Hope In The Dark: The Untold History of People Power

“Amnesia leads to despair in many ways. The status quo would like you to believe it is immutable, inevitable, and invulnerable, and lack of memory of a dynamically changing world reinforces this view. In other words, when you don’t know how much things have changed, you don’t see that they are changing or they can change.”

In this passage, Solnit points out that the danger of not remembering past social and political changes is that you think the status quo is immutable. The mere knowledge that change has been achieved makes it easier to envision future change. Thus, the status quo that some authorities would like us to believe is immutable is a temporary and easily conquerable phenomenon.

“Total victory has always seemed like a secular equivalent of paradise: a place where all the problems are solved and there’s nothing to do, a fairly boring place. The absolutists of the old left imagined that victory would, when it came, be total and permanent, which is practically the same as saying that victory was and is impossible and will never come.”

Solnit draws an unlikely parallel between the religious far right’s ideas of the world as a fallen Eden and the old left’s search for a world where all problems are solved. This paradisical state would be an inactive one and is such an impossibility that reaching for it leads to disillusionment and inaction. Solnit rejects the idea that the only victory is a total one.

“Together we are very powerful, and we have a seldom-told, seldom-remembered history of victories and transformations that can give us confidence that yes, we can change the world because we have many times before.”

Here, Solnit argues that a history that remembers collective campaigns to change the world is empowering, as it enables us to see that change was possible and to be inspired by the examples of our fellow humans. Subsequently, feats that we may consider impossible enter the realm of possibility.

“Virginia Woolf wrote in her journal, ‘The future is dark, which is on the whole, the best thing the future can be […]’ Dark, she seems to say, as in inscrutable, nor as in terrible. We often mistake the one for the other. Or we transform the future’s unknowability into something certain, the fulfillment of all our dread.”

Solnit cites Virginia Woolf to emphasize that the darkness of the future can be grounds for hope rather than despair. She takes Woolf’s meaning of dark as unpredictable rather than bleak and thereby encourages the reader to make the most of what isn’t yet written to create change in the world. This is counterintuitive, as we’ve been trained for generations (and in an evolutionary sense are hardwired) to see darkness as frightening and a sure sign that our hopes are over.

“It’s always too soon to go home. And it’s always too soon to calculate effect.”

Throughout the book, Solnit repeats the idea that it’s always too soon to go home from activism and resume our individual lives. Retreating into political apathy means that the fruits of our activism may falter before they have a chance to ripen—that we set aside causes when we don’t have an immediate victory because we believe that we’ve failed to achieve them.

“Hope […] is not […] willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for early success, but, rather, an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed.”

Here, Solnit emphasizes the importance of trusting in hope that is independent of the outcome. Thus, goodness rather than results should be a central motivation in campaigning for something.

“By living out our hope and resistance in public together with strangers of all kinds, we overcame this catechism of fear, we trusted each other; we forged a community that bridged the differences among the peace-loving as we demonstrated our commitment to the people of Iraq.”

Solnit shows that a key goal of activism is to bring together previously disparate groups. Although the communities are temporary, uniting people of different stripes makes a powerful statement against the government monolith that seeks destructive action. The trust between different kinds of activists is an antidote to their great mistrust of the government, and this positive feeling keeps them going.

“Despair demands less of us, it’s more predictable and in a sad way safer. Authentic hope requires clarity – seeing the troubles in this world – and imagination, seeing what might lie beyond these situations that are perhaps not inevitable and immutable.”

While despair is a passive state that’s easy to fall into, hope requires action, as Solnit shows by creating an opposition between static gloom and toiling optimism. The authentically hopeful must balance clear-sightedness about a problem with the skill to contemplate a better world. This demands more of us than despair, which makes us spiral into apathy.

“The activists who deny their own power and possibility likewise choose to shake off their sense of obligation: if they are doomed to lose, they don’t have to do very much except situate themselves as beautiful losers or at least virtuous ones.”

The image of the “beautiful loser” shows the vain posturing of defeatism. People use the power and possibility that might keep them fighting to instead do nothing—yet still feel good about themselves because they’re ideologically on the right side. The purpose of Solnit’s statement is to rouse such activists from their complacency and hold them accountable to their continuing duties.

“Joy doesn’t betray but sustains activism. And when you face a politics that aspires to make you fearful, alienated, and isolated, joy is a fine initial act of insurrection.”

Solnit overturns the common assumption that activism must be deadly serious to be successful. Instead, any form of joy and lightheartedness among protesters is essential fuel to their efforts; it’s also a bold retort to the authorities who may seek to intimidate and depress activists out of their opposition.

“From the places that you have been instructed to ignore or rendered unable to see come the stories that change the world, and it is here that culture has the power to shape politics and ordinary people have the power to change the world.”

Here, Solnit argues that while the politicians who occupy center stage think that they’re the ones writing history, the social movements that count emerge from the margins. Obscure places breed the hope for change and start shifting the power from authorities to ordinary people.

“The perils of corporate personhood will become common sense, become what everyone always knew. Which is to say, stories migrate secretly. The assumption that whatever we now believe is just […] what we always knew, is a way to save face. It’s also a way to forget the power of a story and of a storyteller, the power in the margins, and the potential for change.”

