This is a call to sing and dance in the darkness. To smile against adversity; and have cheer in the face of fear.
We all want to believe in a better world. Personally, I’ve grown up believing that staying hopeful is essential for envisioning the positive future we want to create. Though these unprecedented days have certainly made me feel truly low at times, I have never been more certain of the importance of radical happiness. I hope to make you feel the same too.
But first, the bad news…
Covid, climate and catastrophe anxiety
When it became clear how serious Covid-19 was, many of us began thinking about the wider implications. A looming era of massive uncertainty yes, but not just about a pandemic. It’s also about an approaching economic depression at a time of rising authoritarianism; when the far-right (no, they don’t deserve my capital letters) is seizing control and when we now realise we have a very limited time scope to prevent catastrophic climate breakdown. Rather than standing up to meet the urgent needs of the day, Liberal and Social Democratic parties have tended to spend their time desperately clinging onto their failed “Third Way” ideology and doing their utmost to crush any rise of the Left into power.
Is it any wonder we are in the middle of a global mental health crisis - why around 20% of young people in Britain have symptoms of anxiety or depression?
It feels like the fate of the world is now teetering on the brink, with the apocalypse on one side and total, social and environmental transformation to save the future on the other. We need a whole new paradigm, one in which the goal is not about trying to claw back the status quo but about rebuilding the world with radical hope at its core.
Towards a radical manifesto of happiness, the proper way to deploy the joy
Just to reassure you, I’m not one of the so-called “New Optimists”. This term refers to those espousing the kind of ideology advocated by technocratic billionaires such as Mark Zuckerberg, Richard Branson, and Elon Musk. Their warped philosophy uses a skewed set of international development statistics to try to prove that people have never had it so good and that capitalism will inevitably form a generation of “entrepreneurs” who will harness technology to sort out the world's problems and keep billionaires in their mansions or on Mars. Pursuing business profit before all else, they promise “frozen yoghurt and roller coaster rides” for their workers, but only if these same workers don’t unionise. In short, such technocrats offer a technotopia for everyone, just as long as you’re a billionaire. Frankly, they’re welcome to stay on the other side of the solar system.
Nor am I calling for a “dance/drugs your way out of capitalism” approach advocated by certain hippies and some in the environmental movement. This is often a convenient way for middle class white people to close their eyes to the grim realities of the world. Such an approach is typically rooted in the innate privilege of having the means to take a holiday from the stresses of industrial living in the Global North. Its followers decry the society which privileged them and instead they envision an alternative ecotopia, yet they do nothing to genuinely support the social struggles of those most marginalised by the climate crisis. If anything, this ideology serves the neoliberal worldview by caring only about immediate feelings rather than fostering genuine human connections with others through actively forging a better society.
This piece is instead advocating a way forward based around radical happiness. Lynne Segal, who wrote a book on radical happiness calls for happiness to be re-politicised and reframed as a “collective good” rather than simply the desiable “brain chemistry” for individuals. Adding to this, for me radical happiness is conscious of the seriousness of the problems we face yet recognises the power of positivity against a neoliberal worldview which seeks to systematically depress us. Radical happiness is about creating a better world, but it’s also about moments of collective joy and genuine connection with others along the way. All that aside, it’s simply about basic human ways of being sustainably happy in our lives and doing so in a way which helps other people to be happy as well.
If you want to know what this sounds like, listen to Anderson .Paak singing “I was under the impression that we all want the best in life. So let’s celebrate while we still can”.
Learning from the veterans of hope in the face of adversity
For many in the West, measures such as having to wear face masks or having to physically distance previously seemed unthinkable. We consider the pandemic and other extreme social and ecological changes and we think to ourselves, surely this must be the "end times"?
Worse still for middle-class Liberals is the knowledge in the back of their heads that the only way towards true justice and sustainability is for a massive redistribution of wealth. They advocate for equality yet are afraid of it because genuine equality means global reparations for those who have been systematically exploited over centuries. As Frank Leonard says, “When you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression”. The reality is, over 70% of all carbon emissions are caused by just 100 companies and just 26 people own as much as half of the world’s entire population. It has never been more obvious that getting us out of this mess requires a mass movement of people calling for huge wealth redistribution and a publicly owned, fossil-free economy. No matter how we shift from one form of consumerism to the next, neoliberal solutions are not going to solve neoliberal problems. So offsetting guilt by buying from Infinity Foods and fitting solar panels to the summerhouse extension just isn’t going to ‘save the world’.
