What hope for a “post-hope” world?

Max Weber is one of the founding greats of modern sociology. A tireless scholar of acute intelligence, his ability to combine vast empirical knowledge with crystalline analysis, makes him a compelling read, even today.

In 1917 and 1919, he gave two famous talks, titled “Science as a Vocation” and “Politics as a Vocation” respectively. They are as fresh in their insights now as when they were presented a century ago.

The “vocation lectures” were delivered at a spectacularly bad time. Weber, a patriotic German, gave the first just as his country was starting to lose World War I. He gave the second as it plunged into revolutionary chaos and faced a second (diplomatic) defeat at the Versailles peace conference. He died in 1920, having foreseen the rise of political extremism, and the whole disaster that became mid-twentieth century history.

Weber tried to stop the unravelling, but could not, as the dismal record of our past shows. Yet not once did he abandon the struggle for a better world. “Politics as a Vocation” ends with these remarkable words:

It is absolutely true, and our entire historical experience confirms it, that what is possible could never have been accomplished unless people had tried again and again to achieve the impossible… Even those who are neither leaders nor heroes must arm themselves with that staunchness of heart that refuses to be daunted by the collapse of all their hopes, for otherwise they will not be capable of accomplishing what is possible today. Only the person whose spirit will not be broken if the world proves too stupid to accept what they offer it, but can still say “Nevertheless!”, has a vocation for politics.

During Covid there was much mention of “hope”, and the need for it. Now we are through the worst of the pandemic, the future seems replete with other horrors. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a reminder that nuclear war is still possible. The economy wobbles as inflation rises while the average wage – our capacity to pay higher prices for essential goods and services – remains flat or grows at a lower rate. The extreme weather events scientists told us to expect with Anthropogenic planetary warming, impact more severely each passing year.

As complexity theorists like to say, “small changes in certain parameters of a non-linear system can cause equilibria to disappear leading to large and sudden changes of the behaviour of the system”. In simple English: what many fear now is imminent global catastrophe.

I am, I decided recently, a “post-hope” person. An easy mistake to make is to think of our choice of Weltanschauung (“worldview”) as a binary one. Either we are hopeful, or we are in despair. Either things are getting better all the time, an upward path to prosperity, peace and enlightenment, or we are dropping off a civilizational cliff face like a sack of stones.

Weber would have none of that.  Emerging from German Romanticism at its most faux-mystical and chocolate-boxy sentimental, he rejected all forms of utopian and dystopian thinking as delusional. His views were sophisticated, developed from years of research into the decline of religion and the rise of rational science. He used the phrase “disenchantment” (Entzauberung) to describe a world that no longer takes religious truths literally, and so experiences an explosion of political pluralism. Foundational arguments, root dissentions, conflicts over what Weber calls “ultimate values” – these are not the failings of the modern era; these are the modern era. Such “institutional polytheism” is inevitable when we let go of the idea that we should all believe the same thing, and act in the same way.

From this point of view, the rise of authoritarian styles of government in the last century, as with their re-emergence today, is a form of escapism, a retreat into a lost and irrecoverable past. Modernity throws up problems only some of which can be solved definitively. The rest, we must learn to live with.

Weber’s vision of the politician with a genuine vocation is gripping. They are someone who feels strong emotions but are not dominated by them. They inspire others to follow their leadership, while keeping their own ego on a short leash. Of the three qualities he sees as essential to the role – passion, perspective and a sense of responsibility – he emphasises the last.

It is not enough to hold that our views as the correct ones. We must always be aware that others believe they hold the correct views too and accept the resulting principled disagreement without being overwhelmed by it. “Politics is a strong, slow boring through hard boards” he famously said. Hope doesn’t come into it. Courage is what matters. As a young play director, I remember being told by a mentor that in the theatre there is only one rule: keep going.

Beyond hope, lie the unenviable but unavoidable challenges of the contemporary world. A number of these are significant in objective feature. How do we combat climate change? How do we redress runaway inequality? Others, however, are internal to a disenchanted, pluralist social order. How do we find (much) more effective ways of working together? How do we stop making a religion of our differences and operationalise our common humanity?

It was challenges of the latter type that Europe faced in 1919, when Weber delivered his “Politics as a Vocation” lecture. The leaders of the time – including Australia’s bumptious Billy Hughes – failed to recognise it. Consequently, we now own a past which is a monument to a failure of the collective imagination: the Depression, World War II, the Holocaust, the Cold War. Our current problems are of a piece with this legacy, and it often feels to me as if the same challenges are pressing.

We must surely rise to them or perish. Let us not look too hopefully to “hope”, therefore, or expect too much from that state of comforting expectation. Let us do what Weber did: roll up our sleeves and get to work.

Let’s not hope for a better future. Let’s go out and make one.

Dr Julian Meyrick is Professor of Creative Arts at Griffith University.  He was Artistic Director of kickhouse theatre 1990-1998, and Associate Director and Literary Adviser at Melbourne Theatre Company 2002-2007. He holds a MA in theatre directing and a PhD in Australian theatre history and was a Senior Research Fellow at La Trobe University 2008-2011. From 2012 to 2019 he was Professor of Creative Arts at Flinders University, South Australia. Julian has directed over forty theatre shows and was winner of the Helpmann Award for Best New Work in 2012. He is a General Editor of Currency House’s New Platform Papers, a board member of NORPA, and Literary Adviser for Queensland Theatre. He is a regular media commentator on the arts and cultural policy. His latest book, Australia in 50 Plays, was published by Currency Press in March 2022.