I’m currently reading Rutger Bregman’s Humankind: A Hopeful History, which asks us to question the story we’ve been telling about ourselves for centuries. The one that says, at bottom, people are selfish, fearful, and prone to cruelty when the veneer of civilisation cracks. Bregman strongly challenges that story with impressive evidence.
The news tells us one side of the story, but there’s a very compelling flip side – one demonstrated when we properly investigate what happens in times of strife. He quotes the Blitz and Hurricane Katrina amongst many other examples: far from succumbing to our basest instincts, all the evidence shows that communities come together and work for each other in noble and deeply generous ways. In other words, we are wired to care for each other.
What strikes me most about this book is its insistence that cynicism isn’t realism. That choosing to believe in people isn’t naïve – it’s one of the most politically and socially potent things we can do. In a world that often feels like it’s fraying at the edges, Humankind points to a truer lens through which to see more clearly. The answers, it seems to me, come from openness to this truer narrative – and from refusing to be disempowered by the media’s version.
Theresa Sansome
On Wednesday 9th April at 3.30pm UK time, I’m running a 90-minute online webinar for the ASP community called Embracing the Paradox. It’s a gentle exploration of how we find – and hold – genuine hope in complex, uncertain times. Not the brittle, wishful kind of hope, but something more robust: hope that lives in the space between us, in relationship, in honest conversation, in the willingness to sit with what’s hard without turning away, and yet, find a frame that empowers and inspires us forward. Drawing on thinkers like Bregman, Robin Wall Kimmerer, and Kahlil Gibran, alongside practices from my own Future Self Now methodology, we’ll explore what it really means to navigate chaos without losing our orientation. I’d love to have you there.
Reserve your place here: https://sustainabilitypractitioners.org/embracing-the-paradox/
