Where is the hope?

What I learned from five years of being a hope-based communicator

We developed hope-based communication in 2017 as human rights activists were trying to come to terms with precisely the kind of moment we find ourselves in at the end of 2024: Trump, Brexit, fear of refugees, brutal war in Syria, Yemen and elsehwere, ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya in Myanmar and populist authoritarians seeming to pop up everywhere.

Then as now, we believe that, like human rights, hope is something you need precisely in dark times.

Three things that inspired the hope-based idea in 2017 that still hold true

1. To counter populists, offer alternatives. Attacking them just allows them to dominate our psyche (There were three times more mentions of Trump than Kamala Harris on Tiktok).
   Instead, be bold and radical in embracing your own values, like the Book of Radical Love strategy in Istanbul - which advised activists to ignore the populist but have love for their supporters.

2. We have to inspire people, especially people who already share our values. As in 2016, the Trump/Musk campaign invested heavily in demotivating Democratic voters. The campaign of emotions is as important, if not more, than the campaign of ideas, facts and messages.

   It’s a pity that a campaign that started with inspiring content about Kamala Harris, ended up talking more about Trump. (I’ll admit I also fell into the trap of reading all the stories of Trump being terrible, thinking “he can’t possibly win now” → the problem is populists will always find another taboo to break to win the attention contest: breaking the taboos is the point for them).

3. We have to work every day to nurture support for core values. Making principles like human rights and rule of law common sense requires constant, dedicated communications and marketing work: think gardening, replanting season after season, allowing these concepts to put down strong roots in our societies (rather than a building that, once built, sits there for centuries requiring the odd lick of paint).

   

   Artwork: Huzefa Indorewala for ArtistsForClimate.org

Three things that I have learned in five years of hope-based workshops

These were the ideas with which we went to work on hope-based communication at Amnesty International in 2017, and then into its own community in 2019. Five years later, we see the need for hope more than ever:

1. We need new, cross-border movements. There is a shared vision out there for a better world: we have seen it in our workshops when we ask activists to articulate their vision and values. It is based on community, care and change. But it needs a political movement to give it shape, something that unites us as international citizens.

2. To change the narrative, we have to be the narrative. We need to create new rituals that reinforce support for climate justice, democracy and human rights. Rituals give people sense of control and belonging. And one person taking an action sends a signal to others, providing “social proof” encouraging them to also support the cause.
   In today’s world of visual-first media, a message will only spread if people can bring it to life in front of their smartphone camera.

3. We need to build social change strategy around a more scientific understand of human behavior and a more hopeful perspective of human nature.

   We must use insights from experts like Jamil Zaki to build organizations and strategies based on cultivating empathy and compassion, kindness and caring.
   We need new kinds of organizations dedicated to storytelling and other applications of behavioral science that directly changes attitudes and behaviors. (rather than relying on laws and policies to make things better by themselves).
   This collective storytelling can keep alive intrinsic values and common interest thinking at a time when authoritarian leaders risk shaping our brains and psyches.

Three things to draw hope from

Social change organizations, and human rights groups in particular, were made for times like these.

1. We’ll do it ourselves. Leaders were never going to fix things. We were always going to have to get it done ourselves. Now there is no avoiding it. While we obsess over politics, the financial system remains a black hole sucking up all our money. And then there’s climate change. And capitalism. We need to build a new global society from the ground up, starting with the way we live together. We cannot wait for leaders and experts and wealthy donors and COPs, we all have to grow build a global culture based on shared humanity; on mutuality and interconnection; on love and kindness.

Our politics is already changing, the centre-right neoliberal consensus has broken and can only be defended by more extremist parties. If centrists were still in power, we would be complacently sleep-walking towards climate disaster. Now there is no avoiding the need to radically reshape our politics, our economies and our societies around a radically different set of values: care, compassion, interconnection.

2. If we get organized, we can change the narrative. Today’s technology changes how influence is shaped and spread. If you can tell your story in a creative, engaging way on Instagram, YouTube or TikTok, you can reach people without convinces an editor or producer that your story is worth being heard. Right now, rich people are using their money to flood these new zones of influence. But just wait until the rest of us get organized to spread our messages.

3. [Human] nature is on our side. With billionaires and authoritarian states pouring huge resources into spreading division and hate online, it’s no wonder toxic narratives dominate politics. But imagine if we invested just a fraction of that in nurturing solidarity and shared humanity? When you read about how wired humans are for collective action and kindness, you can see a new way forward for our species and our planet. We just have to work for it.

Hopey, changey stuff

• Sign up for foresight training! A leading thinker and faciltiator in the social change field Krizna Gomez is offering a Webinar on Futures Thinking for Beginners. Details and signup here. Krizna leads the way in adapting foresight practice to civil society - see here guide here.

• Beyond blame games: new article from Anat Shenker-Osorio on the need to offer a viable alternative to neo-liberalism to counter the populist threat to democracy. My take: if we learn anything from populist electoral success, it should be to have the courage to offer radical alternatives to the status quo, rather than appear to defend it.

• When is a social media platform too toxic to use? Cristina Velez writes a great piece on the move from Twitter to BlueSky (English version here). I suspect we are headed for a period of smaller, niche communities rather than the big platforms that have proved so toxic both for our politics and our mental health. On that note, I just can’t stop thinking about Zadie Smith saying that she uses a flip phone because she doesn’t want her behavior shaped by apps.

  What if your communities started to shape the apps we use, rather than the other way around?

• Can mindfulness and CBT practice make us more resilient? The more I read about psychology and neurobiology, the more I see the need to integrate these subjects not just into human rights training and education, but also to make them a core part of civic education. After all, how are we going to improve human societies without understanding human behavior?

Quote of the week

If novelists know anything it’s that 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 — and most recently in America — the conductors standing in front of this human orchestra have only the meanest and most banal melodies in mind. Here in Germany you will remember these martial songs; they are not a very distant memory. But there is no place on earth where they have not been played at one time or another. Those of us who remember, too, a finer music must try now to play it, and encourage others, if we can, to sing along.

Zadie Smith, On Optimism and Despair, 2016