Also posted on Linked in August 25, 2026.

Hope has been on my mind a lot lately.  I’ve been reading SciFi that has a hopeful outcome after the polycrisis, the many crises that seem to be accelerating in real time. I heard Thomas Homer Dixon’s talk yesterday about the Hope Attractor (very small but real) at the Victoria Forum and read Julien Norris substack on raging against the dying light.

I also often turn to the Adaptive Cycle when I start to lose hope about the polycrisis, or even a more focused crisis like the one our government is dealing with because of the chaos emanating from the Trump Whitehouse.  I like to remind myself that when old systems get smashed up, they release a lot of energy needed for exploration and ultimately growth.  We need to harness that energy if we are to get closer to the hope attractor.

As I listened to the news yesterday about the tariff war, I couldn’t help but wonder if anyone in the Federal Government is thinking about how to turn all the released energy of people who will lose their jobs into something useful?  Why not think about ways to steward that energy toward some of the problems we/they are experiencing?  Invite people to be useful by tackling local problems, ones they know of and even ones they don’t know about.

What could this look like?  Maybe it starts with kitchen table and community-based conversations about local problems and potential solutions?  Enable exploration, innovation and experimentation. 

I once heard the line from Vina Nadjibulla that human rights is just three things “the right to be, to become and to belong”.  We need to create spaces for those who are losing their jobs, not just to be, but to also become and belong to a hopeful future.