Part III: The Punk

Credit: Ron Chilston - Fine Art America

My favourite hopepunk show that not only nurtures my hope that we can be kind and accepting of each other no matter our differences but shows how it’s done: Queer Eye. Dubbed “the hopepunk manifesto made flesh” and a makeover show that “operates from a standpoint of total empathy” - this is what I turn to when I want to bask in the absolute best of humanity and need a break from the relentless dystopia on the march. Thank you Fab Five.

Most of us are a bit wary of hope and optimism – literature and philosophy reflect that ambivalence and differing ideas of hope and its function. It’s uncool to care too much. It’s naïve and unrealistic. It’s a folly and a delusion in which we persist because it allows us to bear the suffering that life entails. But this is not what hopepunk is. It's not the idea that good will vanquish evil, that the fight will be long and hard, but ultimately noble and deliver a final result. Hopepunk is not a ‘glass is half full’ sentiment. It's a resolute stance of 'the glass is neither half full nor half empty, but there is still something left in the glass and that is worth saving'.

Hopepunk is the fight itself.

A manifesto for the world of unprecedented and violent changes for us all, hopepunk is about action – where an act of kindness, of care, of nurture, or generosity is a radical and political one, a stand taken deliberately, a choice made for a better world in a world of brutal pessimism, nihilism, and hopelessness. It is a radical and political act, to care. Sartre told us that we shape the world in our choices. What we do, how we act, the choices that we make, shape who we become. This is observed in his maxim of ‘existence precedes essence’ – we first are (we exist), and the essence of who we become emerges as a result of our choices. But it doesn’t only shape who I become as a person; every choice I make shapes the world we all live in – I ‘fashion the world’ through my choices. Everything I do, shapes the world in which you and I live. Wanting a good world for us both, us all, and acting to make it so, despite the never-ending looming darkness, is hopepunk.

Our beautiful world, with all living creatures in it, our home is depleted. We are all depleted. Our anxiety constant, our sleep much disturbed, our exhaustion bone-deep, our relationships – to ourselves and others – strained and breaking. The final frontier is before us – the AI revolution, where humans are being invited to succumb and hand over our cognitive capacities, critical thinking abilities, and relational needs to a massively growing aspect of the necro-techno industry that aims to deplete what is left of natural resources so it can run. We live in grimdark times.

A different world is possible. It’s up to you and me how the next chapter is shaped, how it unfolds. David Graeber understood that what we construct is a story of how something should be or can be, and the current story is serving only the smallest percentage of humans and destroying the only home we have in the process. David wrote that "the ultimate hidden truth of the world" is that it is made by us, so it follows that it can be made into something else, something exciting, caring, nurturing, loving – if we consciously chose to do so. We can choose to tell different stories. We can choose to tell fewer stories where we position ourselves as certain about life and others, all-knowing and always good and well-meaning. We can stay more curious and compassionate towards ourselves and others, creating space for unknowing and messiness of real life. This is the richer, more honest ground of real connection where acceptance and meeting become possible.

In his 1975 contemplation on courage, Rollo May gave us a brilliant manifesto of hopepunk. Echoing Camus’s ideas of The Rebel, May speaks of courage to create something as necessary to an assertion of the self, a form of commitment one has to have, if one’s self is to have any reality. I quote here, at length:

To live with sensitivity in this age of limbo indeed requires courage. A choice confronts us. Shall we, as we feel our foundations shaking, withdraw in anxiety and panic? Frightened by the loss of our familiar mooring places, shall we become paralysed and cover our inaction with apathy? If we do those things, we will have surrendered our chance to participate in the forming of the future. We will have forfeited the distinctive characteristic of human beings – namely, to influence our evolution through our own awareness. We will have capitulated to the blind juggernaut of history and lost the chance to mold the future into a society more equitable and humane.

