Can you find hope in a book?
Fiona Vaz
When I was asked to read and write about Jane Goodall’s The Book of Hope, I couldn’t help but think that the request came at the right time. It was the end of last year, which is a great time for some reflection and to look to the new year with hope. It has been difficult to feel hopeful given Israel’s ongoing genocide in Palestine and its assault on other countries, politics leaning to the right, continuous threat of communal tensions, and increasing divides between the wealthy and the poor. Goodall and Douglas Abrams, who is the co-author of the book (along with Gail Hudson), touch on almost all these topics in a book that one might assume is about climate activism. This is not to say that the book is not about saving the Earth, it is. But using Goodall’s decades of experience fighting a battle that few understand and care about, the authors try to inspire hope in their readers. Goodall and Abrams show us how to be hopeful, especially when the signs of hopelessness are rife.
About the book
The book, published in 2021, is in the form of a conversation between Jane Goodall and Douglas Abrams. Goodall one of the greatest living naturalists, primatologists, and anthropologists has worked for around 70 years, to raise awareness on the sentience of animals and the need to conserve our natural environment. Douglas Abrams is an award-winning author of bestsellers, with his last being one with Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama, where they talk about joy. In a sense then, after covering the topic of joy, Abrams is focusing on hope, which is considered to be uniquely human – the ability to desire for an outcome and a belief that the outcome is possible.
Abrams is a skeptic who, through his questions to Goodall, seeks to find what hope is, and how it can be cultivated in children and young people as well as adults. The book begins with Goodall’s definition of hope, which is “[that which] enables us to keep going in the face of adversity. It is what we desire to happen, but we must be prepared to work hard to make it so” (pg. 8). There is conversation around agency that allows one to act towards what one hopes for. Goodall provides examples of chimps throwing tantrums for what they want as evidence that hope is not uniquely human. The dialogue between Abrams and Goodall leads her to conclude that hope is a survival trait without which we might perish (pg. 11).
The book proceeds to outline the four reasons for hope according to Goodall. These are (i) The Amazing Human Intellect (ii) The Resilience of Nature (iii) The Power of Young People, and (iv) The Indomitable Spirit. These four reasons for hope are derived from Goodall’s experiences of working with chimpanzees in Gombe, Nigeria, and through her years of advocacy and educating people all over the world on saving the environment. The last section provides more insights into the life of Jane Goodall as a messenger of hope. In the next few paragraphs, I take a look at the book, through the lens of a justice-minded reader and assess some of these ideas to see if they have currency today.
Forms of storytelling
Goodall firmly believes that statistics and numbers can take one only so far. What makes a real difference, according to her, is the sharing of stories. Hence the book is filled with stories that illustrate not just the four reasons for hope, but also the smaller arguments within each of the sections and sub-sections. The stories are clearly narrated and do the job well of persuading the reader in a gentle way regarding the myriad ways in which hope is demonstrated, built, and shared. The chapters include pictures from diverse sources that also bring the stories to life. Long after one has completed the book, the stories and lessons remain. However, I couldn’t help but think that these stories from far flung areas are separated from each other both in time and space. They don’t snowball into bigger movements. For example, the Fridays for Future Movement that began with one Greta Thunberg sitting a year in front of the Swedish Parliament galvanized people all over the world to take action for the environment. These protests and resulting activities rattled even strong leaders like Donald Trump and Narendra Modi. One can see Jane Goodall’s work itself as a movement which started conservation efforts in different places, but it feels like these stories do not come together to create hope at the same magnitude as the despair of environmental destruction. Unlike Goodall, I think that statistical data when presented well can move people. For example, the work of Mona Chalabi, a Pulitzer-prize winning writer and illustrator, helps people visualize large scale data and in turn informs public opinion.
Chalabi, in her art posted on Instagram, shows through a single image how trees mitigate soaring temperatures in Brooklyn, New York. In another illustration, Chalabi, presents statistical data on the number of natural disasters that have taken place from 1980-2017 and their causes through a compelling visual. It is easy to see that while the incidents of storms have remained the same in this period, extreme temperatures, droughts, and bush fires on account of climate change, have soared from about 200 incidents in 1980 to close to 800 in 2017, i.e., four times the increase in just 40 years. Data can be used to communicate urgency and scale in a memorable way too.
