Leaving Space for Grace

Radical Hope on the Other Side of Despair

A handful of commenters on this Substack, when faced with its analysis of culture wars or assessments of the polycrisis, always ask some version of:

“cynicism is easy, don’t you believe in anything???”

To quote the late great Robert Anton Wilson,

And while I think he nails it, it’s still a bit too clever for its own good.

Great for stoney late night bull sessions, or as a parting bon mot at a cocktail party.

But in this moment of increasing disorder and potential hopelessness, I feel obliged to lay some cards down.

About what leaves me hopeful

(still and yet!)

And about the particular kind of hope that seems durable enough and true enough to be helpful to other folks too.

Then we can all get back to irreverent piss-takes and gallows satire.

Sound good?

First things first: we need to define what kind of optimism we’re even shooting for here.

It’s definitely not the #inspopost #succesories kind.

It’s much closer to what Viktor Frankl laid out a while back in his three step model of Man’s Search for Meaning:

• There’s Naive Optimism. Everything’s gonna work out! (via delusion or denial)

• Then there’s Existential Nihilism Nothing’s gonna work out ( via analysis or despair)

• And finally, Tragic Optimism. Everything’s gonna work out–just maybe not for me in this lifetime (via faith or hope)

We’re aiming for that last bucket, Tragic Optimism.

But before we get there, we need to unpack the other two first.

***

The Naive Optimist believes they’re going to grow up to marry Prince Charming or Sleeping Beauty, get to be President, or an astronaut (or at the very least, a fireman).

Or in a more mundane version–go to college, get a good job, buy a house in the suburbs, lease a nice SUV and watch their 401K and home equity fatten nicely until they retire at 65. At which glorious point they’ll collect Social Security and splurge on Sandals All-Inclusive Resorts and Disney Cruises til they die.

Yay!

(See David Foster Wallace’s classic take down of middle American cruise culture in A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again)

Regardless of their particular hopes, the Naive Optimists have been taking a bit of a beating lately. Most of the simple promises they planned their lives around aren’t turning out as imagined.

That’s the collapse of the American Peace, or Pax Americana. It kept things generally prosperous and groovy for most of our lives, until lately.

GenZers, on the other hand–are the first generation since WWII to believe they won’t enjoy a life that’s bigger, better and richer than their parents. Over half of UK young ‘uns think a strongman would do better than democracy! 70% are debating bringing kids into this world.

The simple Progress/American Dream stories are frayed beyond repair. And folks are scrambling to find their replacements.

from Recapture the Rapture

If the last few years haven’t sobered them up, if seriously considering the prospects that they might not get to show their children (or grandchildren) coral reefs teeming with Finding Nemo fish, or visit Glacier National Park and actually see any of its namesake glaciers, or continue to enjoy free and fair elections, peace in the streets, or a comfortable retirement with decent health care, if all that hasn’t spurred them into clearheaded action, they’re in one of two places— denial or despair, neither of which will be particularly helpful on the road ahead.

Which brings us to the inevitable encounter with the sad stuff that prompted this essay in the first place…what happens when Naive Optimism collapses and gives way to dread?

The Existential Nihilist concludes that life really is nasty brutish and short, red both in tooth and claw. Just like Hobbes and Tennyson promised.

Through disease, displacement, disappointment, betrayals, bankruptcies or loss, they’ve concluded that the unavoidable hardship of life is baseline truth.

But being a nihilist kinda sucks.

It’s an uncomfortable state to hang out in for any extended period of time, unless life and hard knocks just pin you there.

What’s far more tempting, is to get suckered by someone (anyone!) promising a return to that happier register–Naive Optimism.

That’s the denial option.

“Hey, guess what kids? We can have our cake and eat it too! Today! No tradeoffs!!!”

The recipes for this tasty cake vary.

From downloading manifestation “codes” at your next Costa Rica ayahuasca retreat, to uploading your consciousness to an AI chatbot and living forever.

From blaming Marxists or Muslims or Mexicans (or all three!) for causing all that suffering of yours,

To accepting that Yahweh (or Elon) have chosen to spirit you into the heavens and ditch this worldly clusterfuck altogether.

From believing that Conscious Capitalism (plus Cloud Seeding) mean we don’t even have to tap the brakes on our consumption…

To insisting that implementing Sharia Law for Jesus will return this once great Christian nation to Providential Favor.

However we slice it, these regressions to simpler easier (Make It Great Again™) times are all Rapture Ideologies. They promise an “up and out” solution rather than an “in and through” one.

But none of them even pretend to credibly solve our actual problems for everyone.

They scapegoat the Many, for the redemption of the Few.

And boy, are they tempting.

After all, we regress under stress.

