Acknowledgments

I COULDN’T HAVE WRITTEN ANYTHING resembling this book without the inspiration and emotional support that Ben and Kate, my children, have provided so abundantly over the last eight years. They’ve been with me either in spirit or in person every step of the way. Nor could I have written it without my wife and partner, Sarah, who has always been by my side with love, comfort, and guidance, encouraging me to press forward, most crucially after I finally decided (in the face of much advice) that this book had to be about hope.

I was away from my family at solo writing retreats for a total of nearly seven months. I missed them all terribly on these occasions; and every time I came home, I found that the kids had changed. I’ll never get that time with my family back, and I’ll be forever indebted to Sarah, Ben, and Kate for giving me those precious opportunities to focus exclusively on writing.

I’m grateful to my literary agent, Bruce Westwood, for gently urging me, in 2011, to write one more book. Over the twenty-five years we’ve known each other, I’ve been blessed to become friends with Bruce, to be touched by his warmth and charm, and to benefit from his enormous professional acumen. Louise Dennys, my editor in Canada, and Jonathan Cobb, my editor in the United States, helped turn a heap of somewhat inchoate ideas and arguments into a disciplined and (I trust) compelling book. Jonathan’s wonderful insights and unflagging patience were critical at moments when I felt lost; sometimes he seemed to have a clearer sense for the essence of my ideas than I did myself. Louise’s brilliant and painstaking attention to every aspect of the book through multiple revisions has crucially strengthened its argument and tightened and enlivened its story. To you both, thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Geoffrey and Elizabeth May were extraordinarily generous in introducing me to their mother’s story and helping me understand its details and context. Stephanie’s memoirs and scrapbooks are a goldmine of information about her activism and perspective on the world and about how life and politics looked and felt in the United States in the late 1950s. Geoffrey took me through Stephanie’s old house in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, regaling me room by room with family tales; and Elizabeth and I discussed the role of hope in today’s environmental activism. Both graciously answered my many questions and read and commented on all passages about their mother.

At the University of Waterloo, my dean, Jean Andrey, has enthusiastically supported this book project for many years, even though it falls far outside the ambit of normal scholarship. My students and colleagues at the university and beyond have helped me develop and strengthen the scientific foundations of my argument, particularly the parts concerning complexity science, psychology, political science, and processes of institutional and technological change. Paul Thagard, Tobias Schröder, Manjana Milkoreit, and Jinelle Piereder pioneered our work on cognitive-affective maps. I’ve also learned much from Paul on the role of emotion in cognition, from Manjana on the role of imagination in envisioning new futures, from Mike Lawrence on dehumanization and on the tension between global diversity and uniformity, and from Jonathan Leader Maynard (at the University of Oxford) on the connections between political ideology and violence. Mike and Norman Kearney explored with me the implications of the WIT framework. Steven Mock advanced my thinking about symbols of nationalism and group identity, Steve Quilley about the ontological and moral commitments of modern conservatism, Lee Smolin about the nature of time, and Stephen Purdey about the importance of new, emotionally grounded, global narratives for humanity. Tahnee Prior explained the Finnish concept of sisu. Yonatan Strauch deepened my grasp of the complexity of energy transitions and Clay Dasilva of our societies’ psychological and social commitments to economic growth.

Scott Janzwood gave careful attention to my claims about uncertainty and wrote excellent research reports for me on normative cascades, the neurobiology of hope, humanity’s mood shift since 2000, and the parallels between the fights against slavery and climate change.

I owe special debts to my dear friends Frances Westley, for her groundbreaking research on social innovation, and Fred Bird, for his advice on the Axial Age, Karl Jaspers, Reinhold Niebuhr, Hannah Arendt, Émile Durkheim, and the history of hope (the subject of his own book project). Matto Mildenberger (University of California, Santa Barbara) straightened out my ideas on Pascal’s Wager and on the politics of climate change in advanced economies. Sheldon Solomon (Skidmore College), a world authority on Ernest Becker and Terror Management Theory, reviewed and commented on the passages dealing with those topics. Jordan Mansell (University of Quebec at Montreal) completed initial surveys and tests of the state-space model of political ideology.

Anthony Barnosky and Elizabeth Hadly (Stanford University) reviewed the passage on their co-authored article about planetary state shifts, which Kate found on Sarah’s desk; John Bongaarts (Population Council) checked my assertions regarding African demographic momentum; Gordon Laxer (formerly of the Parkland Institute) contributed his thoughts on the links between perceptions of justice and identity; Stuart Kauffman (Santa Fe Institute) opened my mind to the possibilities of the sacred in living nature’s complexity; and James Risbey (Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization) reviewed the graph in chapter 2 on warming since the beginning of the Holocene epoch. The concept of “virtuous cascades” originated with Trevor Hancock (University of Victoria). Jane Long (California Council on Science & Technology) shared with me her ideas about our responsibilities to sustain others’ hope, and Jim Balsillie helped me understand the pernicious role of social media giants in eroding social solidarity.

Many thanks, too, to Joan Hewer, for her tireless assistance with research and locating articles and books over the years and for handling all illustration permissions; Jacob Buurma for his beautiful illustrations; David Porreca (University of Waterloo) and Rabun Taylor (University of Austin, Texas) for guidance on the book’s Latin dedication; Nick Garrison, Jane Willms, and John Pearce for discerning comments on the book’s opening (and also to Jane for her company and insights during our travels so many years ago); Werner Kurz and Sarah Beukema for general solace during my writing retreats and for reviewing my calculations on the volume of carbon dioxide that needs to be removed from Earth’s atmosphere to keep warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius; and Matt Hoffmann (University of Toronto) for his heartfelt comments on social scientists’ fear of climate change.

This book has benefited immeasurably from the keen editorial eye of Associate Editor Rick Meier (Knopf Canada), who saw the book through to production; from the meticulous care of my empathetic copyeditor, Linda Pruessen, and proofreader, Tilman Lewis; and from the patience and skill of Senior Managing Editor Deirdre Molina, who brought the book to completion. I’ve also been enormously fortunate, once again, to have had financial support from the Winslow Foundation to defray research, illustration, and editing costs.

And, finally, a special tip of the hat to the blue monkeys from the land of Twang, a tortoise named Bill, and their cats— all creations of the British comedian Eddie Izzard, who has brought so much laughter to our family and who somehow manages to make the world’s craziness a little more tolerable.