The Foresight Institute is holding a contest to make a meme that represents existential hope. So I made an emoji. A) Because emojis are about as memetic as it gets. And B) I was kind of shocked to find there wasn't one that embodied 'existential hope' already.
So here it is, the HopePunk.
Defiance. Disruption. Carving out space outside systems that try to flatten individuality and impose conformity. A rejection of the mainstream. That’s punk.
But the mainstream has shifted. Casual comfort and complacency with the fundamentally broken have given way to pervasive distrust, cynicism, and even misery. Now it is belief in each other, positive change and the possibility of a brighter future, even in the face of collapse, which constitutes rebellion. Hope as punk isn’t naïve optimism. It’s a refusal to let despair monopolise the future.
Hope is punk. Optimism is cool.
And I guess my Mum was right all along.