reflections on gathering around an ethics of hopelessness
for the past few years, i have been wrestling with big questions that ultimately ask me, how do i be in this world right now? its been a personal journey, a professional one, but more than all, a human one.
last year in toronto i heard victor udoewa, a u.s.-based Nigerian and american civic designer, liberation futurist, and practitioner of radical participatory design, speak on the ethics of hopelessness, and it reframed how i was carrying these questions. back home in australia, i kept wondering how hearing this message might help others like it did me. but i was also curious how the ideas would land in this place, with its own history and culture and pluriverse of relationship to hope and hopelessness.
late last week, we gathered online from australia, new zealand, the us and canada to sit together and explore an ethics of hopelessness, asking
“how can we think and be, when we are sure the future we hope for will not come?”
while we knew no single conversation can hold or resolve this question, we wanted to make time and space to think and be, and to sit with these questions in community; with an aim to both inspire and challenge ingrained ideas about how we might meet our individual and collective futures.
coming into the room together we wanted to acknowledge the range of experience and relationship to hope and hopelessness and everything in between. when asked how they were arriving, most participants were feeling hopeful, with far fewer feeling hopeless, some felt the question was almost too big to ask, and others moved between all of these, depending on the day, the context, the moment in time.
in session we invited victor to share his thinking, and to be joined by colleagues situated here in australia including dana shen, an Aboriginal/Chinese australian-based meditation teacher and systems change practitioner bringing her professional and lived experience and, stacey ong, an australian-based, Malaysian chinese social change practitioner to host the dialogue.
victor’s thinking offered an ethics of hopelessness: an ethics that stands apart from hope, open to the hopeful, the hopeless and the hope-ambivalent alike. where integrity, dignity and love are Black liberatory traditions, he invited us to ask whether we are moving in alignment with our ancestors and the dreams of our descendants, and to live as if the future we long for is already here.
dana spoke of her practice as holding hope and hopelessness as a living balance, one she returns to again and again. drawing on buddhist practice, and equanimity in particular, she makes room for what she feels, while enacting the steadiness needed to respond instead of react. she pictured this balance as a mobile, asymmetrical, always moving, finely balanced, pieces of different weights held together and never still.
as we moved through the gathering, individually and collectively, we created a moment in time, held by everyone in it, one we want to continue to honour. but for those who couldn’t join us, we want to share a sense of how participants met the provocations along the way, and perhaps invite you into the conversation too.
looking back, the session moved the way a symphony does, in movements, each with its own tempo and feeling. we share here a few of the voices from each, with thanks:
arriving
crossing geographies to one place, and joining in a shared breath.
“something about all of us breathing here together = so deeply moving.”
“i am a lotus. feet in the swamp, flower shooting up to the sun.”
stirring
victor’s thinking moved through people in many ways, opening, bridging, unsettling, challenging.
“powerfully, beautifully painful.”
“just so many parallels to australia and the stalled work of reconciliation.”
“i’ve heard so many things that shifted things inside.”
one person, noticing dead end and no outlet signs rising inside them, reached for yield: “it’s not full speed ahead because i’m aware of the need for caution in this, but there is more ahead if we can walk onward together.”
stillness
a moment without words, to let what was heard have time to settle in the body.
“just breathing through that. words are very insufficient here. that will live in my bones.”
“digesting the challenge, the resonance and the unknown but felt.”
“maybe might just let something live in my body for long enough that it might metabolise later.”
grounding
dana’s words offered a place to stand, a steadiness for all that had been stirred.
“all of us ‘riding the waves’ together helps me feel more belonging, and less alone.”
“thank you … for sharing your truths and grounding.”
one participant, in the midst of the stirring, had asked, “love won’t just get rid of these feelings. how do you go from apathy to action?” and later found something to hold when dana spoke of doing her very best to behave out of love, even with “a lot of churn going on on the inside”.
keeping company
being with others helps us travel well.
“i think i arrived at some clarity on one of the roots of the struggle i’m feeling right now within my work.”
“relieving to be in community in the fullness of this.”
dispersing
acknowledging the many truths, with room for all of them.
“i’m leaving thinking about the many truths that can exist at once… so many things but no one definition needed at all. and maybe that’s the work.”
“i AM hope, hopeful, hopeless. and that’s all very okay.”
~
the question we gathered around stayed open, as it was always going to.
as one participant put it, “this is a forever conversation.”
we’d love for it to keep unfolding here, in whatever way it’s living in you. with deep thanks to victor and dana for all they offered, to stacey for holding us so well, to everyone behind the scenes who helped to make this happen, and to all who came and gave so generously of themselves.