Solnit argues that just as in history previously unthinkable notions became common sense, the unthinkable things of the present day can become reality. While the authorities portray past radical changes in thought as common sense and seek to envelop them in the status quo, Solnit asks us to be aware that these changes came from the margins and spread through the power of storytelling.

“The millennium was long anticipated as a moment of arrival, as the end of time, but it is instead a beginning of sorts, for something that is increasingly recognizable but yet unnamed, yet unrecognized, a new ground for hope.”

While the media and politicians sought to define the millennium as a fixed entity, Solnit sees it as a fluctuating, vague phenomenon. She’s yet unsure of the direction events will take in this era but finds the darkness of the future hopeful.

“Poisoning the well is no longer a crime, but stopping the free flow of poison meets with punishment.”

In this passage, Solnit uses the visceral metaphor of a poisoned well to illustrate how injustice is directed at activists who campaign against the malpractice of large corporations—instead of at the corporations themselves. This encourages contemplation about the corruption of authorities that seek to silence truth-tellers while widening their profit margins.

“The airplanes that became bombs were from any perspective a terrible thing. But there was a moment when something beautiful might have come out of it, not only the heroism of those on site but of those across the country.”

Solnit paints the surreal horror of 9/11 in the image of functional airplanes becoming bombs. However, she contemplates that the tragic event was an opportunity to reshape the US in a more heroic form. Thus, she asserts her belief that coming through crisis makes us better human beings.

“History is like the weather, not like checkers […] A game of checkers ends. The weather never does. That’s why you can’t save anything. Saving is the wrong word, one invoked over and over again, for almost every cause […] We never did save the whales, though we might have prevented them from becoming extinct.”

While much activism predicates upon notions of saving, Solnit argues that this is impossible in a world that fluctuates and endures like the weather. Although it’s counterintuitive to our human desire for certainty, clear wins, and preservation from destruction, we’d do better to appreciate that activism takes place via small victories in a changing world.

“An essay, a book, is one statement in a long conversation you could call culture or history; you are answering something or questioning something that may have fallen silent long ago, and the response to your words may come long after you’ve gone and never reach your ears, if anyone hears you in the first place.”

Here, Solnit comments on how writing is an act of faith—and the unpredictability of whether one’s words will have any consequences. This is akin to the notion that the fruits of today’s activism may grow only many years in the future. She thus draws attention to the mysterious process of influence in the world and the human inability to control the timescale of the impact of words and actions.

“If we did more, the world would undoubtedly be better; what we have done has sometimes kept it from becoming worse.”

Solnit introduces the paradoxical idea that the fruits of activism are often invisible as they constitute the prevention of something that has stopped the world from becoming a worse place. She thus encourages looking for progress in unexpected places and asserts that not all victories are loud and revolutionary.

“Many North American creation myths do not portray a world that was perfect in the beginning. Instead, the world was made by flawed, humorous creators who never finished the job. In that world, there was never a state of grace, never a fall, and creation continues.”

In this passage Solnit draws attention to Native American stories of flawed creators and unfinished creation projects to show those raised in the Judeo-Christian tradition a way to perceiving the world other than a fallen Eden. The North American worldview is more consonant with Solnit’s view of activism as a never-finished project as opposed to one with a finite end.

“The guys drilling with guns might’ve been too weird to be our allies, but they were just the frothy foam on a big wave of alienation, suspicion and fear from people watching their livelihoods and their communities go down the tubes.”

Here, Solnit makes the case for groups with disparate ideology to unite when their goal is similar. While nothing would seem so opposite of a pacifist environmentalist as a group of gun-loving men, the groups share a sense of alienation from the globalized projects where local livelihoods and lifestyles are sacrificed to the interests of corporations.

“The answer to most either/or questions is both; the best response to a paradox is to embrace both sides instead of cutting one or the other for the sake of coherence. The question is about negotiating a viable relationship between the local and the global, not signing up with one and shutting out the other.”

In this passage, Solnit points out that embracing complexity and paradox is essential for activism in a complex, continually evolving world. The focus on the relationship between local and global action, rather than a fixed binary solution, indicates the necessity of a versatile, adaptive response—and the open-mindedness to see both sides.

“This is what the world looks like to me, like the UN Plaza, full of half-forgotten victories and new catastrophes, of farmers and junkies, of mountains of apples and of people trying to change the world and tell the truth. Someday all this may be ruins over which pelicans will fly, but for now it is a place where history is still unfolding. Today is also the day of creation.”

Solnit’s native city, San Francisco, is a microcosm for the world’s balance of despair and hope. The UN plaza, with its “half-forgotten victories and new catastrophes,” indicates the world’s flux of promise and pessimism. She can envision a day when nature reclaims her city; however, for now it’s still a place of human history—and a place continually being created by the humans inhabiting it.

“Many were killed or widowed or orphaned on that September 11, but none were defeated. Not that day. To remain undefeated we would have had to recognize that such events are immeasurably terrible, but neither so rare as we Americans like to imagine, nor insurmountable.”

Solnit repeatedly emphasizes that immediately following the terrorist attack on September 11, no one was defeated, even though the attack had immense effects on lives. Instead, she suggests, what defeated the populace was an American exceptionalism in believing that they were unique in their endurance of such a tragedy and so felt victimized by it.