Thread by @1goodtern

I've got a nebulous thought around belief and covid and climate and politics that has been ringing round my head for a couple of weeks and won't properly coalesce or congeal, so I think it's time to just start writing and see what comes out.

In a nutshell, I think too many people are living by habit and hope.

Habit is just doing things the way you've always done things.

Hope is hoping that it's going to work out ok.

Hoping that the things you're doing aren't going to harm you or the people around you.

Some hope is actually exceptionalism.
It'll never happen to me. That sort of thing happens to other people. Weak people, lazy people, foreign people, people who deserve it.

Some habit is old habits from an old time when things were different.
And you haven't realised that things have changed.

You used to be able to rely on public health to at least pretend to have your best interests at heart.

If your habit was to trust public health, then you need to break that habit.

People hope that someone in charge knows what they're doing.

And their habits are to just get on with things.

Some people hope in science, but that's just hope in people, scientists, who have been doing science stuff.

Science is only ever filtered through the medium of people.
So you can think that you're trusting vaccines, but actually you're trusting the people who made the vaccines.

And some people hope in God or faith or the rightness of the universe or positive thinking or basically just hope itself, the idea that things must get better, that they have to.

But often when people think they're trusting their God or faith, they're actually just trusting the people who have told them that everything's going to be ok.

Faith is so often about trusting *people* and what they have said.

And when it comes to huge issues like covid or climate, the hope is that everything is just going to sort itself out.

In my reading of history, it seems that very rarely have things just sorted themselves out.

If you're hoping things are going to sort themselves out now, then you're ignoring the evidence of history.

What actually needs to happen is for people to change their habits.

And by habits, I mean that in climate terms, people need to change the way they live.

And the same goes for Covid.
The situation has changed.
The old habits don't work anymore.

Hope isn't going to be enough.

Believing is not going to be enough.

We need to change how we live.

Why don't people change how they live...

Maybe we don't know we need to.

Maybe we don't know what new thing we need to do.

Maybe we don't want to.

Maybe we don't know how to.

Maybe we don't have the resources necessary for the change.

Maybe we're addicted or trapped in the old ways.

Maybe we're afraid.

Maybe we're stuck in our ways.

Maybe we're selfish and think someone else should be doing it but not us.

I know that eating dairy is bad for the planet.
But I flipping love cheese.

And I can justify my cheese eating to myself, even though I know there are several good reasons to stop.

(thank you in advance for all the people who will reply to these cheese loving posts telling me about how evil I am)

And each one of us is justifying each of our indulgences or habits or luxuries and not realising that we're doing damage far beyond what seems like just a small slice of cheese.

And because we're a planet of eight billion people the habits all add up beyond the sum total of available resources, and all the hope in the world can't make up the shortfall.

Do you just hope that the AMOC won't shut down?

Do you just hope that there'll be enough fresh water in 2035?

Do you just hope that a third of the world's arable land won't be turned into a dustbowl over the next twenty years?

Do you just hope that corruption in politics and the influence of the billionaire class won't permanently destroy democracy worldwide, and then the world itself?

Hope is an illusion.

The great changes in the world haven't been won by hope, they've been won by determination and sacrifice and discipline and vision and creativity and dealing with reality not illusion.

Ok, so maybe I should say that they've not been won by hope alone.

What it needs is hope applied.

And habits changed.

A new world.
A better one.

And a new you in it.