What gives you optimism about the future? What makes you hopeful?
Threats of disaster and gloomy forecasts stalk our days. They provoke despair and withdrawal. We need some basis for hope, to encourage action, and to help those we will soon leave behind.
I am planning a “Looking Forward” discussion for Friday afternoon of Reunion, seeking broad participation by the experts in our midst – and we are all experts on something, right?
My career has been mostly in energy and climate policy, good basis for a bleak outlook. But there is much to be hopeful about, even there. Does this strike a chord with you, in your field?
Nominate your own Trailer of Coming Attractions –surprising snippets of good—anything from health care to AI to your favorite pastime. From podium or the audience: brief, and factually based.
Let me know what gives you hope. Encourage classmates to get in touch with me, or to leave their comments here on the website. Add your comments below.
Be heard at the reunion session.
Email me reid.detchon@gmail.com.
Thanks.
Prompted by Reid Detchon’s note on this Earth Day, I will share that I do have hope about the environment, despite adverse trends and unsettling current events. Since graduation I have spent my career in education, and over the last twenty years have been involved in promoting environmental sustainability. I am now a member of the Yale Blue Green (YBG) board, and our mission does give me hope. We serve as an alumni hub for thought leadership, collaborative action, lifelong learning and inspiration on initiatives promoting environmental sustainability, and we serve as a liaison with the University in its sustainability efforts, including Planetary Solutions and the Yale Sustainability. Over the last decade, Yale Blue Green has developed Local Chapters in major cities that connect fellow alums on environmental and sustainability issues unique to their area and focus on five areas: nature, service, networking, education, and activism.
I am eager to connect with classmates who might be interested in starting a Class of ‘70 YBG Chapter. Recently, the Class of ’94 created a Class Chapter at their reunion, and I hope we might follow their example and organize our own environmental work through Yale Blue Green. A core group meets monthly and the larger community comes together for a series of quarterly one-hour zoom calls featuring a class member involved in some aspect of environmental sustainability. These talks, available to YGB members and other alumni, have been preceded by an informal half-hour class meet-up and check in. The activities of the Y94 Class Chapter can be seen on the YBG website.
If this idea sparks your interest, I would be glad to talk with you further about this initiative. Please feel free to contact me at pchapman5@gmail.com or 510-520-6657.
Paul
Being naturally optimistic due to faith in a benevolent divinity , I feel there’s little any of us can do other than kindness to each other and charity . I honestly believe things will work out ok .
What a strange, strange world we live in, Mr. Jack. Blindly, I began to apply effort where I could in 1978, working [after 80+ hours as a medical intern] in the first transgender clinic in San Francisco – long before this was a nationally visible issue.
I have enjoyed picking projects and leaning in / looking for my handhold on Archimedes’ lever since. Emergency medicine has been largely a practice for those who cannot use office based medicine – whether by acuity or disenfranchisement. After retirement 3 years ago, I have pivoted to on call education for those members of the MN legislature who choose to seek my input. I am still teaching mortals how to drive without crashing. Oh my, do I have stories. Ask at will YC’70/55.
I am hopeful. It’s not easy to be hopeful, but not to be hopeful is to surrender in advance, which is what the fascists want.
There is an important distinction between being hopeful and being optimistic. A person can see what the pessimist sees and still be hopeful.
In thinking about why I am hopeful, I think it is grounded in my faith…another discussion for another time.
I am convinced by our classmate Dr. Jose Giron, despite our political differences, that there is great hope in medical science. (I have read one of his papers which moved me greatly.) Maybe more will be from Japanese or British bio-tech than our own in the future, but research is very promising. I take hope in the proliferation of small, local, and diverse agriculture and green markets. When in my work, I encounter depressed youth, I ask them the current human population. Kids know this answer. I say, “Someone is bound to think of something.”