And few things are as stressful as sitting in that middle step in Frankl’s framework–Existential Nihilism.

And few things are as regressive , as going back to a Naive Optimism that ignores stressful reality in favor of soothing fantasies.

“But we must know first that our acts are useless and yet we must proceed as if we didn’t know it. That’s a sorcerer’s controlled folly.”

― Carlos Castaneda

So to state in plainly: I am opposed to Naive Optimism and the Rapture Ideologies that come from that place.

I’m advocating that we face the facts about life, the universe and everything. Un-Varnished. Buffered or Bargained.

#existentialistrisk

So that we might persist and prevail towards something resembling Bucky Fuller’s target of a “world that works for 100% of humanity through spontaneous cooperation, without ecological offense or disadvantage to anyone.”

And have as much fun as we can muster along the way.

Hope this all tracks so far, and explains why I spend time trying to deconstruct regressive Rapture ideologies.

#burntheboats

Because getting over the hump to “Tragic Optimism” on the far side of the trainwreck is easier said than done!

Most people confront the polycrisis and want to turn right back around.

If confronting Existential Nihilism seems too much, denial seems like a solid option.

Scoff, delay, deflect.

Shoot the messengers.

Anything other than think the unthinkable. And with the ever present distractions of our algorithmically optimized smartphone, AI slopped lives, denial can take an even more banal path.

“And as things fell apart,” the Talking Heads sang presciently, “nobody paid much attention.”

On the other hand, if we stop bargaining for the idealized future we’ve always imagined, despair looms large. The enormity of the problems, the natural beauty and human dignity under threat.

The pissing-in-the-wind futility of any effort to change things. We will break our hearts or lose our minds. But despair isn’t any more effective than outright denial.

As Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes once advised, “I would not give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity; but I would give my life for the simplicity the other side of complexity.”

Another Wendell, MacArthur Fellow Wendell Berry, wrote that we have no choice but to “be joyful, though [we] have considered all the facts.”

Put together, these two Wendells might give us a plan. We shouldn’t give a fig for the joy on this side of complexity (Naive Optimism), but we should be willing to give our lives for the joy on the other side of it (Tragic Optimism).

And that will require facing all the facts.

Which are more or less as follows:

Our familiar way of life–everyone from military strategists to climate scientists, from culture warriors to Christian soldiers all agree–is ending or has already ended.

We’re in the middle of a transition from a 75 year old period (Post WWII Rules Based Order OR a Descent into a Secular Humanist Hellscape) to whatever’s coming next.

You might be cheering it or fearing it.

Stoked or terrified.

But the consensus–across the aisles and trenches–appears remarkably consistent:

We’re not going back to Normal. And what’s next is coming on fast and will likely shape the next century or more.

The only question is how hard the landing’s going to be.

From mild belt tightening to get us back on the straight and narrow. To ecological collapse or civil wars. (or both).

Is this a few bumps and gosh-I’m-sure-happy-the-stewardess-doublechecked-all-our-seatbelts kinda landing?

Or is this a hard hit and a skid that rips off the landing gear leaving the fuselage and passengers largely intact? (but makes taking off again impossible)

Or is this a nose first bomb hole, looking-for-the-black-box kinda landing?

***

So, now that we’ve outlined the three different stages of Victor Frankl’s model including the Naive version and the Nihilistic option, and we’ve also highlighted how seductive but destructive retreating back into Naive Rapture Escapes can be…

Let’s talk about the active ingredients in that final bucket–Tragic Optimism.

What it is.

The stories that support it.

Where it might take us.

And why it might be credible enough to believe, in spite of all the interim “facts.”

Step One: What’s Our Story, Morning Glory?

These days there are lots of competing narratives that try to wrap our current moment up in something Heroic, Destined, and Triumphant.

Trust the Plan.

But all of them tend to skip over the hard, messy and uncertain, in favor of the transformative, redemptive and simplified. (if not for All, then at least for Us).

They conform to that Rapture Ideology format (1. world is broken, 2. an inflection is coming soon, 3. “we” are saved on other side, 4. let’s get there quick), chapter and verse.

From libertarian seasteading communities to silicon immortality or AI salvation, to actual honest to God, Jesus in Jerusalem Second Comings…they all hit those same beats.

So in choosing a better, more accurate, more inclusive story to steer by, we might slow down to listen to other voices, like Zen grandmother ecologist Joanna Macy.

Her notion, that we are “the People of the Passage” traversing through “the Great Unraveling” feels like it acknowledges the seismic shifts of our moment, as well as our responsibility to some future yet to be born.

“The People of the Passage” traversing through “the Great Unraveling.”

Evocative phrases, both.

And what they mean, taken together, is that we need to get from Here to There. Together.

