The Book of Hope: Discovering Light in Darkness

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[00:00:13] Today we will unlock the Book of Hope, a survival guide for trying times. Where is hope in modern times?

[00:00:21] Too many people are scrambling to get a share of the planet's diminishing resources.

[00:00:26] It seems like the natural world always suffers in this free for all.

[00:00:30] In this book of hope, good all is realistic but never disheartened.

[00:00:34] She will inspire you with examples of determination against all the odds and with nature's capacity for healing.

[00:00:41] She asks you to listen to her stories of change and repair, and then to take up the challenge and do what you can yourself to save the world.

[00:00:50] Douglas Abrams, the co-author of this book, asks the question over and over, Jane, what does hope mean to you?

[00:00:57] Again and again, good all comes up with a beautiful story.

[00:01:01] She tells of people's determination to win against all the odds and how nature can, with our help, regain its share of the planet.

[00:01:09] In the end, good all's vision of hope is of harmony between humans and nature.

[00:01:15] Abrams and good all's book takes the form of a series of inspiring talks, each in a different location, significant in good all's life.

[00:01:23] However, a pandemic hit the world and interrupted their travels.

[00:01:27] Turning this crisis into a further reason for hope, good all highlights the mobilization of resources to develop vaccines to combat the viruses.

[00:01:36] The dedication of all sorts of people demonstrates what can be achieved with resilience and willpower.

[00:01:42] Good all points out that pandemics seem urgent, but they come and go, the environmental crisis is more tenacious.

[00:01:49] Unless individuals, companies, and nations adapt their behaviors and priorities, the environment will spiral into terminal decline.

[00:01:57] Hope will overcome even trying times.

[00:02:00] Good all has no doubt we will survive, and you can help.

[00:02:04] In this bookie, we'll outline three of Abrams and good all's conversations.

[00:02:10] Part 1. In their first conversation, Abrams and good all talk about the time she spent watching and living with chimpanzees in the wild.

[00:02:18] Part 2. The second conversation delts into the four ways good all thinks hope can make a difference.

[00:02:24] Part 3. Finally, good all talks of how the human spirit allows us to put hope into practice.

[00:02:30] Part 1. Working with wild animals in Tanzania.

[00:02:35] Early on, good all was given a chance that launched her extraordinary career as a naturalist.

[00:02:41] Another person's belief in her potential inspired her commitment and persistence.

[00:02:46] Her very first field study in GOM, Tanzania, proved groundbreaking and produced unprecedented insights into primate behavior.

[00:02:54] The GOM wildlife reserve on the shores of Lake Tanganyika became good all second home.

[00:03:00] This is where Abrams and good all's first conversation takes place.

[00:03:04] Good all first uses an anecdote about her life to show that you can never fully predict what will happen.

[00:03:10] To be hopeful you need to expect the unpredictable.

[00:03:14] As a girl, good all loved stories featuring smart animals.

[00:03:18] She yearned to be a scientist and study wildlife, but she couldn't afford to stay in school to gain the qualifications necessary to achieve this ambition.

[00:03:27] In fact, she left school at 16 and did a secretarial course.

[00:03:32] She found it depressing and boring, but as it turned out, it was the first step towards her dream.

[00:03:38] Through a series of lucky circumstances, she met Dr. Lewis Leakey, a paleontologist at Nairobi National Museum in Kenya and became his secretary.

[00:03:48] Leakey thought there was a limit to what could be found out looking at fossils.

[00:03:52] He wanted to learn about the behavior of early humans by studying their near ancestors, apes.

[00:03:58] He recognized good all's passion and arranged for her to travel to Tanzania to research chimpanzee behavior.

[00:04:05] Although with turns and twists, she finally embarked on the journey she desired.

[00:04:10] When she arrived at the GOM reservation, the chimpanzees were suspicious of her and kept their distance.

[00:04:16] Good all persisted.

[00:04:18] Over many months she squatted in the undergrowth and experienced moments of hope and hopelessness.

[00:04:24] Eventually, through calm persistence, she gained the animal's confidence and one day a proud looking chimpanzee with a handsome white wispy beard came up to her.

[00:04:34] She named this chimped David Gray Beard.

[00:04:37] When the rest of the group saw that good all wasn't a threat, they slowly accepted her too.

[00:04:42] It was the breakthrough she needed.

[00:04:44] Now she could watch the chimps behavior close up.

[00:04:48] Good all often lacked confidence in her own abilities, but Leaky had unshakable faith in her.

[00:04:54] Good all says she wrote to Leaky saying,

[00:04:56] You've put all your faith in me and I can't do it.

[00:04:59] And he'd write back and say, I know you can.

