I first discovered the word HopePunk when reading an online article at Vox by Aja Romano. HopePunk is a genre of science fiction that was "named' by Alexander Rowland, a Massachusetts writer, in a two-sentance Tublr post in June 2017. "The opposite of grimdark is hopepunk," she declared "Pass it on!" The term caused much hoopla , but after a shile the loose parameters of the genre were described as followes in Aja's article:
- - a weaponized aesthetic of softness, wholesomeness, or cuteness - and perhaps, more generally, a mood of conciously chosen gentleness.
- - a worldview that argues that the fight to build positive social systems is a fight worth fighting. "feeling resigned is not hopepunk," Rowland wrote in her expanded definition.
- - an emphisis on community-building through cooperation rather than conflict.
- - a depiction of the fight to achieve human progress as something permanent, with no fixed "happy" end.
I was moved by what I read and resonated with the courage it could take to be able to envision a better world than the "business as Usual" on put before us. I proceeded to buy the URL hopepunk.ca and forgot about it for a few years.
I started my MSc in Sustainbility in September 2008 and by dec 08 I was barriling towards an existential crisis. An existential crisis is the unease people experience about meaning, choice and freedom in life. for existentialists - those who embrace a philosophy focusing on meaning and purpose - an existental crisis is considered a journey, an awareness, a necessary experience, and a complex phenomenon. It arises from an awareness of your nown freedoms and how life will end for you one day.
I started my MSc in Sustainability in September 2008 and by December I was charging into an existential crisis. An existential crisis is the unease people experience about meaning, choice, and freedom in life. For existentialists—those who embrace a philosophy focusing on meaning and purpose—an existential crisis is considered a journey, an awareness, a necessary experience, and a complex phenomenon. It arises from an awareness of your own freedoms and how life will end for you one day. This can become even more challenging when faced with a world in climate chaos.
This past year I have been researching a lot about climate emotions. As I feel the people around me becoming more and more unsettled by the fires, storms, floods and natural disasters that are seeming to become “normal”. All these emotions bubbling under the surface because we aren’t having the difficult conversations. I started doing lectures climate emotions; what they are and steps we can take to processing them. There has been a lot of research on Active Hope. Joanne Macy describes 2 types of hope:
- Passive Hope (optimistic hope) - involves hopefulness, where our preferred outcome seems reasonably likely to happen. It can often be seen as wishful thinking. But if we require this kind of hope before we commit ourselves to an action, our response gets blocked in areas where we don’t rate our chances well. Like when we feel hopeless.
- Active Hope - is about desire. It is this kind of hope that starts our journey - knowing what we hope for and what we'd like, or love, to have happen. It is what we do with this hope that really makes the difference. Like moving forward when we are unsure of the outcome. Active hope is a practice. It is something we do rather than have. It is a process we can apply to any situation, and it involves three key steps.
- We start from where we are by taking in a clear view of reality, acknowledging what we see and how we fell.
- We identify what we hope for in terms of the direction we'd like things to move in or the values we'd like to see expressed.
- We take steps to move ourselves or our situation in that direction.
Passive hope is about waiting for external agencies to bring about what we desire. Active hope is about becoming active participants in the process of moving toward our hopes and where we can, realizing them. Faced with climate chaos and science that tells us a dismal future may be in the cards. I myself have been so down over the last decade, unsure of where to put my efforts and passions to create a more sustainable world. Reading the new literature on Hope has helped me pave a way forward.
I hope to create an online site that helps people with these big climate emotions while connecting to the community around them Offers information on the environmental, social and financial sustainability challenges we face. Nature works in cycles. We can no longer operate Business as usual. When I was studying sustainability, I was struck by how many academic projects and information are out there but fail to get to many people. Through directories, information sheets, workshops, lectures and online presence, I hope to help people access the information they need to
- Process climate emotions
- Find out more about environmental social and financial sustainability projects and what you can do to build a better world.
A sense of self-awareness about weaponizing kindness and optimism — and even emotion itself — in the face of that fight. As Rowland noted in her definition of the term, “Crying is also hopepunk, because crying means you still have feelings, and feelings are how you know you’re alive.”
And while that may sound paradoxical, it’s a perfect aesthetic accompaniment to the hopepunk philosophy that aggressively choosing kindness, optimism, and softness over hardness, cynicism, and violence can be a powerful political choice. We need kindness to care about the natural environment and creatures that depend on that web like we do. Optimism is important when imagining a future that we want to create (not optimistic hope). Softness when we are bumping up against each other in an every increasingly populated world.