{"id":2894,"date":"2025-12-11T11:10:49","date_gmt":"2025-12-11T11:10:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/eastlondon.humanist.org.uk\/?p=2894"},"modified":"2025-12-11T11:10:49","modified_gmt":"2025-12-11T11:10:49","slug":"keeping-hopeful-in-a-rotten-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/eastlondon.humanist.org.uk\/?p=2894","title":{"rendered":"Keeping hopeful in a rotten world"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Seasonal opinion piece Barking and Dagenham Post 10 December 2025<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A recent remark about hope by author Salman Rushdie came to mind as I sat down to write this piece for the festive season.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rushdie, a Patron of Humanists UK, was speaking on BBC Radio 4\u2019s Desert Island Discs. He described writing a book as an \u2018act of optimism.\u2019 Authorship is a time-consuming labour of love. There\u2019s no guarantee of publication, let alone creating a best-seller.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hope seems to be hard-wired into us.  There are so many occasions where we pin our efforts and aspirations on a future as daunting and uncertain now as it has ever been. It can underlie the decision to have a baby, move to a new country, or just plant a tree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The period around the winter solstice has traditionally been a time of hope in the Northern hemisphere. In this dark cold season humans have always looked forward to the rebirth of nature, and longer, warmer days. It is marked across continents with lights, feasting and celebration  – a thread that highlights our common humanity.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Christmas is of course a special religious occasion for Christians. But for many it\u2019s a secular celebration we can take part in whatever our belief.  Much of the sparkle and merriment would not have been out of place at the Saturnalia festival held by the ancient Romans to mark the solstice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Jewish festival of Hannukah is sometimes called the Festival of Lights. It starts 14 December. Again, it\u2019s a time for eating special foods with family and friends. As are the winter festivals of Sadeh (Zoroastrian), and Dongzhi in China, Korea, Vietnam and Taiwan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the face of it there is not much to be hopeful about as we head to the New Year. This year has largely been a rotten one for peace, nature, kindness and fairness. But it\u2019s important to reflect on the way that war, bigotry, poverty and degradation of our environment is due to human action or inaction. Hope therefore lies in the fact that as humans we all have it in our power to help make things better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Human beings evolved to survive and thrive. Perhaps being optimistic when the odds seem to be against us is vital to this. So, this Christman let us maintain hope, and our determination to work together to forge a better world in 2026. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Paul Kaufman
Chairperson East London Humanists<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Seasonal opinion piece Barking and Dagenham Post 10 December 2025 A recent remark about hope by author Salman Rushdie came to mind as I sat down to write this piece for the festive season. Rushdie, a Patron of Humanists UK, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2894","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9c4oP-KG","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/eastlondon.humanist.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2894","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/eastlondon.humanist.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/eastlondon.humanist.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eastlondon.humanist.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eastlondon.humanist.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2894"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/eastlondon.humanist.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2894\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2896,"href":"http:\/\/eastlondon.humanist.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2894\/revisions\/2896"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/eastlondon.humanist.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eastlondon.humanist.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eastlondon.humanist.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}