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Writers Paul Loeb, Rebecca Solnit, and Mark Hertsgaard (speaking) discuss hope in a challenging time.
Photo by T.E. Lesle

by Timothy Lesle
Visionary Solutions Session
Paul Loeb, Rebecca Solnit, and Mark Hertsgaard

Three writers held a packed hall in thrall to their views on why and how we should remain hopeful about our government, our society, our future, and working in the face of long odds.

Paul Loeb has made a mission of spreading hope in the face of numerous social and political challenges with "The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen’s Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear."  It fits in well with his career of supporting citizen responsibility and empowerment.

Rebecca Solnit, a cultural historian whose most recent book is “A Field Guide to Getting Lost,” poetically expanded our conception of hope to address a “world full of surprises.” Pointing out that “If I told you in July that in August a sweet-voiced mom from Vacaville would take President Bush hostage for the duration of his Crawford, Texas, vacation and change the dialogue about the war; if I told you that the city of New Orleans would be destroyed by September and the cataclysm might shift the national conversation about climate change, petroleum, priorities, poverty, racism, taxes, infrastructure and the damned war—you would’ve thought I was really wacky.” She added, “my hope isn’t for specific outcomes so much as a faith that what we do matters and we are going to be surprised again and again, by horror and by splendor.”

She further explained that what activists do matters, even if the results are not immediately apparent. In fact, it is what we don’t see that might be the greatest victory: “the road that isn’t built, the forest that isn’t logged.”

Mark Hertsgaard, a journalist and author, and one of the contributors to Loeb’s book, told the crowd that they gave him hope because so many Sierra Club activists possess that “wonderful combination of tough-mindedness and heart.” He said his reasons to hope for a better future are more urgent now that he has a five-month-old daughter.

Hertsgaard noted that while optimism is a rational calculation of potential outcomes, it is not the same as hope. He echoed Loeb’s earlier quote of the evangelical writer Jim Wallis: “Hope is believing in spite of the evidence, then watching the evidence change.” “Do not mistake hope for naivete or sentimentality,” Hertsgaard cautioned. “Hope is tough.” It helped guide Vaclav Havel through six years of solitary confinement, and Nelson Mandela through 27 years of imprisonment: “They never wavered.”

“Terrible things will happen,” said Solnit. “But if I had told you in New Orleans last week that you couldn’t save everyone, would you have thought it was meaningless to save this kid or that grandfather? We aren’t going to win everything. But if we don’t do something we could lose everything. And the most important thing not to lose is hope.”

-- 09/10/2005 Sat
7pm