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How to Be Hopeful About Doomsday

2022-01-21 · letter vlog · Hank · 3:56 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Philosophy & meaning (also: World affairs) · mode: Personal essay · tags: timely hook, civic or action cta, heavy topic

After speaking at the unveiling of the 2022 Doomsday Clock, Hank walks through how he wrote hopeful remarks: zoom out to how wonderful life is, recognise that problems are hard for reasons rather than because humans are awful, and instead of getting mad, get curious and engage deeply with one of the many smaller problems.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — The 75th Doomsday Clock unveiling: 100 seconds to midnight for three years

  • ★★ Hank says that yesterday he took part in the unveiling of the 75th annual Doomsday Clock, basically a subjective measure of how close to doom we are. — 00:00:00
  • ★★ Reflecting three years of piling-up bad (pandemics, climate change, isolationism, fascism), the clock has stood at 100 seconds to midnight for three years, the closest in its 75 years. — 00:00:00 · climate change

00:00:27 — The writing assignment: agreeing to speak only if he could be hopeful, going last after the bad news

  • ★★ Asked to give remarks, Hank agreed only if he could be hopeful; going last after speakers explaining why things are bad made it a challenging writing assignment. — 00:00:27 · hope

00:00:56 — Staying in place is not stagnation; zooming out to the origin of life and the universe talking to itself

  • ★★ Hank opened by saying that staying in the same place does not mean being stagnant, so one can talk about both good and bad news, of which there is plenty. — 00:00:56
  • ★★ Hank zooms out: four billion years ago water, energy and carbon became alive, and somewhere between a few million and a few hundred thousand years ago the universe started to talk to itself. (hedged) — 00:00:56
  • ★★★ Humans are the universe talking to itself about itself; we are so worried because this is really wonderful, so we are protecting something great. — 00:01:25 · hope

00:01:55 — Things are hard for reasons: the communications revolution, and why blaming awful humans is disempowering and wrong

  • ★★★ Hank's main point: things are hard for reasons; we are in the largest communications revolution in human history, so we will be bad at it, but needn't resign ourselves to that. — 00:01:55
  • ★★★ Hank is worried by how many people think we could solve these problems if only humans weren't so awful and stupid; he calls the idea seductive, tremendously disempowering and objectively wrong. — 00:02:24
  • ★★★ Humans constantly do things that were once impossible, like this conversation, and in the future we will do many things that are currently impossible. — 00:02:24 · hope
  • ★★★ Getting stuck in disempowerment is the worst place for challenging institutions and solving hard problems, and rage without an outlet only ever makes things worse. — 00:02:24

00:02:53 — Instead of getting mad, get curious: engage deeply with one of the many smaller problems; link to the remarks

  • ★★★ Instead of getting mad, get curious: start with someone who deeply discusses a big problem, like the Prison Policy Initiative on incarceration, David Roberts' Volts on climate, or Fair Fight and Stacey Abrams on voting rights. — 00:02:53 · curiosity, climate change

    “Instead of getting mad, get curious.”

  • ★★ Engage ever more deeply, and listen to people who disagree, to understand not the most awful version of their arguments but the ones actually convincing people. — 00:02:53

  • ★★★ Big, hard problems are made of thousands of smaller problems, each with people working on it; if each of us focuses on one, we will be far more effective than all of us on all of them. — 00:03:22
  • ★ Hank points to his remarks at the link in the description; the description says his part starts around 30 minutes into the unveiling video. — 00:03:51

In the description and comments

  • ★★ The description says none of these challenges will be fixed overnight: science may be fast, but scaling and implementing are slow, and human culture slowest of all. — video description

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: curiosity · Doomsday Clock · hope

Also: People: David Roberts · Stacey Abrams

Works: Volts

Organizations: Fair Fight Action · Prison Policy Initiative

Concepts: abiogenesis · climate change · fascism · mass incarceration · moral outrage · suffrage

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