Where’s the “There” she’s signposting?

Pulitzer winning poet Gary Snyder perhaps said it most simply:

In the next century

or the one beyond that, they say

are valleys, pastures

we can meet there in peace

if we make it.

So in Macy’s terms, we are In-Betweeners, a liminal generation with the responsibility to shepherd the light of consciousness and culture between worlds.

To those “peaceful valleys and pastures” on the other side that Snyder’s hinting at.

We’re a bit like those ancient people who crossed the Bering Strait into the Western Hemisphere.

But where the Ice Age Beringians traveled through space to get from the Old World to the New World, today’s Beringians are going to have to travel through time to get to our new world.

Seems kind of appropriate. And clarifying.

So that’s Step One. Our story: We’re the People of the Passage. Our Old World is Unraveling. And it’s on us to make it across this land bridge/birth canal to the daylight on the other side.

Step Two: The facts of our current moment are really hard to face, (and likely getting harder)

So how on Earth do we find the joy on the other side of them?

Simple!

(but hard)

We choose to believe, as an act of faith, that It All Works Out.

In the Long Run.

Not because we’re so sophisticated or so spiritual that we deserve it.

Or that God or AI are on our side and will ensure it.

Or that Progress or Democracy will win because we invented it.

Simply as an intentional belief that helps make it more likely that it works out.

It’s an utterly self-serving, hopefully self-fulfilling prophecy!

A “controlled folly” that we know is impossible on its face, but we chose to believe in anyway.

And it’s not totally out of the blue. There’s lots of folks stumbling into that insight these days.

That’s something that comes through often enough in peak experiences that it’s worth underscoring here. Time and again, when entering the Deep Now, there is a persistent sense that somehow, in the end, it all works out.

We make it to the Omega Point at the End of Time.

The technical term for this persistent phenomenon is Eschatosthesia–a clear sense of an impending End of Time.

But now fortified with this glimpse of the future, we’re freed from the burden of wondering if the Impossible is Possible.

We can relax a bit, we can be kinder, more playful, more courageous—for ourselves and for each other, steeped in the knowing that somewhere, somewhen, somehow, we have already won.

And what’s especially beautiful about that realization if it comes, is that it doesn’t let us off the hook for showing up at full strength.

Hands-off-the-wheel Calvinist predestination doesn’t work here. Because even if we’ve been blessed with a glimpse of the Happiest Ever After Ever, we also know it all comes down to a 51/49 nail-biter in triple overtime to win the Game.

#dropkickmejesusthroughthegoalpostsoflove

That means that every single calorie we burn, every breath we take, every stand we make, is essential to that final tally.

Radical hope gives us perspective beyond the false certainties and certain vulnerabilities of our own lifetimes.

We may not get to the Promised Land ourselves, but we keep on walking in the conviction that our children, or their children, might.

The question’s not having hope, as Cornel West reminds us, it’s being hope. As we let go of our own personal references and preferences, we can reorient to the lon- ger arc of humanity finding its way to the Omega Point.

That really would be the greatest Cinderella Story of all time. Delivered from evil, at the stroke of midnight, or not at all.

So that’s the potential gift of Eschatothesia—the Persistent Sense of an Ending.

It buoys our hearts and girds our loins for the hard parts between Here and There. But prevents us from getting crushed by Existential Nihilism.

Think of it as a form of recursive, participatory predestination.

Recursive (because what happens next shapes what we must do now)

Participatory (because we have to show up to help it happen or it definitely won’t)

Predestination (we have already won, we just need to make it to the finish line to collect our medals)

***

If all of that seems like a leap of faith, lets explore a couple of analogies that might make it more tangible.

Hiroshima and Hobbits

Quaker theologian and Stanford minister Elton Trueblood once observed “Faith is not belief without proof, but rather, trust without reservation.”

It’s a nice way to rebut the cynic who refuses to “just” believe in something superstitious because it’s comforting.

So what might it mean, for us to have unreserved trust in a future we can’t see from here, but choose to believe in nonetheless?

Especially if we’re allergic to the kind of fundamentalist faith that soothes so many?

It all comes down to Chaos Math and fantasy fiction.

In his book Fluke: Chance, Chaos, and Why Everything We Do Matters, Oxford philosopher Brian Klaas suggests that “We control nothing, but influence everything.”

Beyond offering a rigorous take down of the New Age “you manifest your reality” tropes, Klaas makes the case for something else: the impossible interconnectedness of life and all of our actions.

He retells the story of Secretary of State Henry Stimson during WWII and how he personally protected Kyoto from getting nuked.

Why?

