Beyond Hope

A friend shared with me a recent op-ed by David Brooks at the NY Times entitled, "Relax, We'll Be Fine," and it was such a charming blend of nationalism, triumphalism, technotopianism, and modernist myopia that I felt it perfectly exemplified the impoverished level of discourse in the U.S. about the true challenges of the present century.

Take a look and read it. Maybe Brooks' "orgy of optimism" will resonate with you. He, too, like our friend in an earlier post, seems to be a "realist," which means he is willing to ignore the ubiquitous fallout from our "orgy of consumption" of the past 100 years (itself a consequence of an optimistic and boundless faith in "Progress" with a capital 'P') for the sake of preserving some shred of hope for the future.

Now don't get me wrong. Hope is good. More than that, I'd venture to assert that it is a necessity, hard-wired into our DNA as a prerequisite for survival. As an organism that lives or dies by its ability to predict the future, Homo Sapiens would crash on the rocks of despair if we didn't have at least some sense that continuing our existence were a viable and valuable enterprise.

But to say that adding 100 million people to the U.S. by 2050 will produce a population of "enterprising and relatively young" Americans is not only an empty statement, founded on pure speculation--it's also dangerously irresponsible.

What kind of stress will an extra 100 million put on our food system? Where is the growth going to take place? If it is in the Sunbelt, as he seems to hint, then we're on a collision course with ecological reality which is already facing a coming water crisis and certainly lacks arable land for local food production. (Just check out National Geographic's spectacular new water issue for more details!)

I do, however, appreciate his insinuation that suburban America will see a revival of localism and community. But if this is just going to happen magically by a surge in numbers, and not from a true emerging ethic of community support, then we may just be crossing our fingers and hoping it comes out well in the end.

Touting American competitiveness might seem like a compelling argument, especially when you marshall official statistical evidence to support your claims. But competitive at what? What are these statistics NOT telling us? What does 'competitiveness' truly mean, and does that have a meaning that is relevant to life or solely to the GDP and foreign investors?

What I really would like to know is where all of this hopeful rhapsodizing get us? Does it make us see America any clearer? Does a hopeful prediction about the coming 100 million do anything to dispell the growing sense of uneasiness and dread about the path we are headed down?

I suspect that Hope, as it is offered here, does nothing to help clarify the two things Americans today really need help clarifying:

1. What challenges are facing us in the current century, socially, economically, ecologically, politically, and spiritually?
2. What can and should we do to best meet those challenges head on?

Rather than offering Hope at no cost (which is really just an argument for 'business-as-usual'), we need a to go beyond hope, beyond despair and dread even, to face the specters of resource depletion, rampant pollution, or climate catastrophe head on.

When has the media ever offered despair? As Christopher Hedges writes in his excellent article in Adbusters, chronic optimism is a malady that "allows men and women to behave and act like little children, discredits legitimate concerns and anxieties. It exacerbates despair and passivity. It fosters a state of self-delusion . . .it has perverted the way we view ourselves, our nation and the natural world."