bringing a change in attitudes or behaviour? This is not to say that anger has no place in taking action; indeed on many occasions it is the driver of social change but anger without a pause to listen and reflect can also lead to further hostility and division (think family arguments!) We do not know what the future holds; we in fact never know for sure, and sometimes the wiser course of action may be to rest in that uncertainty before leaping into a battle against what we think is going to happen.

This leads me to the next stage in building a more compassionate response. We need to commit to actively listening to others we disagree with. This requires that we release judgements which block us from discovering and understanding the other person more fully; just banging the table and calling someone ignorant or stupid is never going to move things forward. We can instead take on an almost innocent curiosity where we ask ourselves questions of ‘the other’ from a clean slate of non-judgement. Where does what they say come from? Is it from a place of insecurity that resonates with us on some level? Can we find compassion, and even common ground, by considering that person as more than just the labels we and others have assigned to them? They, like us, are in all likelihood individuals with the same basic needs and desires as us – such as health, love, financial security and freedom. Are we able to meet and understand someone on that basic level, even if our values appear diametrically opposed?

These are just the beginning stages, I believe, of stepping into a new way of being and learning that can guide us towards eventually taking informed and compassionate action in response to current political events. It is a long journey of change we have to embark on, but if we let go of judgements and the quest for a certain outcome, perhaps we can open ourselves to more possibilities than we’d ever considered before.