PSYCHOSCAPES: Radical Hope to Heal a Divided Nation

I took this photograph at Hampton Beach State Park in 2014

The Crow people were a proud and thriving Native American Nation until the U.S. defeated them in battle while killing off the Buffalo, the primary source of their subsistence. As their legendary chief, Plenty Coups, explained, “When the buffalo went away the hearts of my people fell to the ground,” he said, “and they could not lift them up again.”^⁠1

This example of human vulnerability– that of a people faced with the end of their way of life – prompted Jonathan Lear, philosopher and psychoanalyst, to write a book about the human suffering that comes about from societal collapse.

To my perhaps warped way of thinking, I see a similarity between the psychological consequences of what happened to the American Indians and what is happening to a sizable segment of our fellow Americans today: those still imbued with that macho frontier spirit personified by John Wayne. (Please excuse the following exaggeration)

This segment of our fellow citizens, often followers of Trump, to one degree or another, still attempt to live by the creed of the Wild West: They sneer at regulations and community and worship their version of the Bible which declares nature is meant for them to possess. They march under a flag that says ‘don’t tell me what to do’ or prevent me from riding out of town on my trusty steed packing my trusty six-shooter to patrol against dark-skinned immigrants, a constant threat like the 'Injuns’ were.

Writing this will probably get me run out of town on a rail. I'm only exaggerating this comparison to emphasize Lear's more significant point. Losing one's way of life –whether a Crow or a Trump believer – is excruciating, a psychological death. One's first inclination to fight on, as many Indian tribes did, or hold a lasting grudge, as the confederacy did after our civil war.

The Sioux and most other tribes viewed Plenty Coups as a coward for not battling the white man, but the chief understood that fighting back against the endless convoy of settlers moving west was futile. Instead, he chose to work with the newcomers by leading a delegation to Washington and negotiated a treaty with the U.S. that allowed the Crow to keep their ancestral land..“Today members of the tribe express pride that the Crow were able to keep their mountains.”^⁠2

Plenty Coups' radical action flew in the face of the age-old warrior ethic never to concede, to fight to the end for your beliefs. That way of thinking was pervasive at the time, held by everyone from the cowboys to the Indians to the U.S. Army cavalry. Needless to say, this warrior ethic still flourishes, underlying U.S. Foreign policy today.

Most thought Plenty Coups' approach of having "compassion, empathy, and the willingness to seek understanding" as weak and naive. Yet he persevered, creating a better future for his tribe through understanding and dialogue. Even today, he is remembered by his people for telling them: "With what the white man knows he can oppress us. If we learn what he knows, he can never oppress us again."^⁠3

Although it may appear that I am writing this column to infuriate both sides of our cultural divide, what I'm attempting to do is promote Plenty Coups' vision of radical hope. As Lear describes it:“What makes this hope radical is that it is directed toward a future goodness that transcends the current ability to understand what it is. Radical hope anticipates a good for which those who have the hope as yet lack the appropriate concepts with which to understand it.”^⁠4

It's impossible to summarize Lear's book in 700 words because it is dense and complex, relying on nuance. Let me close by defining radical hope in terms of how I think it could help mend our fractured nation.

For liberals, it means not viewing Trump supporters as 'a basket of deplorables.’ If we resist our first impulse to make moral judgments, perhaps we can feel empathy for how psychologically devastating it is to lose a way of life – the ethic of the American wild frontier – whether it is factual or increasingly hyped up on social media.

Conversely, it’s equally important that my friends who support Trump foster radical hope: to hold out the possibility that supporting community and diversity will not spell the end of a way of life but be the start of a more productive and meaningful one.

xxx

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