Stop hoping; start doing.

That's my new motto: stop hoping; start doing. And it's inspired partly by my own musing thoughts, and partly by an essay from this new book I am reading, The Future of Nature . I bought it at the Green Living Expo, and it is "required reading for those interested in a livable future . . . a crucial guidebook for the 21st century activist." My motto comes from Derrick Jensen's "Beyond Hope."

Jensen frankly admits that he does not have much hope for the environment. He says, "No matter what environmentalists do, our best efforts are insufficient. We're losing badly, on every front. Those in power are hell-bent on destroying the plant, and most people don't care."

Kinda depressing, huh? BUT, he goes on to say that he sees his lack of hope as a good thing because

Hope is what keeps us chained to the system, the conglomerate of people and ideas and ideals that is causing the destruction of the Earth . . . To start, there is false hope that suddenly somehow the system may inexplicably change. Or technology will save us. Or the Great Mother. Or beings from Alpha Centauri. Or Jesus Christ. Or Santa Claus. All of these false hopes lead to inaction, or at least to ineffectiveness . . . False hopes blind us to unlivable situations, and blind us to real possibilities.

Jensen so clearly accurately depicts what most of us say or think:

If only we get a Democrat in the White House, things will be okay. If only we pass this or that piece of legislation, things will be okay. If only we defeat this or that piece of legislation, things will be okay. Nonsense. Things will not be okay. They are already not okay, and they're getting worse. Rapidly.

If only, if only, if only . . . Jensen is right. We need to stop saying "If only," and start doing something.

He goes on to say that "Hope is really nothing more than a secular way of keeping us in line," because to hope for something, is to assume that something is out of your hands. In Jensen's words, "Hope is a longing for a future condition over which you have no agency; it means you are essentially powerless." He explains this even further:

I'm not, for example, going to say I hope I eat something tomorrow. I just will. I don't hope I take another breath right now, nor that I finish writing this sentence. I just do them. On the other hand, I do hope that the next time I get on a plane, it doesn't crash. To hope for some result means you have given up any agency concerning it. Many people say they hope the dominant culture stops destroying the world. By saying that, they've assumed the destruction will continue, at least in the short term, and they've stepped away from their own ability to participate in stopping it.

In other words, stop hoping, and start doing. And this can be applied to any number of situations. I wish I could delve into some of them as examples, but I hear the little one waking up, so I can only leave you with a few more of Jensen's great words:

I would say that when hope dies, action begins.

I have no patience for those who use our desperate situation as an excuse for inaction . . . The use of any excuse to justify inaction reveals nothing more or less than an incapacity to love.

People sometimes ask me, "I things are so bad, why don't you just kill yourself?" The answer is that life is really, really good. I am a complex enough being that I can hold in my heart the understanding that we are really, really fucked, and at the same time that life is really, really good.

Let's use this in our lives today (and all the other days) and see what we can do.