A Big Question I Have Is…

A few weeks ago I had the good fortune of participating in The Futures Happening: Democracy Edition at the Stanford d.school. My friend Lisa K. Solomon curated and hosted the gathering. It was based on her premise that, “if we don’t spend time working on more positive postures and possibilities for our future, we risk staying in a constant state of reactive despair, or worse, disengagement.” As Lisa puts it, “we can't build a future we haven't first imagined.” 

Lisa convened an eclectic group of people to imagine possible futures. She infused the standard mix of nonprofit leaders, philanthropists, and consultants with students, athletes, coaches, futurists, filmmakers, photographers, designers, librarians, DJs, slam poets, and other creative types.

Toward the end of our time together, Lisa asked participants to fill out index cards with a simple prompt: “A big question I have is…” My response, in case you have trouble deciphering the scrawl in the photo above, reads as follows:

“How can we bring the spirit of hopefulness, creativity, and bottom-up civic innovation that mark this gathering to the broader “democracy” movement that tends to be pessimistic, in-a-rut, and top down?”

I brought the card on which I had scribbled my big question home from Palo Alto and taped it to my desk. Since then, I have been mulling over answers to it. Let me share a few here.

Recovering hope

These days, the worldviews of most philanthropists, civic leaders, and advocates working to bolster democracy run the gamut from bleak to grim. There is plenty of evidence to reinforce their pessimistic outlooks. 

The foreboding in civil society reflects the dark drumbeats of our politics. Both parties and their candidates are attempting to rally their followers by scaring them. Their campaigns hawk the same messages: we cannot ignore the signs of the country’s impending corruption and degradation. Can we keep the republic? It depends on whether our side wins in November.

Against this backdrop, optimism about the future really does feel forced, as if people are faking it to make it. Yet we have a third option, one that lies beyond pessimism and optimism: hope. In retrospect, perhaps the most striking aspect of The Futures Happening event was the sense of hopefulness participants brought to it. 

The vibe brought to my mind the definition of hope offered by Vaclav Havel, the playwright, Soviet-era dissident, and subsequent democratic leader of Czechoslovakia. Reflecting on what had sustained him through long years of oppression and imprisonment, Havel observed that,

“Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for early success, but, rather, an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed. The more unpropitious the situation in which we demonstrate hope, the deeper that hope is. Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.”

Hope in this form is critical not only for the consolation that it provides, but also for what it enables and inspires. Havel went on to note that hope serves as “the only true source of the breathtaking dimension of the human spirit and its efforts.” It is what “gives us the strength to live and continually try new things” in the face of grave adversity. 

Designing our future–and having fun doing it

Here we come to the second hallmark of The Futures Happening gathering. Participants shared the conviction that what democracy needs right now is the “breathtaking dimension of the human spirit” and a willingness to “continually try new things.” Hopefulness creates space for and gives rise to creativity, heterodoxy, informality, and playfulness.

Without disrespecting current efforts, the presumption at the event was that existing solutions and approaches can and need to be remixed, enriched and added to in fruitful ways. Given the problems we face, what got us to where we are now will be insufficient for getting us to where we need to go. We will be more likely to get there, and to engage and enlist our fellow citizens along the way, if we make the prototyping and pursuit of new ideas and approaches fun.

For all of its good intentions, the democracy field in civil society tends to prepare programs and campaigns that are equivalent to big, steaming vats of oatmeal. The offerings are nutritious, to be sure, but rather bland and unappealing.

I was thus intrigued at the event when we heard from Evan Weissman, founder of a Denver-based nonprofit that operates with a decidedly different vibe. Warm Cookies of the Revolution bills itself as a “civic health club.” It is determined to solve a big challenge:

“Civic life is boring and a spectator sport. Look at a newspaper advertising sports, comedy, music, and other events. There are links and times and locations listed because the assumption is that you want to attend and participate. For civic issues, however (taxes, housing, schools, immigration, neighborhood development, etc) we are routinely “updated” on processes and decisions made by other people. Sports stadiums and concerts are full. City council meetings are rarely packed with excitement! This is poor civic health….

If asked about the state of your physical, emotional, or spiritual health you’d have an answer, places to work on them (a gym, therapist, religious institution) and the expectation that when you left these places, you’d feel better than when you entered. But what about your civic health? We provide a local space to exercise civic health by combining necessary community issues with inventive programs, engaging participants where they already are.”

At the Futures Happening, Weissman shared several of the different types of events and settings that Warm Cookies uses to engage neighbors and get them talking, thinking, and working together. They range from family dance parties and Sunday School for Atheists to “The People vs. _____” mock trials and “Civic Stitch and Bitch” sessions. In short, they sound like fun!

Placed-based civic health

While Warm Cookies of the Revolution is attentive to national and even global issues, they ultimately focus on what people can do to improve things where they live, in Denver. Put another way, they are practicing placed-based civic health. 

This was a recurring feature of the ideas that animated the Futures Happening event. Participants shared possibilities that were being realized–or could and should be–in particular places. Eric Liu talked about neighbors coming together for the communal rituals of Civic Saturdays. College students shared what they were doing to lift up democracy on their respective campuses. Shamichael Hallman held up the power of urban libraries to anchor and enrich the civic life of our cities. 

The local, human scale of most of the projects and opportunities we discussed reinforced the hopeful and creative ethos that distinguished the event. As neighbors and community members, we have and can exercise agency that compounds itself. The further the focus of our agency recedes–from local matters to state, national, and global concerns–the more our sense of efficacy and community deflates. We are less apt to be citizens and more apt to be spectators.

If we want to harness hope and creativity to strengthen democracy, we need to start where we are and work from the bottom-up.