INTERVIEW: David Gee.

David Gee discusses themes from his stirring new book, Hope's  Work, which helps us to see where we might find hope in an age of crises, step-by-step, moment-by-moment, in ourselves, in those alongside us, and in the world around us …

Would you say there is a difference between being hopeful and being optimistic? And if so, what is it? 

All the difference in the world, yes.

Optimism, as I think most of us understand it, is a confidence in the future; things look like they’re going to work out. And if they are, we can sit back and enjoy the ride. But the world is under strain. Our lives are under strain too, I think. Things might indeed all work out, but we can’t afford such an easy confidence in tomorrow’s world. We don’t know.

For me, hope is a response to this uncertainty. It’s finding what’s worth committing to – the life in and around us – and committing to it today, whatever may happen tomorrow. History shows, I think, that this impulse lies behind pretty much all changes for the common good. In any case, without it we wouldn’t live long. 

Is being hopeful a choice? And why does hope require commitment?

I think hope is a choice, yes, because it’s made real by doing. Hopeful people are often pessimistic about the future, but still choose to commit to life in the present. This is how they choose to live. 

Despair is part of this, too, as the feeling that nothing can be done. I wouldn’t imagine a journey in hope to be breezily despair-free. It passes through despair, possibly many times, and yet is not overwhelmed by it – though it could be. No guarantees.

I think of Ruth and Naomi: the love that bound them in their determination to make their journey into the unknown, never once feeling sure of its outcome. In their most desperate of situations, they still made their choice in hope. 

What would you identify as the main obstacles for hope to overcome?

The obvious ones are out in the world, as it were. The big power – ‘bulldozer power’ – is in hands that ‘know not what they do’ with it. 

But I think the more significant obstacles are within us. The notion that, if only we had a bit more power – more levers to pull, more people to pull them, more of this, more of that – is really toxic to hopefulness. If your hopes are hung and that kind of power, which you don’t have, then where does that leave you?

Hope has tended to shape history by stealth. Pretty much all the genuine gains in history have been won by people without much political power at all, and mostly without any kind of violence. I’ve been calling it ‘heathen power’, where heathen means people who live ‘in the open’ – they’re not as closed in by the norms of ‘Western civilisation’, their desires are freer. 

The community of heathen power is vast. It stretches across the world, as well as across time from our ancestors to our descendants. And it’s largely invisible to the political establishment. Hope’s heathen power may be slight, but it’s also relentless.

How do you see the relationship between advances in technology and hope for the average person, and for societies in the Global North and, for that matter, Global South? 

Well, we could still disappear in a mushroom cloud any day. The world is primed for cataclysmic violence powered by technology. And at the same time, Bangladeshi villages are linking rooftop solar panels and pooling the energy so that everyone can have a bit of light after dark.

The nuclear weapon and the solar panel are both technologies used to gain power. For the villagers, they want power to meet their fundamental needs without undue harm. But the nuclear weapon has made an idol of power, and the purpose is a kind of lust for dominance – it’s never been about ‘defence’. 

So, I think in the global south we’re seeing some of the emancipatory virtues of new technology – the lovely film 2040 shows many examples. In the global north, the balance has long since tipped the other way. We tend to be engorged on new technology, from sabre-rattling with nuclear weapons all the way down to refreshing that social media feed every two minutes.

I found Pope Francis’ critique of the ‘technocratic paradigm’ a superb read. He appeals for a renaissance of a kind of natural experience of the world, not so heavily mediated by technology. It seems to be that this would help to clarify our choices as to what we attend to and what we don’t. I warm to that personally, as I live on a boat and am fortunate enough to wake up to the river every morning. How Francis’ message might land in a more urban space – I think that’s more complex. 

Are you hopeful a more just economy and a more equal society and can be built in the wake of the global pandemic? Perhaps one that isn’t structured exclusively around capitalist ideology?

Hopeful, yes, optimistic, no. Society seems to be snapping back to its version of ‘normal’: homeless people no longer in housing, evictions back, huge queues at the shopping mall, the endless roar of traffic, and the rest of it. 

But I think the pandemic has exposed the cracks in the system and perhaps pushed them a little wider. Some people are wondering how the owner of Amazon can pile up the gold while the nurses caring for the critically sick get a clap and are told to keep calm and carry on, for example. Some people are wondering what that means for who gets valued in our consumer-capitalist system and who doesn’t. Black Lives Matter and Extinction Rebellion have been asking their own versions of the same question. That gives me hope, but hope’s a long road.

If there’s a story, myth or historical event that can help us be hopeful in these difficult times, what would you suggest? 

There are so many. Almost all stories are about hope, actually – even in Hollywood, though most of those hitch their wagon to what Walter Wink called ‘redemptive violence’.

Any single story is going to leave too much out, but the one coming to mind is the walk to Emmaus, as told in the Book of Luke. Hope’s Work ends with a veiled retelling of this story of ‘difficult hope’, as I’ve been calling it, which is what Hope’s Work is aiming towards. The two disciples believe Jesus’ death has left them with nothing to live for, and now they’re

running away from Jerusalem. Aren’t we all doing that, in one way or another?

But when Jesus reveals himself, they understand that the real hope has never hinged on the term of his life, but what his life has given to those who come after him. They have nothing – no political power, for sure – but still they get up and walk the road back, in the dark, to the city that doesn’t believe in them. Their friend is with them and always will be, and so their journey in hope finally begins.

(I’m drawn to this idea of the Resurrection as experience. Whatever ontological claims are made for it, it can also be an experience within us. I don’t only mean ‘us’ as Christians with specific doctrinal commitments and so on; I mean that the story can live in any of us, whatever we call ourselves.)

Is there a single person whose life has inspired hope in you and why? Or a single group of people? 

I think almost everyone inspires hope in me, in one way or another.

It’s tragic beyond words to witness our collective violence against the life of the earth and its people, to which we all belong. It’s violence on a scale beyond comprehension, and it can crush hope. Sometimes, I think the only honest thing we can do is mourn, letting hope go.

And yet that life is, so I feel anyway, present in all of us. It doesn’t give up on us. It’s in the eyes of all the children, and in yours and mine, too. So, in thinking of who inspires hope in me, I won’t single out one person. I’m going to say everyone, and to try at least to mean it. 

Hope’s Work: Facing the future in an age of crises is available now in paperback, priced £9.99.

David Gee is a writer and speaker on nonviolent social change, with over two decades’ experience campaigning for peace and human rights. Supported by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, he works with groups around the UK exploring the practical meaning of hope in an increasingly violent world.