Because he and his wife had visited that fair city twice in the 1920s. At least once during the cherry blossom festival. And so struck was he by its beauty and architecture, that decades later he defended it. Even as Hiroshima and Nagasaki got turned to glass instead.

Except for that one couple’s springtime holiday, Kyoto wouldn’t exist.

Impossible to plan for. But inevitable once it happened.

That’s the famous Butterfly Effect—flapping wings in Kyoto created a tornado in Washington DC. That blew a mushroom cloud to Nagasaki.

At the same time that we know chance encounters can shape so much, we know the opposite is even more true: that even “the best laid plans of mice and men end badly.”

Which means that when we attempt to force our specific outcome, we rarely get what we intend.

Man proposes. God disposes.

Many a slip ‘twixt cup and lip!

Turns out, we control nothing.

But when we have faith that we influence everything (however tangentially), we can restore our belief that our efforts still matter.

Somehow.

In spite of, not because of our personal agendas.

Stimson’s example in Kyoto can read as a bit of a one-off. As the title of that book suggests, a “Fluke.”

So let’s look for another deeper example. Arguably, there’s no better story to illustrate this than the Lord of the Rings.

Most folks miss the subtlety of Tolkein’s moral universe, and get caught up with the adventures of humble hobbits, salty dwarves, sexy elves, and bearded wizards.

It’s all about magical swords with names, moon runes, and giant fucking eagles that swoop in exactly when needed.

But in reality, the deepest lesson of LOTR is a simple one: mercy.

If you remember back to the climactic scene at the edge of Mount Doom, when the trustworthy hobbit Frodo has to fulfill his quest and chuck the One Ring of Power into the lava, he balks.

Can’t do it.

Won’t do it.

After battling the sickening pull of power the whole journey, Frodo finally gives in.

And what saves him?

It’s not the love of his trusty sidekick Sam Gamgee. His pleas get drowned out by the roar of the volcano.

It’s definitely not Gollum transformed back to his former self Smeagol, who might have then redeemed himself by sacrificing his life to destroy the Ring that nearly destroyed him.

Oh no!

Frodo gets bent and can’t do it.

Gollum stays bent, rejects his repentance and grabs it for it himself!

Bites off Frodo’s finger and clutches it downward to his doom.

My Precious til the End!

And that act, borne from weakness, selfishness and a thirst for power, tips the battle once and for all towards the Good.

Wait, What?

How is that the moral of the story?

Tolkein hid the clues to this ending back near the beginning of his tale.

When Frodo wails that it was a pity that his Uncle Bilbo hadn’t stabbed Gollum years ago, Gandalf the wise wizard responds:

“Pity? It was Pity that stayed his hand. Pity, and Mercy: not to strike without need. And he has been well rewarded, Frodo. Be sure that he took so little hurt from the evil, and escaped in the end, because he began his ownership of the Ring so. With Pity.”

“I am sorry,” said Frodo. “But I am frightened; and I do not feel any pity for Gollum. He deserves death.”

“Deserves it! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.

I have not much hope that Gollum can be cured before he dies, but there is a chance of it. And he is bound up with the fate of the Ring. My heart tells me that he has some part to play yet, for good or ill, before the end; and when that comes, the pity of Bilbo may rule the fate of many — yours not least.”

So how’s them apples?

In the end,

All the heroics didn’t matter.

All the magic didn’t matter.

Even the hobbits’ incorruptible goodness didn’t matter.

Or the belief that everyone, even Gollum/Smeagol, was redeemable.

Mercy, evoked a thousand pages earlier, to as-yet-unknown-ends, tipped the balance.

A simple, counterintuitive, utterly irrational impulse to zig rather than zag, to turn the other cheek, to #dobetter.

Just cuz.

We control nothing. (as Frodo’s failure at Mount Doom shows)

We influence everything. (his pity allowed Gollum to live long enough to betray the Fellowship while accidentally completing its mission).

Recursive, participatory predestination.

(We have already won).

We just need to keep the faith.

As the People of the Passage, we’re going to wander for forty years (or more) between the Old World and the New, to eventually make it to the Promised Land.

Just in time.

And all of our actions, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant that align with that ultimate goal—from random kindness to senseless acts of beauty–might tip the balance in the long run.

Can we map and predict the Butterfly Effect?

Not even close.

Can we tell when a flapping wing or a falling cherry blossom will shape the course of history?

We can’t even solve the Three Body Problem in physics. Let alone eight billion bodies!

Can we manifest or bargain for our preferred outcomes in our lifetime?

Less and less likely.

But what we can do is face the facts, and choose to be joyful in spite of them.

Not because it all works out for us.

But because it eventually works out for everyone.

We just have to keep the faith. And play our part.

For as long as it takes.

And no matter what, always leave space for Grace.