Or shall we seize the courage necessary to preserve our sensitivity, awareness, and responsibility in the face of radical change? Shall we consciously participate, on however small the scale, in the forming of the new society? … We are called upon to do something new, to confront a no man’s land, to push into a forest where there are no well-worn paths and from which no one has returned to guide us…To live into the future means to leap into the unknown, and this requires a degree of courage for which there is no immediate precedent and which few people realize. This courage will not be the opposite of despair. We shall often be faced with despair … courage is not the absence of despair; it is, rather, the capacity to move ahead in spite of despair…But if you do not express your own original ideas, if you do not listen to your own being, you will have betrayed yourself. Also you will have betrayed our community in failing to make your contribution to the whole.

There is evidence everywhere of people still caring, or stories of possibilities emerging - you do have to look for those stories a bit harder, it's true. We have more power in our individual choices than we appreciate. I often think of that time travel fallacy, which goes something like this: when we consider time travel we worry about changing the smallest detail in the past and it having serious ramifications in the future, but we rarely believe that a small action in the present can seriously influence our future. (Here is a fabulous book about chance, chaos, and why everything we do matters.)

Remember, the obligation of choice is an existential given, and you are always making a choice (for even not choosing is a choice). How will you choose? Why not make it a conscious, reflective choice, and contribute to the survival of what is still here, and good, and worth saving? The most caring thing you can do now is be a rebel and a punk.

The rebel and the punk do not practice that which teaches peace with an inequitable world.

We practice that which helps us stay sane and connected while fighting for a better world.

Let's start with reclaiming our minds.

Start working on something difficult, something hard, but meaningful to you. Start that novel, begin learning the tabla, take up adult ballet, lead a community workshop, restore that piece of furniture. This is where you find the state of flow, a sense of purpose, and quietly resist the synthetic stream of content pulverising us and our nervous systems every day. This is a type of resistance where you protect your mind, and your peace. It's where you begin to regain presence.

Source a massive dictionary, and a thesaurus, and use them instead of your phone to look up words and explore meaning. Read from physical books whenever you can, especially if you are learning. Your recall will improve, as our processing of information differs if taken from a page versus from a screen. (The cognitive processes required for reading from a page as compared to reading from a screen are different. Across 54 scientific studies, the findings are consistent: people understand and remember less of what they absorb from screens. This phenomenon is known as ‘screen inferiority effect’.) You will also be avoiding odd AI-generated gunk.

Do not use Chat GPT. It will debilitate your cognitive functionality, and it will do so quickly, while exposing you to risks of AI psychosis.

Try to use social media sparsely. Apart from well-documented impacts on mental health it will take you out of your subjective experience of your own life. You don’t get a do-over with life, so make sure you are there while it's happening.

Now reclaim your sense of self and connection to the world. Cultivate pleasure. Dance with friends. Restore your energy through connection and belonging. Remind yourself of what is beautiful about humanity, and restore kinship with those who care. This is what makes it possible to keep fighting, and reminds us what we are fighting to save. Go to the beach in winter. Go out and dance. See a live band. Walk barefoot on grass. Inhale the cold morning air, and close your eyes as you turn your face to the sun. Breathe, and just be for a moment. Joy and pleasure sustain us.

Show up for those who are scared, isolated, vulnerable, or dependent. Be that person who does not leave others by the side, but brings everyone along, however slowly, or painstakingly. Be the person who remembers those in need. Volunteer, pop down to the shops for your neighbour just because, take out your heartbroken friend for a walk.

Restore kinship with the natural world.

Restore structure in your being and your life. Slow down. Mark your afternoon with a cup of tea. Resist the constancy of deliberate chaos. Structure restores a sense of direction and purpose. Create a rhythm to your day, your week, your month. Start every day the same, or attend a weekly or monthly event regularly. Share your experience or curiosity with others; this builds endurance and connection, and adds a unique everyday richness to your life.

Any small act you change today will have meaningful ramifications for the quality of our collective tomorrow. I hope you find a way to rebel, to honour your power and embody a version of hopepunk for a better world.