I was honored to write an editorial for my Human Rights Masters course alumni newsletter this week. I was tasked with giving human rights activists some hope and purpose after a month of election results that challenge our faith in humanity and progress. I used it as an opportunity to argue that human rights work is not just about writing laws, but promoting shared humanity - something all of us can do.
In 2006, when I graduated from EMA, a consensus in politics around the primacy of human rights felt set in stone.
Just ten years later, when I was working for Amnesty International, it felt like that consensus was being washed away.
In the years that followed, I realized that it is not enough to start the human rights story with the horrors of the 20th century: we need to offer a vision of a future that more human rights can achieve. Human beings are not made of stone, we constantly evolve based on our experiences and the ideas that are most salient in society around us. To realize the rights of all humans, we must create a culture where we see and value the humanity of others.
Hope is the belief that tomorrow can be better than today, if we make it so. Unlike positivity or optimism, hope is a tool for dark times: we recognize the fears but we seek pathways towards our goal. One of the challenges for the human rights movement is to find new pathways towards our goals, rather than relying on tactics like “raising awareness” and “name and shame”. One such pathway is drawing on fields like neuroscience, psychology and behavioral theory, along with new technologies like AI and digital marketing, so that we can turn insight about human behavior into strategy for better human behavior.
The most important thing right now is that we not lose faith in our cause and in humanity itself. A great source of fear for activists is seeing large numbers of people support cruel politicians and inhumane policies. But that does not mean we have lost those people forever, it means we have lost narratives and debates. Huge amounts of financial and political resources are being invested in spreading hate and division online. We have to believe that we can win them back. We must win them back. Humanity depends on it.
Underlying this creeping sense that human rights are losing their moral force is an underlying meta-narrative about human nature: are we fundamentally cruel, individualistic creatures who need to be punished by strict laws when we err? Or are we fundamentally caring, group animals in whom better behavior can be nurtured through empathy and compassion. Can human beings change for the better?
Whether we are dealing with conflict, migration or climate change, these underlying meta-narratives - or worldviews - shape our behavior and attitudes. And they can be changed - if we in the human rights movement reflect on our values and then talk about them, so that they become as salient in our political debates as the hateful ideas that currently dominate.
I think we need to grow a shared humanity worldview. We can all spread this way of thinking through the stories we tell. You can start by reading our Visual Communications Guide for Human Rights: Seeing Hope.
I believe we can cultivate more empathy and compassion between human beings, based simply on the fact that we are all human. Brene Brown defines compassion as “the daily practice of recognizing and accepting our shared humanity so that we treat ourselves and others with loving-kindness, and we take action in the face of suffering.”
We humans get a pleasing hit of the brain chemical called dopamine when we see another group suffer (Schadenfreude). But we can also learn to draw pleasure from simply seeing “the other” feel joy, without any personal gain to ourselves (this is expressed by the Sanskrit word Muditā).
What if we started to invest a fraction of the resources being invested in division and hate into the opposite force, into love and care for other human beings - into shared humanity?
In hope-based communication, we recognize our fear, and then ask ourselves to articulate an alternative possibility that we hope for and can base our strategy upon. So let’s be really clear, this is a scary time, with the potential for very dark things to happen. Technology is rapidly offering tools that could be used to dehumanize entire groups of people at an unprecedented scale.
But if we are to respond effectively to this moment, we cannot just be reactive, we have to proactively shape society by cultivating shared humanity - for example by finding ways to use new technologies to create empathy between different groups. It is not enough to identify and analyse dehumanization, we have to counter it with rehumanization. We need to be planting seeds for the future, not just pulling weeds.
For anyone who shares the feelings of grief and despair that I often grapple with, I recommend Zadie Smith’s “On optimism and despair”, based on a talk given shortly after the 2016 election of Donald Trump. In it she provides a great metaphor that perfectly captures how beharioral science plays out in politics.
“Individual citizens are internally plural: they have within them the full range of behavioral possibilities. They are like complex musical scores from which certain melodies can be teased out and others ignored or suppressed, depending, at least in part, on who is doing the conducting. At this moment, all over the world the conductors standing in front of this human orchestra have only the meanest and most banal melodies in mind. … Those of us who remember, too, a finer music must try now to play it, and encourage others, if we can, to sing along.”
In other words, it is little wonder so many people experiencing so much uncertainty, anxiety and loneliness can be swayed by the siren’s call of populist authoritarianism. But by promoting a different politics, a different way of treating each other and seeing the world, we can change minds, attitudes, behaviors, and eventually the world.
When we focus on what is possible, we realize that there is SO much we can do - right now - to grow a better world. This year we are going to launch a new global community organizing group called the Center for Hope-based Communication (you can join the waiting list here). Our vision is a world where hope is stronger than fear, both in the world and in social change movements. We believe that if changemakers engage in collective storytelling to reinforce a shared humanity worldview, we can drive better behavior and change political narratives.
Together, we can make compassion common sense.
Thanks to the EMAlumni Association for publishing this editorial. You can sign up to their newsletter here.
Hopey, changey stuff
The UK is voting today. I found the Labour Party campaign painfully regressive in its embrace of right-wing policies and oblivious disregard of the Overton Window. But I did like Keir Starmer concept of “Ordinary Hope” (that the future will be better for your children). I just wished he had brought that message to life more in his campaign, like the 1997 campaign which actually promised some bold policies together with a bold promise of renewal: Things can only get better.
A better definition of Ordinary Hope comes from the UCL Policy Lab:
“[Ordinary hope] means accepting that the future is not going just to be given back to us. It will have to be made anew by people of all different backgrounds, in all different places, acting consciously together.”
More importantly, in policy terms, ordinary hope is about what people most urgently need: care.
“Through the lens of ordinary hope, we see that investment in care is also investment in our future.”
Meanwhile, in France, a more desperate and determined “no pasaran” form of hope; as a coalition against Fascism finally forms, with left-wing politicians pulling out of run-offs across the country to try to keep seats out of far-right hands (and Centrists slowly following suit). It has required far too much pressure, but admiration for government ministers sacrificing their positions of power in the greater good would be a good strategy to motivate others to join the cause and do the right thing. Long-term, however, we have to figure out how to organize this much unity, energy and determination not just to prevent disaster, but also to get stuff done, i.e. policies of care. The question, as always, is how can we organize ordinary hope?
The latest episode of podcast Communicating Climate Change features hope-based communication - check it out on spotify, apple. In it, I talked about the concept of hope as both active and visionary, how flipping our intuitions inside out can strengthen our message, and how our brains can work to help or hinder us along the way.
Loving the work and writing of Trevor Smith on reparations.
Has anyone been reading about protopia?
New messaging from Anat for France and the USA, the latter presented in an exemplary easy-to-share-from toolkit. My favourite: Disrupt Despair.
What’s giving us hope
Amid all the shit, the European Championships is a reminder that people have more in common and are more than capable of getting together and having a good time, no matter who they are or where they come from. Above all, the fact that hundreds of people will gather around one guy playing a saxophone is a big source of hope for me right now. The hope guy applauds "the guy with the saxopone” and his shared humanity messaging (“love for all humans” “we were not made to hate each other”)
Tiktok failed to load.
Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser