The Book of Hope by Jane Goodall and Douglas Abrams
| The Book of Hope by Jane Goodall and Douglas Abrams | |
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| Category: Politics and Society | |
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Reviewer: Lesley Mason
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| Summary: A timely book that examines what hope is, how to cultivate it, reasons to have it and what to do with it. It’s also a very pragmatic look at how urgent it is that we utilise our hope in action. Moving, uplifting and inspiring. | |
| Buy? Yes | Borrow? Yes |
| Pages: 272 | Date: October 2021 |
| Publisher: Viking | |
| External links: Author's website | |
| ISBN: 978-0241478578 | |
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The done thing is to read a book all the way through before you sit down to review it. I’m making an exception here, because I don’t want to lose any of the experience of reading this amazing book, I want to capture it as it hits me. And it is hitting me. This beautiful book has me in tears.
Dr Jane Goodall – I know she doesn’t use her title much, but I want to distinguish her from any other authors by the same name – we are talking about THE Jane Goodall – has been one of my heroes since I first picked up a copy of the revised edition of "In The Shadow of Man" some time in the 1980s. That was before I started dating when I first read books. Every time I read what she writes and listen to what she says, I do feel, have always felt that the work she does is critically important. I don’t actually agree with all of her interpretations, but I am always comforted by her.
Strange choice of words, "comforted", given that I’ve just said this book has me weeping – but it is the accurate one. The premise of the book is a dialogue between Abrams and Goodall. He had written a similar book "The Book of Joy" (which I haven’t read but must) with the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu and he saw "The Book of Hope" as a companion piece. Actually ‘companion piece’ is my term, not his, and I don’t mean to downgrade this book by using it. Companions, by definition, are equals.
In this one, Jane Goodall, in her mid-eighties at the time of talking, shares stories, some of which will be familiar to anyone who has read her or listened to her over the years but lose nothing in the re-telling. Others are new to me. She shares both her definitions of "Hope" and her reasons for having it.
Importantly, she differentiates "Hope" from "Faith"; she differentiates "Hope" from "Wishful Thinking". Faith, she says, is a belief in things that we can never know. Wishful Thinking is the sitting back in the hope (mis-used deployment of the word) that things will just turn out ok. Real Hope, according to Jane, is what makes us take the action necessary to achieve good things. Real Hope, according to Jane, grows out of us doing just that.
When asked to narrow down her definition of Hope, she says it is a survival trait. It is what makes us get out of bed in the morning, do the work, have the babies, take the risks, follow our hearts. Maybe she doesn’t say it exactly like that – but it is.
It is what makes a CEO decide to return his company’s closed quarry in Kenya to a sustainable eco-system (long before greenwashing became a thing).
It is what makes a New Zealander decide to filch eggs from a pair of black robins not once but twice, to be incubated by tomtits, in the ‘hope’ (properly deployed use of the word) that the parents will rebuild and re-lay, and when they do to return the newly hatched chicks from the tomtit nests to their biological parents so they learn black robin behaviour and not tomtit behaviour.
It is what makes someone rescue the wreckage of a tree from the site of the Twin Towers and nurture it back to full life and ensure it is returned ‘home’ to that particular ground zero.
And it is what is created in me when I read those stories. Jane believes (and I agree) that there are more and more people out here in the world trying to do better, small actions that all add up, and we need to hear these stories.
Jane likes stories. She knows that we will forget the facts but remember the stories. She believes this is why her early mentor, Louis Leakey, chose women to go out into the wild and study primates: they would be empathic rather than scientific, they would be methodical and record accurately, but they would seek the stories rather than the statistics. I think that was a wise call and I thank him for it.
In talking about the human intellect – and she carefully distinguishes ‘’intellect’’ from ‘’intelligence’’ - Jane speaks of her belief that what got us into this mess can get us out of it. I don’t share that particular belief with her but I’m very much in tune with her belief that the planet will survive, long after the humans have stopped walking about on it. Nature recovers more quickly with a helping hand, but she can recover without our help. Jane explicitly makes the point that we need Nature; she does not need us.
That resilience of nature is her second reason for hope. Look at any patch of un-tended land and see how quickly things start to grow. Look at a desert after rain. I’m reading the book in the middle of a heatwave in the UK. This is not just ‘hot’ in the British sense of high twenties, this is mid-to-high thirties. This is not normal weather, this is not freak weather, this is seriously scary weather. Temperatures spiking in the forties.
I am watering a few bits of my garden…the fruit mainly. Much else is fending for itself. The lawns are beds of straw as grass retreats underground, but the agapanthus and the golden rod are glorious and thriving left un-helped. The poppies returned. Ragwort is feeding no end of insects. My point is that if we stand back a little, we can see exactly what Jane is saying for ourselves. And I’m sure that’s what she’d want us to do. Find our own small stories.
She talks about indigenous peoples she has met around the world, and their ancient knowledge, and how Nature can build resilience in us (as part of nature) if we are willing to connect respectfully with its other aspects.
That notion that we are part of Nature is the keystone. If we want to nurture and nourish the non-human, we have to nurture and nourish the humans that live closest to it. We have to be practical and pragmatic. The window of time is closing, but in this book there are many stories of people who are pushing it back open just a little, buying us a little more time, by doing the good work.
Among those people, as we need no telling, are the young. There are tales from her own institute’s ‘’Roots and Shoots’’ programme, but also simpler tales of the young inspiring their parents. And the point is made again that it’s not just about the environment, it’s about social justice as well.
I think the point is well – if not explicitly – made that there is a fundamental difference between this young generation and the flower-power one that came before them. These kids are not dropping out of the system they don’t believe in, they are getting to grips with it. They are angry and they are active. And at local levels they are seeing results, which will make them less angry and more active. A clear illustration of the cycle of Hope: believe – act – succeed – believe stronger – act again - and repeat.
Our role as adults is to sing their praises and to keep educating more and more young people and empowering them and believing them. And getting involved practically ourselves.
Her fourth reason is the indomitable human spirit: that aspect of humanity that refuses to give up. Again, she turns to stories to illustrate what she means. Interestingly, she doesn’t down-play that this spirit is not always used for good…and I suspect there has been some judicious editing in places. Her point is about belief and conviction and how important they are per se. If we direct them to the just causes we can achieve the seemingly impossible.
Towards the end of the book, Jane talks about her own life’s journey and her personal beliefs. Here she strays away from Hope and into Faith – not with any intention to preach, but just to explain, to put herself in her own context.
Through-out the book, Jane comes back to this expression ‘’a window of time’’. We have a ’’window of time’’ in which we can still start to heal the world, but the window is closing. Be hopeful, she tells us, but also: act now.
The importance of this book is that it goes some way, I think, towards encouraging those who think it is already too late. If we give up, it will be. If we act, now, urgently, in however small a way our situation and our gifts enable us to do so, then there are reasons for hope.
I have come away from reading this book understanding that my own mantras of “focus on the good stuff” and “look for beauty, share wisdom” are really also about finding reasons to hope.
If you care about where we go from here, we can also recommend Our House is on Fire: Scenes of a Family and a Planet in Crisis by Malena Ernman, Greta Thunberg, Beata Thunberg and Svante Thunberg
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