Creating Space for Hope

A lot of people I talk to feel pretty down and powerless about the discord in the world today, and the prospect of ecological, social and economic collapse. So where do we find hope in these times...

I’ve been joking with friends about being a “reluctant prepper”. One on hand I do know that every generation has had its angst about where the world is heading, and so far humanity has overcome it all. On the other hand, it does seem that many challenges are coming to the crunch point simultaneously and, certainly in the online space, we all seem to be stridently at loggerheads with each other as to what to do, or even whether its happening at all. I’m also a typical Libra so always see both sides of every argument and need to weigh everything up from all angles. In the cacophony of social media, clickbait and online news it can be hard to discern the truth - if we even agree on what ‘truth’ is anyway. How much of the impending doom is just a ‘meta-crisis’ and how much should we take seriously? For a lot of people, especially our young people, the concern about the future state of our societies, politics and planet is causing severe strain on their mental health. Hence this post (my first in a while) because I too have had to find a path through the solastalgia to a place of hope.

One of the ways that I have always dealt with fear, risk and change is to plan for a worst case scenario. I appreciate that this wouldn’t work for everyone but, for me, I find comfort addressing risk as a planning exercise. This works by breaking down my fears into smaller pieces that I can apply an action too. Once I know what I would do in any given situation, even if its not ideal, or its tough or painful, knowing that I have some sort of a plan reduces the fear attached to it. For example, I am now working with a charity Heritage Village Foundation helping the San Ju|’hoansi indigenous people retain economic independence and preserve their incredible culture. When I first went to the Kalahari Desert for 6 weeks to stay with them, I went on my own. I arranged for a driver to take me out there, leave me in a small village, and (hopefully) come back in 6 weeks to get me!

This was obviously quite scary. So I went through different scenarios and realised the thing I was most afraid of was snakebite. You can recover from theft or mugging, but you can die from the bite of a black mamba! What was my eventual plan then? I invested in a set of snake-proof Australian gaiters; bought a book on southern African snakes so I could identify what had bitten me (to get the right anti-venom): found the phone number of the most knowledgeable snake doctor in Namibia; got up to date on my first aid training; packed an ambu-bag resuscitator in my first aid kit; and invested in a SpotGen4 tracking device with a big orange button that gets you a helicopter!

If that sounds like I’d overdone the planning, yes, I probably did, given that I only ever saw one snake - a harmless grass snake! However, being prepared removed my anxiety and let me really enjoy my time there. Whilst obviously taking sensible daily precautions - like wearing shoes.

I’ve also now been applying this to a “what if” examination of what life would be like if there was a temporary emergency, and also if there was a significant change to the way that we live now. Despite ‘prepper’ having eccentric connotations - at least here in the UK - the more I learn about the breakdown of a number of global systems, the more I think it is just common sense to be prepared. 2050 is a year that is cited often in estimates of climate or environmental system collapse. In 2050 I’ll be 87, and quite possibly still alive given our family’s longevity genes, so I’ll be pretty vulnerable then too.

Yet, it’s the dark that lets the light shine in…

Change in itself can be scary. We always think of it as inevitable. I don’t entirely agree with that. Homo sapiens didn’t change dramatically for the first 240,000 years. It was 50-65,000 years ago that we adopted ‘behavioural modernity’ - advanced art, complex technology, and rapid cultural change. In contrast, the start of the Anthropocene - the ‘Great Acceleration’ of rapid, global human impact on the Earth’s ecosystems - is thought to have begun around 1950. So just 72 years ago. But history aside, there is no doubt that many people find the modern, technological world a complex, frustrating and difficult world to live in much of the time. Technology’s demands for our attention exacerbate distractibility, create overwhelm and make it hard to focus. Life is lived at a pace that makes it hard to find the time to slow down, do nothing, or contemplate a grasshopper (as in Mary Oliver’s wonderful poem The Summer Day) - without feeling guilty. Yet, until recently, it wasn’t always like this either. This overwhelm, combined with the concern about environmental collapse, the loss of democratic freedoms, social balance, etc. has fuelled a lot of anxiety and grief.

Looking ahead, none of us can predict the future. All we can do is live our present as best we can and incorporate skills and values that are a sound investment for any future. Learning the skills of ‘the old ways’ gifts us a sense of resilience, the pleasure of craft, the joy of Nature-connection, self-confidence in our ability not just to survive but also to thrive. The ‘old ways’ skills includes Mesolithic hunter-gatherer skills (like foraging, firecraft, flintknapping or bowmaking); the Neolithic (gardening, farming, husbandry); Mediævel (food preservation methods, herbal medicine making, spinning, weaving, tanning) as well as the many crafts of wood carving, tailoring, making pigments and dyes, pottery, baking and so many more. Getting out of your head and into your hands absorbs our minds like no amount of box sets or doomscrolling can. Plus, these skills may be useful in the future.

Of course, no single person has a long enough lifetime to become an expert in every method of survival or technologically-independent living, so that is where community comes into it. A multi-skilled, multi-talented group of people, interdependent and interconnected. In fact, in every doomsday scenario that I can think of the bedrock to our survival is rooted in strong community. And experiencing community does create hope, because we remember the good things about being human. The warmth and kindness of each other instead of the vitriol of social media comments. The conversations about the change that builds a better world instead of the mainstream political narrative. It is in the real (not the virtual) world that we feel able to be who we truly are and show up with support for each other. While so much of the world feels designed to pull us apart, I do feel that my courses - and those of many of my contemporaries - are a way of pulling us back together. They’re not just about learning skills — they’re about gathering. Around food, fire, land, craft, curiosity, creating resilience and a better future. Having the layered meaning of so many indigenous languages, the old Gaelic word for foraging, “cruinneachadh”, meant both the gathering of food and the gathering of people. We need to remember how to be human together. If you’re craving connection, practical skills, and a slower, rooted way of being, you’re warmly invited.

More on my website at monicawilde.com