Radical Hope = Swimming Easy in the Deep!

To most of us it seems that nothing makes sense anymore.  Which is especially true if you expect things to make sense in the first place.  Silly you. 


Jonathan Lear's Book

"Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation" looks at the response of Chief Plenty Coups of the Crow to the collapse of his people's traditional way of life and culture to examine how a community should responds to the collapse of its culture - sound familiar?

According to him "Radical Hope" as practiced by Chief Plenty Coups is the ability to maintain hope in a meaningful existence even when one's existence has lost all meaning. It is hope that goes beyond one's ability to formulate an idea of what one hopes for.

If one cuts through all the hype, hyperbole and intellectualisation, what Lear confirms is that:

• The only sensible response to life is to insist on joy in spite of everything; and

 

• The only way to do that, is by swimming easy in the deep!

We fixate on global warming, the economic meltdown and the rise of religious fundamentalism while most of us know that there really isn't all that much we can do about any of those things except know that they too will pass.

Which isn't to say we should pollute, spend or pray our way into oblivion.  Far from it. 

What we should be doing is living the kinds of lives that resonate with the universe while laughing at the bogeymen that rise up to threaten us and refusing to be drawn into the bleakness and seriousness that envelops the world.

 

Here's the thing:  Joy is everywhere, even in despair.  Most often joy finds its way around even the bleakest and most challenging situations and when that isn't possible, joy is all you have ... and that's always enough.