I guess I’m in some space between hope and despair. Maybe denial.

I’ve spent a long time dealing with a lack of hope — slowly, it’s trying to lure me back unto its clutches.

Technical nitpick: Your link to Neruda seems to be missing its beginning “h”.

Thanks for the thoughtful comment, MB. I hope some other readers respond to it, too, but here are a couple of my own preliminary reactions:

I think Derrick is right in saying that hope implies a surrendering of agency, though certainly he may have resorted to a little bit of hyperbole there. But I think your critique of his possible hubris is accurate, too — and jibes with my own observations of successful agitators and activists. They are quite often on the arrogant side. In pondering this further, I think my own reservations about our cultural emphasis on hope relate to my intense suspicion of progressivist narratives. Without necessarily romanticizing the past, I don’t think the anthropological evidence supports the view of continual progress from the days of small-band, gatherer-hunter societies. I also find myself much more sympathetic to a fatalistic view that says that ultimately the universe is way, way bigger than us, and all our efforts amount to fairly little. And that being the case, I feel reverence and humility are imperative. Though not Muslim, I often find myself mentally (or actually) adding “inshallah” to hopeful statements, because it strikes me as presumptuous to count on favorable outcomes. So I guess I do come down on your side here, though I’m not sure Jensen would disagree too strongly with this view of things, either. Thanks to you and Matthew for pushing me to think more deeply about this (and to re-read the essay).

There is almost a kind of hubris in the statement, “I do not hope coho salmon survive. I will do whatever it takes to make sure the dominant culture doesn’t drive them extinct.” No one can know that their efforts will be successful: life on this planet is far too vast, complicated, mysterious, and chaotic a system to ever be completely sure of anything. I work on behalf of the environment without being sure our work will do enough, but I retain hope that it will make a difference and determination to do the work. Another potentially hubristic and certainly oversimplifying statement: “You don’t simply hope your beloved survives and thrives. You do what it takes.” If my beloved has a deadly form of illness, I’ll do what it takes — I’ll make sure he gets whatever treatment or therapy is possible — but his survival is not all in my control. I will still be hoping for his survival, and that is not an “excuse for inaction.”

In my view, Jensen’s oversimplification makes him guilty of his own charge, of “forget[ting] that it is possible to feel many things at once.” It’s a reductionist argument.

Thanks for the comment. I admire Armstrong, though I haven’t read that book. Interesting observation. I try to be tolerant, even of the chronically intolerant, but the manifest hatred for the world that such religionists evince is very hard for me to take. On the other hand, I do think some feeling of exile is as near to universal as any element of human consciousness can be.

It’s easy to imagine a post-apocalyptic, Mestizo American future in which the collected works of Neruda replace the Bible for a new, biocentric humanism.