So I am currently as pessimistic as previous contributors, but I have several observations. When I was in 7th grade, I remember a geography class in which all the wonderful things about our country were stressed–most productive economy, strongest army, most natural resources, most morally righteous, etc. As a result, I felt really good being an American—until I grew older and began to realize all our flaws throughout history: Slavery, women as second class citizens, our imperialistic tendencies, our deeply embedded racism (Jim Crow, etc.), our wealth discrepancies, our demagogues (McCarthyism, for example)–I could go on. Suddenly I began to feel less proud and more ashamed. The American flag suddenly became less a symbol of what is right with America than a badge of shame for some of our behaviors, especially given our current political leadership. What I find interesting, however, is that in reviewing our history, it usually takes a major calamity to set us right, at least for a time. Think of reconstruction after the Civil War, the righteous populism of Teddy Roosevelt and the labor movement after the age of the robber barons, the FDR agenda (WPA, social security, etc.) and World War II that pulled us out of the Great Depression following the excesses of the roaring twenties, the post-war benefits of the GI Bill, the Civil Rights Movement, Medicare, Medicaid, and the other Great Society programs. We got the EPA under Nixon in response to horrendous industrial pollution (think of the Cuyahoga River catching fire, the local cancer epidemics, urban smog). We got the Affordable Care Act when people with pre-existing conditions couldn’t get health insurance. What all of these benefits have in common is that we had to go through various forms of terrible trauma to attain them. Somewhere in the future, I shudder to think, we will have another terrible trauma, hopefully not self-induced by our current government (but I’m not holding my breath), be it a bird flu pandemic we are ill prepared for, a global recession, or a serious regional or world war that will somehow bring us back to our senses and allow some good to flourish once again. I just hope we can all survive it. So my optimism, such as it may be, is rooted in our next calamity (what’s it going to take, an invasion from Mars?), following which we will all hopefully find a way to cooperate and put us in a better place.
Here is my brief reflection on my hopes for the future.
History is cyclic. At times it moves far too quickly, at times far too slowly. I have confidence in the young, that they will advocate for their future, including the environment, the economy, healthcare, and inequity. It might take a while to happen. As for the immediate future, I have always said that extremists inevitably over play their hand. The upcoming congressional elections have the potential to slow, maybe even reverse, the MAGA madness.
As for my profession, medicine, I sense an increasing public dissatisfaction with much of healthcare – access, cost, and the subliminal yet pervasive anonymity of care provision. Whether change in that area comes quickly or gradually remains to be seen. I hope it is soon.
I have little hope, since the greatest goal in our society seems to be accumulation of material wealth and the primary motivation greed. However, the great goodness and kindness I see in my children and grandchildren gives me some hope that their world may be a better place than ours.
Very little gives me hope, though I keep trying to do my small part. I feel like Cassandra — everything I (and a few others) warned the rest of us about Trump and his thugs has come to pass, only worse. I remember referring to him years ago as a wannabe fascist, and friends accused me of normalizing or even diminishing the term “fascism”, of insulting the memory of victims of REAL fascists. No one accuses me of that now. Random thoughts: Coffin once referred to the U.S. as a country that grew by enslaving one minority and exterminating another. Right on, William Sloane! “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public”, attributed to H.L. Mencken. Amen, H.L.
Mostly these days, I weep for the future of our one and only grandchild. Based upon the mortality tables, my wife and I have another 20 years or so. Our kids (in their 40s) are already aware of what is coming. But our granddaughter believes only in the goodness of people — she’s surrounded by two loving parents, four doting grandparents and an adoring uncle. She lives in Massachusetts, where, for the most part, the cancer of Donald Trump has not yet spread. But how will she deal, in the years ahead, with toxic air, water and food, a burning planet, weather extremes, a broken medical system, bigotry and hatred triumphant, cruelty the official law of the land? She still believes in happy endings, good triumphing over evil, love conquers all, the Beatitudes.
My small part, to which I refer above, is engaging in political activity. And even that seems inadequate, what with one of our two main political parties no better than a cult — hypocritical, dishonest, craven, heartless — and the other one feckless and, yes, craven, too. Our Supreme Court is ruled by partisan, dishonest hacks, who perjured themselves to get on the bench, sneer at ethics and openly take bribes. Imagine how women feel these days, with one “Justice” credibly accused of sexual harassment and another of attempted rape, their attitudes toward women perfectly reflected in their medieval decisions on women’s health and women’s rights.
Anyway, hard to be optimistic.
It’s spring training for baseball. It’s always a time for hope!
This email came in just as my wife and I were talking with the two women (immigrants) who clean our house. They were asking Margaret about how they and their young husbands could volunteer at a very active soup kitchen that we support.
What gives me hope, then, is the willingness of people to help and the effectiveness of local initiatives.
Who was it who was questioned about why he/she thought he/she and a few friends could ever change things said “That kind of start is the only way things have ever been changed!”