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he pro¬ gressive deadening of this ’felt sense’ in our children, whether through simple ignorance or by deliberate schooling, lends itself to a collective dissociation, which leads in turn to environmental and social decline

hope is the byproduct of action, not a prerequisite for it, says Sarah Ray, who leads the environmental studies program at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California. Action leads to results, which fosters hope, creating a virtuous cycle.

Often, hope works best alongside tools for proactively tackling future challenges. If our work becomes a catalysing force for people to imagine things they would not have been able to imagine otherwise and act upon that imagination, then that’s powerful, and for me, this is a slow form of critical activism.

Tim: I think optimism is the expectation that things are going to be OK. That we’re going to get a good outcome. Hope is much more about meaning; hope is the will to hold on to our values in the face of difficulty. Optimism is one kind of hope, a rather flimsy sort of hope. What we need now is a more resilient kind of hope, one not based on an

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a more thorough and sensitive contact with our ’felt sense’ - that is, our kinesthetic, proprioceptive, spatial sense of orientation and move¬ ment - is a vitally important front on which to fight the battle for a more human use of human beings, and a better integration with the world around us.

Marshall McLuhan:^ 'Environments are not passive wrappings, but are, rather, active processes which are invisible. The groundrules, pervasive structure, and overall patterns of envi¬ ronments elude easy perception

Hope is not prognostication. It is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart; it transcends the world that is immediately experienced, and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons. 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

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