In fact to quote from another recent BRICK article “Everyone’s an ally until they hear what change actually requires”.
It’s essential to remember that many communities and diasporas have endured hundreds of years of genocide, slavery, environmental destruction and countless other forms of oppression. Indigenous American professor Nick Estes at the University of New Mexico points out, “If there is something you can learn from indigenous people, it’s what it’s like to live in a post-apocalyptic society… In some cases, we have undergone several apocalypses”. It’s also a romantic illusion and frankly deeply offensive to assume that all indigenous and rural people traditionally live(d) in utopian societies “in harmony with nature”. However, it’s undeniably true that in certain autonomous societies, people not only continue to function in far more ecologically sustainable ways but have far more positive ways of dealing with mental health, despite centuries of colonial induced traumas.
So, what can be learned from such societies about staying positive in dark times?
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Throughout Pacific island countries, people are making leaps forward fighting for climate justice while proudly declaring that rather than being passive victims “We are not drowning, we are fighting”. The Pacific Climate Warriors movement is made up of young Pacific islanders on the front-lines of climate breakdown who are mobilising their populations to demand radical climate justice. Recognising that climate justice is inherently tied to social and political justice, the Pacific Climate Warriors are also actively supporting the anti-colonial struggles of Pacific islanders in occupied countries.
In Brazil, where Bolsonaro’s far-right regime is deliberately withholding Covid-19 aid for indigenous people, the Landless Workers Movement (MST) is successfully organising hundreds of thousands of people towards access to healthcare, land rights and socio-economic justice. According to a recent article, they are running over 170 community health clinics, 100 agricultural cooperatives, 66 food processing factories and 1,900 farmer associations.
In some societies, ritual dances and songs are used as part of resistance strategies, to incorporate the individual into the group and to do so ecstatically. This can even take place at protests and during uprisings such as during the vodou ceremony at Bois Caïman in 1791; the spark of the successful Haitian Revolution which led to Haiti’s independence and the overthrow of slavery in the country.
If any overly romantic types think that the best solution is therefore to go off and live in a commune or join Rojava, Standing Rock or the Zapatistas; with the greatest respect I hope that these hyperlinked articles in the respective examples will promptly change minds. This isn’t James Camerons’ Avatar, the Global South doesn’t need white saviours or voluntourists. It needs people to use their privilege to support front-line efforts to make the world a better place. The reason that such societies are able to effectively face the issues they are dealing with is because they have blended hundreds of years of anti-colonial resistance with local cultures outside of capitalism and because they have done so among their own communities. People might not find it as glamorous, but we can make much more lasting and effective change in our own communities. We can achieve lots through supporting organisations like mutual aid groups, while learning from and showing genuine solidarity with those in the Global South.
The previous examples of grassroots resistance and collective joy are by no means unique to indigenous societies or those in the Global South and I know this from my own personal experience. On 14th February 2019, I was walking down the Trafalgar Street underpass and as I looked behind me, I saw hundreds of young people chanting for climate justice as one. Suddenly I was hit with a profound epiphany. At this moment, I felt genuinely detached from my own body and ecstatically very much part of the hopeful crowd; moving in the same direction for the same purpose.
This was no random Valentine’s Day acid trip; this was the first Youth Strike 4 Climate in Brighton.
Other such examples are by no means limited to protests. Even at a football game, the way thousands of pairs of eyes simultaneously watch the ball and then spontaneously burst out chanting is a form of collective joy. Have you ever been dancing at a club or in a festival with hundreds of others and felt an indescribable feeling of connection, that your happiness was bound up with the happiness of others?
In Britain today, we live in a society where we are constantly made to believe that individual satisfaction is the only route to happiness, that there is no such thing as society. This is a dehumanising statement because it is totally at odds with our fundamental human characteristics as social beings. We live under a neoliberal system which is systematically crushing our happiness; after all, a happy population might have the audacity to imagine a better world. Because of this, merely through socialising and being happy together we are taking steps towards resisting such an ideology.
I argue that in a time of global despair, happiness itself is resistance.
Are there signs of such collective reasons for hope today? Are there common causes for a positive outlook?
Yes.
