2017 was a challenging and interesting year for our communities—both locally and globally. From the lowest of lows in Hurricane Harvey to a city-wide celebration for our Houston Astros, there were a lot of ups and downs. Through it all though, I don’t think I ever witnessed anyone lose hope. But what does hope actually mean and can it have real impact? 

It’s a question I find myself asking continuously, especially as I kicked off 2018 supporting Holocaust Museum Houston as The Butterfly Project made its way to the United Nations. It’s a campaign that challenges us to use hope to cause change and combat hatred everywhere it shows up. That hope CAN and DOES have the power to change the status quo. 

A few weeks ago this exact conversation was sent to my inbox via Brain Pickings. After reading through it, it prompted me to consider how we observe and work through the big challenges, such as the impact of the 2016 elections, or even the smallest things like the small stressors of our daily lives. 

“All the goodness and the heroisms will rise up again, then be cut down again and rise up,”John Steinbeck wrote to his best friend at the peak of WWII. “It isn’t that the evil thing wins— it never will — but that it doesn’t die.”

Caught in the maelstrom of the moment, we forget this cyclical nature of history — history being merely the rosary of moments the future strings of its pasts. We forget that the present always looks different from the inside than it does from the outside — something James Baldwin knew when, in considering why Shakespeare endures, he observed: “It is said that his time was easier than ours, but I doubt it — no time can be easy if one is living through it.” We forget that our particular moment, with all its tribulations and triumphs, is not neatly islanded in the river of time but swept afloat by massive cultural currents that have raged long before it and will rage long after.

I have long believed that critical thinking without hope is cynicism, but hope without critical thinking is naïveté. Where are we to turn for lucid hope, then, in cultural moments that inflame despair, which so easily metastasizes into cynicism? 

That is what the inimitable Zadie Smith explores in a piece titled “On Optimism and Despair,” originally delivered as an award acceptance speech and later adapted for her altogether fantastic essay collection Feel Free (public library). 

Escape from 2017: Thoughts on Optimism and Despair

From what I can tell, the theme for the start of 2018 is “thankfully we made it through 2017.”

Condensed

“Because I think that the greatest thing our art does and our industry does is to erase the lines in the sand. We should continue doing that when the world tells us to make them deeper.”

The Shape of Water is such a beautiful and obvious metaphor for mentally exploring xenophobia—the lines in the sand the world would have us deepen. It gives you the chance to weigh the sides, figure out what you believe to be morally correct in a constructed reality which has no bearing on your own. 

Cognitive dissonance is a theory which suggests that when humans encounter values and beliefs that come into direct conflict with their own, they wrestle with these new ideas until they can integrate old convictions with the new notions and restore a cognitive balance. 

Essentially, human brains are wired to harmonize their belief structures—known as cognitive consistency. 

When you have a situation which brings about cognitive dissonance, e.g. cutting down trees when we know deforestation is bad for the planet, we try to find ways to reduce the dissonance. This usually shakes out to three things: 

Change (attitude, behavior, etc) based on the dissonant belief: stop using products that are reliant on paper/rubber, recycle your paper properly, purchase recycled products.

Seek out new information that runs counter to the dissonant belief: I can see trees from my house and they’re totally fine. 

Reduce the importance of the dissonant belief: YOLO, who needs trees, anyway? 

This is often done with works of science fiction and fantasy due to the “literary world” that, through being removed from our own world and sense of reality, can create a virtual workshop for readers to experiment and put their beliefs to the test. 

Because this world is removed from our own, the testing and experimentation with morality, values or belief paradigms is threatening to our immediate existence—and therefore doesn’t send us into an immediate tailspin of existential crisis. You get a platform to think somewhat objectively about the concepts, and the opportunity to develop convictions privately before applying them to your own life. 

So for example. You read a book, or watch a movie, which recounts the lifespan of an alien planet, in a galaxy far, far away, which is left desolate after overuse and industrialization of greedy alien life forms. The protagonist appears and offers a glimmer of hope—growth and life can be restored, a fight against what seems like an irrepressible wave can be fought. 

That moment when you start rooting for the protagonist, cognitive dissonance begins taking place. It (hopefully) helps you think about our world. About our greed. About our irrepressible waves. You start working to harmonize in your head—and how you choose to reduce dissonance is up to you. 

Our job as cause-driven marketers is to build stories that are compelling enough to move people to change, or to act. To give them room and freedom to explore and test and adjust without shame or fear. We want to leave them with this final piece where they walk away wondering—they don’t have to change their mind right away. 

Give people the space and stage to make their own decisions, and your results will be more organic, and lasting. 

Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing’s going to get better, it’s not.

Guillermo del Toro Presents: The Shape of Dissonance

I love Guillermo del Toro. His Oscar acceptance speech only made me love him that much more.