hi John, I clicked your profile and it said "ask my anything" and you've always been someone I look up to a lot. I'm feeling very disheartened by the state of the world, do you have any advice for me about keeping hope?
This is hard for me to remember on a minute-by-minute basis, but when I visit insta/threads/twitter/tiktok/googlenews/etc, I am seeing a feed of information that does not reflect a complicated and multivalent reality but instead was created by an algorithm designed to maximize the amount of time that I spend on social media sites.
These algorithms do not give a shit what is true or useful or humane; they want me in bed spending as much time on those feeds as they can possibly get me to spend.
For example, if your information feed fails to remind you that global literacy rates have never been higher, that fewer children are stunted due to malnutrition, and that the rate of child mortality is the lowest it has been in human history ... there is something inadequate about your information feed.
But of course the fact that the world used to suck more doesn't negate the fact that the world still sucks (and in important ways sucks more than it did ten or thirty years ago). Injustice permeates every facet of human-built systems and social orders. This should dishearten us. It should anger us. But the proper response to this anger, imo, is not idle despair but engagement.
Progress happens (and it does happen) when hundreds of millions or billions of people work together to make it happen. We reduced the likelihood of a child dying by 65% over the last 30 years not because it was inevitable or ordinary but because hundreds of millions of people refused to accept so much needless suffering and built more inclusive systems to expand access to healthcare, clean water, and adequate nutrition.
Lastly, hope is not easy! There is nothing simple about the kind of hope that can withstand our current shitstorm. And yet, I believe that humanity is worth the effort to find that hope. I believe that we are worth fighting for. Inevitably, right now feels like the end of the story. My life is a story that begins at birth and ends today, the most recent day I've lived through. But today is not the end of the story. Together, we will change the story, and I believe we can change it for the better. That's why I believe that while hope is not always rewarded, it is always justified.
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