Hope, Not Optimism – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

As always, excellent insights from Cory Doctorow on how to remain hopeful nowadays (and always) and why is it different from being optimistic.

The main points:

• To face problems in the real world, too complex and large to fully optimize, we should do like the computer scientists and make peace with that fact, opting for a “good enough” solution instead of a perfect one.
• One good approach (the one favored by Doctorow at least) for social problems is hill climbing: take one step at a time towards highest ground

If you can see just one way — any way — to improve your situation, no matter how seemingly small, then you will ascend a step up the hill, you will find a new vantage point, and new courses of action will be revealed. Take note of these, determine which one gets you the furthest toward your goal, take another step, and reassess.

• Lawrence Lessig argues in his book Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace that there are 4 forces that determine social outcomes:
  • Code: That which is technically possible or impossible.
  • Law: That which is legally permitted or prohibited.
  • Markets: That which is profitable or unprofitable.
  • Norms: That which is socially acceptable or unacceptable.
• For Doctorow, those are the 4 cardinal directions when climbing the metaphorical hill:

  This suggests a method: If you feel hopeless and out of options, stop to check whether you can switch directions and still climb the gradient.

• This method “allows each individual or collective or affinity group to pick a tactic that moves them up the hill toward their goal, with the understanding that allies with different priorities, skills, and vantage points can leverage their successes for more success.”

  The less time we all have to spend agreeing on tactics and timing, the more time we have to actually advance those tactics.

• This method is not optimistic, it is hopeful:

  Optimism is just a form of fatalism, a view of the world in which our deeds are irrelevant to the outcome: “No matter what I do, things will get better.”

  (…)

  Hope is a method: If I do something about this situation, I might change it enough so that I can do something else about this situation.