Even at the End of the World, There’s Still a Duty of Hope

We need to fix what we can and set fire to the rest — without a revolution.

What if we were to look right in the eye of the scary truth that even if most of us survive 2018, human civilization as we know it is about to squeeze through a decisive couple of decades and may not make it?

What if we looked our potential extinction right in the face and stopped jokily saying, “I hope I perish in the first wave,” and instead said, “This could really happen. This is the urgency that demands action, and here is what we are going to do.”

And what if instead of being shut down by that fear, we were opened up by joy?

It’s not as daft as it sounds. It’s only when you think about joy that you realize how much of our politics is driven by fear: fear of others, fear of losing however much or little we have.

On New Year’s Day, I went with my family to see Star Wars: The Last Jedi in a cinema in Kerry, Ireland, just a few miles along the coast from the windswept ocean rock where Luke Skywalker hides out.

It was Baltic cold, and we kept our coats on long after we sat down in the half-empty theater. My dad stayed awake for the whole thing. (This is a man who gently snored through the…