Things that give me hope in the world today
Despite the ongoing disgraceful treatment of students and staff by Sussex University management, something has fundamentally changed at our university this year. Following the overwhelming success of the Transform Sussex slate at the recent Students’ Union elections, progressive ideals at Sussex are now very much in the driving seat on the student level. Personally, the incredible manifesto of Transform Sussex genuinely filled me with hope and made me proud to be involved with activism here. Now we have a Students' Union which is openly standing up for decolonisation, climate justice, housing rights, accessibility, a fun and safe campus and much else besides.
Up against the Neoliberal Beasts of Sussex university management, our new radical Students’ Union are going to need all the support they can get to push forward their agenda. If it can be done at Sussex from the bottom up, it can be done in many other places too.
Mutual aid and building back together
One of the worst initial effects of Covid-19 upon people's mental well being was the fear of what society was going to be like during a pandemic. When people started panic buying, my mind spiralled into what was yet to come, but strangely as George Monbiot so acutely observes “The horror films got it wrong. This virus has turned us into caring neighbours”.
While clapping for key workers became glorified by the same people who continue to deport them and deny them fair wages, there are true successes to come out of community resilience to this crisis. The work of mutual aid groups is something to celebrate. In my own home community, a local mutual aid pantry has been spontaneously set up where anyone is welcome to donate food and other items and anyone is welcome to take them. For readers living in Brighton, I highly recommend getting involved with your own local mutual aid group here.
Similarly, the inspiring Build Back Better campaign, (organised by Green New Deal UK) is mobilising from the bottom up to create systemic change and ensure an ecologically and socially just recovery. Such initiatives are the seeds of exactly the kind of grassroots mobilising we need to radically change society and overcome the huge challenges we face in the immediate future.
Global protests and Generation Z
Swedish professor Maria Ojala notes that hope is incredibly important for young people in the environmental movement. I have been blown away by the wave of Youth Strike protests around the world, with hundreds of thousands of hopeful young people, many much younger than myself coming together to demand genuine climate justice.
Over the past two years I have literally met 14-year olds telling me that capitalism needs to be systematically dismantled in order to bring about the end of climate breakdown and white supremacy. Even as someone who has been involved with activism for quite a while, when I was their age, I thought climate action was about saving polar bears with low energy light bulbs. More recently, I have been similarly inspired at the incredible Black Lives Matter protests in Brighton; with their huge turnout, energy and impact on public consciousness of so many people in the city. Again, I have seen many of the same young faces I have seen on Youth Strike protests and it give me hope at how seriously this generation is taking these crucial issues.
Similarly, there was a widely documented surge of protests globally last year, often as part of growing demands for the long-awaited downfall of neoliberalism and its machinations. From Chile to Lebanon, from Hong Kong to Sudan, it’s truly inspiring to see young people rising up against authoritarian rule and despotic capitalism. One day, this generation will be in power but it's certainly shaping power relations for the better today.
The mainstreaming of socialism and environmental justice
Five years ago, policies such as the abolition of tuition fees, common ownership of all public services and a Green New Deal were fringe socialist policies denounced as being “Loony Left”. Now they are official positions advocated even by many Social Democrats and Centrists being pushed towards radicalism. Despite the dominance of the far-right in Europe, Left-Wing and progressive parties are gaining momentum and influence or even taking power, in places like Portugal, Spain, Iceland, Ireland and Finland. Not so long ago, it would have been unthinkable for a genuine socialist to have taken over the UK Labour Party, let alone run for President of the USA and inspire millions of people to fight for truly progressive ideas.
Despite recent electoral defeats of many of such progressive leaders; as Chris Saltmarsh, the co-founder of Labour for a Green New Deal says, “It would be naive for the Left to pin all its hopes for climate justice on the election of democratic socialists in the Global North”. He writes “This decade will be challenging for socialists, but our movement is the only one with the ideas and organisation to resolve the crises capitalism has birthed. In that, we find hope”.
Around the globe, people are rightfully beginning to see these times as an opportunity for real and lasting change and to push for a transformational Green New Deal and the radical measures to ensure not just survival from these crises but a better world altogether.
Three key ways of staying happy and upbeat
These days we are bombarded from all angles by “self-help” guides. Go to any bookshop and you’ll find a section advertising often quite corporate guides to improve your lives and careers. Nothing makes me more depressed than the neoliberal establishment telling me to be happy. Their form of “self-help” tends to mean seeking maximum self-satisfaction and wealth increase for individuals at the maximum expense of others. Corporate self-help prioritises discipline and “productivity” in ways which are so clearly designed to tell workers that it is our fault we are unhappy. We are made to believe that it is our personal responsibility to overcome stress in order to more effectively serve the social structures which suppress and depress us.