Abrams asks several difficult questions throughout the book. He mentions in the beginning that he is a skeptic and uses the conversation with Goodall to build hope. He persists in his questions to Goodall and probes further until he is satisfied with the responses. For example, when Goodall suggests that one of the ways to achieve lasting peace is to develop a new moral code, Abrams is not fully convinced. He writes, “I felt like Jane was leading me step-by-step to a deeper understanding of how we actually might find a better path ahead- though I was also skeptical of any easy solution.” (pg. 55) He persists on how one can find a better path to a more compassionate world, when Goodall suggests developing a new moral code, which in fact is the old one, ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you’. Goodall quips that it is easy but proceeds to describe why it has actually been quite difficult to follow. “Greed. Selfishness. Lust for power and wealth.” (pg. 55) It appears as if Goodall suggests a fairly complex solution, i.e., of individual people following a moral code, as a simple one. The conversation goes on until there is still more focus on individual actions and thoughts. Abrams persists, but at some point, allows himself to get convinced even when it is indeed difficult to. The inability to think about others, Goodall states, is because we have lost the ability to think of the future and others (p.g. 58).
Focus on individual efforts
The narration of stories instead of using data also corresponds to another problem I saw in the book, which is Goodall’s focus on individual efforts. In Chapter 3, The Resilience of Nature, Goodall and Abrams address eco-grief which is a sense of anxiety, hopelessness, and fatalism among others that might prevent people from taking decisive action. A point that Goodall makes here and in other places in the book is the importance of people playing a role no matter how small. “It is the cumulative effect of millions of small ethical actions that will truly make a difference,” (pg. 78) she says. While it is true that all people have agency and can catalyze change, Goodall’s stories go back to actions such as being aware of what we purchase, going vegan, or examples of change of heart. Maybe it is my own skepticism and hopelessness speaking, but at this juncture of the urgency we face, we need mass actions or policy changes that can make a real difference. Activists all over the world, especially fighting in areas that need public opinion and support focus on key levers that increase public pressure on decision makers such as massive protests and campaigns. Individual changes of heart, such as that of Ben van Beurden, the CEO of Royal Dutch Shell, on account of his 10-year-old daughter’s questioning if his company was destroying the planet, made me wonder, how little we expect of people with so much power and influence. At the same time, Goodall’s refusal to hold the powerful such as businesses and political actors accountable and focus on systemic change, increased my skepticism. Small individual actions take time, something that most of us, living in extreme precarity, do not have.
Saviourism and whiteness
Finally, the conversation between Goodall and Abrams has hints of saviourism, and the privilege of what they would probably never have to experience on account of their social locations – that is of being white (or white passing as I couldn’t ascertain Abrams’ race). While speaking of cultures different from their own, the language used signals distance. The descriptions of mud floors, and humble homes, and references to places in the United States that are ‘worse than developing countries’ (pg. 119) show how much Goodall does not really make any of these places in Africa her own. In talking about violence and aggression (pg 50), they refer to choices that reflect which country and culture ‘we’ were born into that influence our predisposition to violent responses potentially hinting that some countries and cultures are more violent than others. In another line (pg. 159) Goodall mentions, “The same courage and resilience, can be shown by people who have been brainwashed – think of the suicide bombers who believe they will be rewarded in paradise for blowing up innocent people”, which can come across as racist, Islamophobic, and xenophobic.
Given my keen interest in gender, I also noticed that Goodall does not mention any woman peer in the entirety of the book apart from Dian Fossey, Birute Galdikas, and Renee Gunther, a teacher in New York. Emmaline Pankhurst, the leader of the Suffragette Movement in Britain and Goodall’s mother appear in the book too along with many women who have gained from Tacare, the microfinance work of Jane Goodall Institute. But role models and exemplars, in Goodall’s eyes are all male – Winston Churchill, Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, her own spouses both of whom were male, and many conservationists, photographers, and thinkers. In the portion on The Spirit That Never Surrenders (pg. 152) Goodall glorifies Churchill’s war responses. Although, she speaks of how Britain defended itself from Nazi Germany, militaristic prowess can hardly be an inspiring example in a time of ongoing war, especially when one professes peace towards Nature.
To conclude, I have no doubt that the work of Jane Goodall is commendable and praiseworthy. The thoughts in this book, however, not so much. But this book is about hope – does it mean it left me completely hopeless? I don’t think so. Reading the book gave me an opportunity to contrast the ideas of Jane Goodall and Douglas Abrams with the conversation that I am able to witness or partake in today. I feel moved and incredibly hopeful when people today do not mince words and communicate directly with the audience regarding the urgency of the challenges we face. Most of this happens online, and in real life through some citizen-led groups. Unlike what Goodall says that people only need tools to bring about change, I think at this point, the initiatives I see are enabling people with the right knowledge. People and youth, will find the tools. And that makes me hopeful.
The author is the Founder and Director of InteGRAL Asia, a gender and education focused consulting and research firm. She can be reached at fiona@integral-asia.org.
