Rebecca Solnit: Why Is Hope So Powerful?

What is hope and why is it so powerful? 

For writer Rebecca Solnit, hope is a commitment to possibility in the face of uncertainty. While many of us react to the unknown with anxiety or worry, Rebecca sees the opposite: that inherent to unpredictable circumstances is the possibility people can take action and to come together to create change. 

In this conversation, Rebecca Solnit and the Surgeon General discuss why hope is necessary. They look back at communities formed in response to disasters, like 9/11 and hurricanes, and how hope and connection are inextricably linked. A historian, Solnit points to milestones like the fall of the Berlin Wall in which people’s actions, sometimes incremental, led to unforeseen outcomes. 

In facing the massive uncertainty of climate change, Solnit offers why she is hopeful. Rather than fall to despair, she points that humans, throughout history, have seen the possibility to intervene and take action. And THAT is what Solnit calls hope.   

(04:34)    Why can disasters be so powerful for uniting communities? 

(11:16)    Why do some types of disasters bring people more together than others? 

(16:55)    How do you advise young people who feel despair about climate change? 

(27:21)    How can the way we remember history’s great social changes contribute to hope or hopelessness? 

(31:28)    How does social media contribute to loneliness and isolation? 

(37:45)    Has tech convinced us that living efficiently is more important than living in person? 

(47:33)    How does Rebecca Solnit make herself feel better when she gets down? 

(48:35)    What does the Surgeon General do to feel better when he is down? 

We’d love to hear from you! Send us a note at housecalls@hhs.gov with your feedback & ideas. For more episodes, visit www.surgeongeneral.gov/housecalls.   

Rebecca Solnit, Writer

X: @rebeccasolnit 

X: @nottoolate_hope 

About Rebecca Solnit 

Writer, historian, and activist Rebecca Solnit is the author of twenty-five books on feminism, environmental and urban history, popular power, social change and insurrection, wandering and walking, hope and catastrophe. She co-edited the 2023 anthology “Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility”. Her other books include “Orwell’s Roses”; “Recollections of My Nonexistence”; “Hope in the Dark”; “Men Explain Things to Me”; “A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster”; and “A Field Guide to Getting Lost”. A product of the California public education system from kindergarten to graduate school, she writes regularly for the Guardian, serves on the board of the climate group Oil Change International, and in 2022 launched the climate project Not Too Late (nottoolateclimate.com).