Radical Hope: Facing the Election Without Fear

~by David Inglis, October 2024

At 11:30 the night of the 2016 election, I turned off the TV and went to bed. I needed to sleep, and the polls had predicted that Hillary was likely to win. Besides, the thought of a reality TV host with Trump’s personality, character and relationship to truth succeeding Barack Obama as President of the United States seemed inconceivable. 

When I woke up to the election results the next morning, the news sucker-punched my soul. I felt like I was living on a different planet than the one I had gone to bed on. 

The same thing could happen again on November 5. What happens to you when you think about that? 

Before the recent debates, what was happening to me were intrusive fantasies of my favored candidates totally obliterating the arguments of their/my opponents—usually when I was trying to fall asleep. I found my emotions roiling with a mixture of anger and anxiety that had no resolution.

I rarely feel strong anger, so I decided to probe into what was driving it. I found I was perceiving Donald Trump as a caricature of the paradigm of separation, domination, exploitation, greed, and competition that underlies the metacrisis our world is experiencing. What he says and does threatens to undo everything I try to create and inspire—integrity, mutuality, compassion, inclusion, and devotion to the common good. That was arousing my ire. 

Boldly claiming the values that I stand for helped me plant my feet firmly on them. This transmuted my anger into fortitude. But I perceived something deeper than my anger churning in my gut. As I felt into it, I found my inner child, who had been rebuffed by my mother at age 2 when I wanted to be held by her. Her physical and emotional unavailability to me threw me into an experience of existential separation, leaving me feeling alone, vulnerable and comfortless. I spent the rest of my childhood trying to avoid that feeling of rejection. Then I spent all of my adulthood seeking avenues of connection to make me feel whole again.

Seeing this helped me actually identify with Donald Trump’s own inner child, who was reputedly regularly criticized by his dominating father. I surmised that Donald grew up hounded by the fear of being wrong, of failing, of looking weak, and of losing. The anxious loneliness I felt as a child pales by comparison to what I imagine he experienced. I could see why he feels compelled to dominate, blame, attack, and deploy whatever tactics seem necessary to defend against the powerlessness and shame that he experienced in his formative years. 

I also perceived that many of Trump’s followers also have an inner child who is desperately fighting feelings of powerlessness and worthlessness in a complex world. Their traditional values, their accustomed privileges, and their worth in a complex economy are all under threat. And the more people are exposed to threats, the more reactive their amygdalas become, triggering emotional responses like fear, anxiety, and rage. 

This experience of separation, vulnerability, and fear pervades our individualistic, competitive civilization–from the micro level of our inner child to the macro level of zero-sum economics, politics, and geopolitics. Our separation, vulnerability, and fear have generated a society that is unraveling both the ecosystem and social fabric that sustain us. As this deterioration becomes increasingly evident, our sympathetic nervous system answers the threat with the defenses that have evolved to help us survive: fight (e.g. blame and attack), flight (avoid and deny), freeze (shut down), fawn (acquiesce to power figures), or flock (remain loyal to one’s own tribe). Hence the reactivity that is rampant in our politics. 

Clearly, our fears about the other party won’t save us, no matter how justified they may be. No matter who wins this election, as long as Americans cling to the belief that we can make progress by defeating and disempowering the other half of Americans, there will be little we can do to stop the unraveling of our world. 

So for me, the key to facing this election without fear is to shift my focus from all the things that could turn ugly, to ways that I can always help create gratitude, generosity, joy, compassion, healing, courage, cooperation, sustainability, and regeneration. These are the tender seeds of a new consciousness of interconnectedness that can be planted in the compost of the decaying paradigm of separation and fear. 

The 2016 election of Donald Trump taught me something important about hope—by actually shattering any optimism that I had held about a brighter future. There is a deeper kind of hope that isn’t focused on what the future might bring, but that actively brings forth latent potentials that exist in the present. I came to call this kind of hope “radical hope,” because it’s not dependent on circumstances or predictions.

I share my understanding of radical hope with you now, because I believe it can help you face this election with the creative energy of hope rather than the reactive energy of fear. As your heart and soul find ways to embody this interconnecting hope, you will exercise your power to heal our separation and plant the seeds of a better world right where you are. This can help keep your focus positive and even joyful, no matter how the election goes. 

Radical Hope

When we align ourselves with the highest good for us and for all, we become agents of radical hope. 

Radical hope isn’t a wishful-thinking kind of hope, or a blind optimism that somehow things will turn out okay. 

Radical hope isn’t about the state of the world. It’s about the state of our souls.

Radical hope isn’t focused on what has happened or what will happen. It courageously steps into the present and devotes its energy to creating what Life is calling forth so it can flow and flourish. 

Radical hope isn't something we have. It is something we do.

Instead of waiting for the news to get better so we can feel hope, radical hope rolls up its sleeves to make the news as good as we can, simply because that’s who we are and that’s what we do as manifestations of the creative force of Life. 

Radical hope is contagious, and inspires radical hope in others. 

When we embody radical hope together, we move

from victimization into vision,

from isolation into connection,

from powerlessness into a force for change.

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Seeds of Hope Presents:

Beyond the Election

Sunday, December 8th, 2024

1:30-3:30 PM EST

Regardless of the outcome of the election, Chante Ishta Kasper, Tim McGowan and I will offer a free interactive online Seeds of Hope program on “Beyond the Election.” We will create a safe space to process our feelings about the election, ponder what it says about the state of our nation and world, and gain deeper perspectives on how to envision and create a positive human presence on our planet, drawing in part on indigenous wisdom.

If you are not on the Seeds of Hope email list (or aren’t sure), contact me, Dave Inglis, at dri.inglis@gmail.com, and I’ll make sure you receive the invitation and registration link after the election.

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