Despite this, there are genuine ways of improving our well being and happiness, backed up with evidence and which come at the betterment of others, not at the behest of the market. Below are a few which help me to stay positive*.
*Note: For anyone who is seriously facing depression, anxiety or other negative mental health issues, there are of course many other ways to cope, which can include counselling, medication and a multitude of other tried and tested methods. I am not a health professional and far from being a comprehensive list, these three examples are just meant as a few suggestions of ways to generally stay happy on a daily basis. You might find the following site useful for more general mental well being support.
Connecting with nature and the environment
The positive effects of the environment on our mental health are now very well documented. Millions of years of evolution and 90% of human history living without cities means that we are quite literally evolved to spend more time outdoors. There’s a reason we all feel eye strain, cabin fever and have difficulty sleeping after staring at screens for hours at a time, but I’ve never met anyone who felt these symptoms after walking on the downs. Personally I have gone for a walk or a run every day of my life for about 10 years and will be doing so again in a few minutes time.
Not everyone has easy access to the countryside of course and I highly recommend getting involved with Sussex’s several societies which are actively involved in supporting environmental connections and access for everyone. Such societies include Climate Action Movement (CAM), Roots, Sussex Walking and Hiking Society and others.
For goodness sake listen to more music!
Putting the speaker on with music has honestly been one of the most important ways I stay happy on a daily basis. It’s important to listen to whatever works for you but for anyone interested, I’ve made this playlist of songs from many genres which I’ve listened to while writing this article and I hope it brings you as many good vibes as it is doing for me now.
You might also be interested in the podcasts Acid Corbynism and Reasons to be Cheerful.
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Connecting with family and friends
Personally, I think this is the single most important thing we can do to enjoy positive lives together in the long term. Solitude can have its place in life but eating, drinking and generally socialising with relatives and friends is practised by every culture, ultimately because we are social animals and are meant to be sharing things together, including our feelings.
It might sound strange, but during such times of global anxiety, talking about your feelings openly with your nearest and dearest is seriously important in the fight against the neoliberal establishment. The more we are made to individualise and depend on technology for our every stimulation, the more crucial it is to retain genuine human connections and solidarity with and across our communities.
As a Sussex student, I’d again thoroughly recommend getting involved with societies, especially those which can help you to connect and have fun with others. Whether through music, climbing, creating art or playing frisbee; any ways to get together and socialise well, even in a physically distanced manner are key to positive personal and social expression.
So let the good times roll!
Yes, let’s acknowledge that vast amounts of wealth and power in this world are currently in the hands of billionaires causing untold pain to billions. But despite this, whether you’re meeting a Sussex student, a Namibian doctor or a Surinamese lorry driver, the fact is, in the vast majority of cases, human beings fundamentally want the best of life for ourselves and for others. Rather than focusing merely on our individuality in a way which those in power would like us to, when we genuinely open ourselves up to positive social interaction, we can often be amazed at how others can open up too.
Almost exactly two years ago today, I was sitting in the middle-aisle of a plane, several hours into an agonising 14 hour flight. Suddenly, the previously silent stranger sitting next to me said, smiling “How you could be so interested in the fight map, I’ll never know mate!” My explanation of geographic fascination aside, I then ended up chatting for hours with him and his friend about everything and nothing. By the end of the flight, we had become good mates and are still in contact today. We all want to be happy, but we’d always like others to be happy as well.
In fact, a growing wealth of psychological, anthropological and other ‘ogical expertise is beginning to unravel just how egalitarian and moral the human psyche really is. It seems alien to us today to consider that for 90% of our history, human beings have lived in societies which are fundamentally egalitarian, without hierarchy or warfare. The potential for evil might be strong but the potential for goodness, compassion and joy is in every one of us and is much, much stronger and far more desirable. Writing this piece has been difficult at times but has definitely made me happier. I hope that reading it has helped to cheer you up too.
Now turn up the music, pour yourself a glass of something if you’re so inclined and put on a smile over the cynicism. It’s summertime after all! 🌞🌻☮❤️️✊🌏
