Elin Kelsey: Remembering the critical role of hope in activism (ep286)
Green Dreamer with Kamea Chayne is a podcast exploring our paths to holistic healing, ecological regeneration, and true abundance and wellness for all. Subscribe to our show in any podcast app!
Dr. Elin Kelsey joins us in this episode to discuss:
the critical role of hope and informed optimism in activism;
the ironic relationship between climate hopelessness and consumerism;
and more.
Musical feature: Trust The Sun by Johanna Warren (IG: @johahahanna, Spotify: Johanna Warren)
“By feeding someone [in a consumer-based society] with a steady diet of just how bad something is when they already know it’s bad, what you end up doing is triggering the terror management theory response and ironically supporting overconsumption.”
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Here’s Dr. Kelsey on our tendency to default to a problem identification lens:
“For a long time, psychology looked at problems and what contributed to those problems. But in more recent decades, we've seen a shift to seeing what allows people to be healthy or thrive even in difficult circumstances—to study where the strength and resilience come from. This shift is necessary in psychology and also in environmentalism.
We can do problem identification as individuals, such as through the SWAT analysis—looking at what's not working in a system.
But in order to develop solutions, it almost always requires collaboration and creativity among many peoples’ strengths. I think part of our bias towards problem identification is that it's easier to do that by ourselves, whereas to enact solutions and find meaningful changes, we often have to do that collectively. A lot of our scientific research paradigms were set up around individual research criteria rather than collective, cross-disciplinary approaches.
It's shifting, but I think it's part of the reason we default to a problem identification lens.”
About Elin Kelsey
Elin Kelsey, PhD is a scholar, author, and passionate leader in the hope and environmental solutions movement. She co-created #OceanOptimism, a Twitter campaign to crowd-source marine conservation solutions which has reached more than 100 million shares.
Elin is also the author of numerous Adult and Children's books, including her latest for Adults, Hope Matters: Why Changing the Way We Think Is Critical For Solving The Environmental Crisis and her latest for children, A Last Goodbye.
