Hope… despite

Helena Fornstedt

They wrote the rules of this game
and dealt the cards before we came.
They said, “This system is the best
that humanity can tailor”.
If so, then our future is a prisoner,
and the present is its jailor.

I say; We cannot rest with that, 
we cannot leave it be. 
We must start our tailoring
and set our future free!

…

Some say our future is dead
that there is nothing left but dread…
and they might very well be right
but we still hope… despite  

… despite the probable and likely
… despite the powerful and mighty

… despite what history has taught
… despite lost causes, we have fought

… despite this system’s insatiable need
… despite its indifference and greed 

We do still sing; we do still dance
cause we imagine there's a chance
and we know the chance is slim 
yes, we know that hope is thin. 
Dark and cloudy is our sight
but we still hope... despite

The Science

In my thesis work, I became interested in resistance to change and the often very rational reason to be against developments brought about by technology intended for a privileged few. So, I was intrigued when I heard Mikael Kurkiala connect resistance to hope, saying that he could only hope as an act of resistance, as hope in spite of the state of the world. This made me think of hope despite… and in this, I returned to some lines by Timothée Parrique. In his argumentation for degrowth economics, he points to dreams as resistance to the current economic system and writes, “So it is time to dream up instead! If the future is a prisoner of the present, it means we should “liberate the future.” From these thoughts, I crafted this poem. 

The Poet

Helena Fornstedt is a postdoctoral researcher in Uppsala, Sweden. In 2024, she co-authored a comic book relating climate and transition research to the general public. In 2021, she defended a thesis on resistance to innovation that was elected the best of the year in two fields (Industrial Engineering and Management and Business Administration). Currently, she conducts research on sustainable transitions in the food sector.

Next poem: Larvae in lines by Chris Gillen