Rich Snowdon - Love With Fight in Its Heart: Finding grace here at the end of the human story

Copyright 2019 by Richard E. Snowdon

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in book reviews, or a total of 250 words or less in articles, videos, or books. For longer passages contact the author directly though his website www.lovewithfight.com

Printed in the United States of America

First Printing: 2019

Print ISBN: 978-0-99882-010-1
eBook ISBN: 978-0-99882-011-8

Permissions

The author wishes to thank:

Milkweed Editions, Minneapolis, MN, for permission to quote from Swimming in the Congo by Margaret Meyers.

Hatchette Book Group, New York, NY, for permission to quote from War by Sebastian Junger.

W.W. Norton Company, New York, NY, for permission to quote from Passionate Marriage by David Schnarch, and for permission to quote from Suffer the Children by Marilyn Wedge.

Invocation

We are a species in deep trouble. What if the trouble is too deep? What if its too late to save ourselves? What if theres no hope for us?

If this is true, how can we hold such truth in our hearts and not hurt ourselves with it? If this is true, how will we love ourselves?

Warning

This book is not for everyone. Marketers say that kind of thing as a gimmick, but I mean it. Love with Fight begins with the death of hope. Please do not underestimate how painful that death can be.

Ive written this book for people who are hurting in a special way. Its for you if youre scared about the future. Its for you if youve put your heart into saving the world and gotten your heart broken. Its for you if you no longer believe in hope, and dont want it back, but refuse, absolutely refuse to surrender to despair.

This is not a how-to, its not a pep talk. I dont have ten easy steps for dealing with the death of hope. This is a book of nurturance.

And that being so, what matters most is that you take very good care of yourself as you read. Ive made a post-hope life for myself over a period of decades. Ive gotten used to it step by step. But in this book Im giving you the full dose all at once. So I urge you to pace yourself. Take time out when you need to. Read with a friend so neither of you has to take this journey alone. And if you need to stop reading altogether, please do that, please stop.

This book is dark but my message is not one of defeat. In this time of distress, in the face of terrible danger, you get to fight harder for yourself than ever before. You get to ask more of love than youve ever asked of it.

Part One:
Common Ground

Checkmate

I used to love to tell the story about the window of opportunity. When I was young and devoted to activism, I told it to anyone who would listen.

You know how it goes. Even though were in mortal danger, we still have a chance to save ourselvesbut only if we take action right now, no more talking, no more delaysbecause the window is closing and its closing fast. How much time have we got? That depends. Some say ten years, some twenty, some go as high as a hundred. Still, in the long journey of human history a decade or two or even a century is only the blink of an eye, and our fate is in that blink.

If I had crossed your path back in those days, I would have barraged you with details about the threats were facing, laying them on thick, then even thicker, watching you carefully until I saw your eyes fill up with fear. Then Id pivot and announce that for yet a little while hope was still ours for the taking.

I provoked distress because I wanted to move people to action. And its true that fear can fire people up, but its also true that fear shuts people down even more than it fires them up. A net loss. So it didnt matter how sincere I was, I wasnt helping. And maybe its just that I wanted you to be as scared as I was so Id have company.

Now, though, when I hear someone tell the window story, I hear it as an admission of defeat. The time frame is too short for us to pull off something as momentous as the salvation of our species. Wed have to make an impossible leap overnight. Tomorrow morning billions of us would have to get up and go show up out on the playing field of survival, giving it everything weve got, all of us in synch, one harmonious global team. But that kind of togetherness is not possible for us. By our nature, we humans are too contentious and contrary. Which means this cherished window of ours is only a pretty picture painted on the wall were about to hit.

Alexander Pope, in his epic poem An Essay on Man , wrote those three famous words of inspiration: Hope springs eternal. But theres a second half to that line, and though I doubt Pope meant it this way, I take it as cautionary because it says, in the human breast. Thats where hope springs, in us, in our hearts. Its got remarkable resilience. It really does. Hope springs again and againright up to the day it dies. And hope can die because its only human.

There once was a time, a very long time, when our ancestors had the art of togetherness mastered. For the first ninety-five percent of our history, so our best evidence says, we evolved in bands of thirty or forty individuals living within larger tribes. These were communities where people knew each other well. There was a high degree of mutual caring and, just as important, accountability. Both were necessary for survival. Tribes which couldnt sustain effective togetherness disappeared. Lots of tribes did survive, though, more and more because we had the luxury of time, tens of thousands of years, to master the art of taking care of ourselves in small groups.

But since then, weve turned into a monstrous global mass, and we havent got a clue how to nurture a population of such magnitude. Were drowning in ourselves. A hundred years from now, if we last that long, there could easily be ten billion of us, every single person with their own urgent needs. How can all those needs possibly get met? Who do we imagine will meet them? Especially since were already failing so badly now with only seven billion of us.

When I was a child, I believed we were the apple of Gods eye. Werent we created in his image? Didnt he protect us with his divine love? Didnt he swear his sacred promise of eternal salvation? Didnt he give us the rainbow sign? But here we are on the brink of extinction and now is when we need him most and where is he? Whats he waiting for?

When I grew up and stopped believing in God, I decided that we must be, had to be, the apple of evolutions eye. Wasnt evolution looking out for us in its own nonsentient way? After all, arent we lifes greatest creation, what its all been leading up to, the apex? Sure, were on a continuum with the rest of the species, but still its true were special. Look at our closest living relatives, the chimpanzees, who are so cute mugging for the cameras but who have created nothing compared to the incredible world weve created. Its no contest. Theres nothing weve ever discovered anywhere in the universe thats more complex than the human brain. Carl Sagan said each of us can have, even the humblest among us, more brain states, meaning combinations of synapses being on and off, than there are atoms in the universe. Atoms in the universe!

But here we are, face to face with fate, and suddenly were nobodys chosen ones. The promise that were exceptional and deserve special treatment and will get it, this happy entitlement, is only a promise we made to ourselves. Still, weve counted on it, so now that its broken why wouldnt we feel betrayed?