The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times

by Jane Goodall

But your hopes are obviously extended to hope for the community and country you live in. Hoping your community will fight a new development that will pollute the air and affect your child’s health. Hope that the right political leaders will be elected to make your hopes easier to attain.”

four components that are essential for any lasting sense of hope in our lives—and perhaps in our world. We need to have realistic goals to pursue as well as realistic pathways to achieve them. In addition, we need the confidence that we can achieve these goals, and the support to help us overcome adversity along the way. Some researchers call these four components the “hope cycle”

four main reasons for hope: the amazing human intellect, the resilience of nature, the power of youth, and the indomitable human spirit.

I discovered that language, goal setting, and hope all seem to arise in the same area of the brain—the prefrontal cortex, which is right behind our forehead and is the most recently evolved part of our brain.

It’s a mixture of greed, hate, fear, and desire for power that has caused us to use our intellect in unfortunate ways.

what we nurture and encourage wins.”

If we live in a society with a reasonable standard of living and some degree of social justice, the generous and peaceful aspects of our nature are likely to prevail; while in a society of racial discrimination and economic injustice, violence will thrive.

“we have been able to progress beyond the purely emotional aggressive responses of other animals and, as I said, we have the ability to make conscious choices as to how we react in different situations.

we may act aggressively knowing full well that it is morally wrong—at least what we believe is morally wrong. For this reason I believe that only humans are capable of true evil—only we can sit down and, in cold blood, work out ways to torture people, to inflict pain.

over the couple of million years that we have been humans, I do think we have increasingly become more caring and compassionate. And although there is much cruelty and injustice everywhere, there is general agreement that these behaviors are wrong.

To choose forgiveness instead of revenge.”

we are suffering from an absurd and very unwise belief that there can be unlimited economic development on a planet of finite natural resources,

“When making decisions most people ask, ‘Will it help me or my family now or the next shareholders’ meeting or my next election campaign?’ The hallmark of wisdom is asking, ‘What effects will the decision I make today have on future generations? On the health of the planet?’

We need to come together and solve these existential threats to life on Earth. And to do so, we must solve four great challenges—

poverty.

reduce the unsustainable lifestyles of the affluent.

eliminate corruption,

problems caused by growing populations of humans and their livestock.

Suzanne Simard,

Peter Wohlleben,

built-in resilience—

adaptability—

Muhammad Yunus—

That’s why school can be so bad. It keeps small children sitting. It’s awful, they’re not meant to do that. They’re meant to be learning from experience.

We have not inherited the Earth from our ancestors but borrowed it from our children.’