[00:05:03] In selecting good all for the expedition, Leaky had been working on a hunch that an untrained woman would have fewer preconceptions, be more patient,

[00:05:11] and show greater empathy toward the animals she was studying than a man trained in a university.

[00:05:16] Good all proved him correct.

[00:05:19] One of her achievements is discovering that chimps use tools.

[00:05:23] One day, after she had gained David Gray Beard's confidence, she watched him strip the leaves from a branch and used the stick to dig for termites.

[00:05:31] The termites climbed on to the stick and Gray Beard licked them off.

[00:05:36] This simple observation changed people's understanding of animals' capacity to think and be creative.

[00:05:42] Previously, scientists argued that humans were the only species capable of inventing and using tools.

[00:05:49] Good all watched Gray Beard adapt the stick, make it fit for his purpose, and then use it to simplify his task, fishing out a tasty meal of termites from their hiding place.

[00:05:59] Her unique insight made Good all famous.

[00:06:02] Good all's early chimpanzee research spurred new interest in their behavior.

[00:06:07] However, in the same period, as scientists were finding that chimps were much closer to humans than previously assumed,

[00:06:14] they also discovered that the wild places where apes lived were increasingly under threat.

[00:06:19] Jungle forests were being harvested for timber and cleared for farmland.

[00:06:24] Extreme poverty in communities around chimpanzee habitats drove hungry people to take any opportunity to survive.

[00:06:31] Wretched people were encouraged to hunt chimps to sell for wild meat and capture young monkeys to trade his novelty pets.

[00:06:38] All the time, competing for ever more limited resources, chimps lost out and desperate humans might win a short-term profit before eventually suffer from environmental degradation because of the loss of biodiversity.

[00:06:51] On another occasion, Good all intervened and saved a chimped she called Wunda, who was captured, destined to be eaten.

[00:06:59] Before Good all rescued her, Wunda was badly abused.

[00:07:03] It took many months for her to recover.

[00:07:05] When she was about to be returned to the wild, she turned, looked into Good all's eyes and embraced her.

[00:07:12] The picture of the interspecies hug became an iconic image for environmentalists, showing that the natural world desperately needs our help.

[00:07:20] Therally recovered, Wunda bounced back and became the leading female in her group.

[00:07:25] She now has a daughter of her own called Hope.

[00:07:28] So what have chimpanzees got to do with Hope?

[00:07:31] They also have the capacity to feel hopeful.

[00:07:34] Inevitably, watching chimps in the wild, Good all witnessed vicious fights and grew some accidents as well as moments of tenderness.

[00:07:43] She noticed that when a chimpanzee was injured and the situation seemed desperate, some would give up and die while others possessed an indomitable spirit and survived.

[00:07:53] She attributes this to Hope, an invincible force that can stand even in the face of death.

[00:07:58] Good all considers there are two types of Hope, small Hope and giant Hope.

[00:08:03] Small Hope concerns personal issues.

[00:08:07] We hope to have a happy and fulfilled life, we can actively work towards it by doing a worthwhile job, nurturing our mental and physical health.

[00:08:15] The larger Hope is more complex. It is Hope for the world.

[00:08:20] It requires benign enlightened leadership that provides the conditions for collective action where everyone plays their part.

[00:08:27] Chimps show the reality of small Hope, but cannot access the larger Hope that will protect the forests where they live or curtail the hunters who want to profit by selling their meat.

[00:08:37] As humans have made themselves the dominant species on the planet, large Hope becomes their responsibility.

[00:08:44] Good all warns us that Hope for the world is an obligation needing an organized approach.

[00:08:49] It is no good just optimistically expecting things to fall into place.

[00:08:54] Such optimism is fundamentally different from Hope. Optimism is fragile.

[00:08:59] If circumstances change, optimism can switch to pessimism.

[00:09:04] The optimist expects everything to go well.

[00:09:07] When things don't turn out right, frustration or disappointment set in.

[00:09:12] In fact, when it comes to profound problems such as global warming, the loss of natural resources or species extinction, cheery optimism is a delusion.

[00:09:22] When optimists sense the true scale of difficulties, they may turn into those who deny the need for action because slow, perhaps barely perceptible, progress challenges their expectation that solutions will simply fall into place.

[00:09:35] Hope however is resilient. It is like a muscle that works against resistance and difficulties. They will make it stronger.

[00:09:44] Hope thrives on facing challenges and overcoming setbacks.

[00:09:49] Good all warns of four alarming problems that Hope must confront.

[00:09:53] These are poverty, inequality, corruption and overpopulation.

[00:09:58] If you live below the poverty line and are desperate to survive, you will not hesitate to burn the last tree to keep warm or kill the last rhino for food.

[00:10:08] If you are too affluent, your endless quest for novel stimulation will lead you to hunt the last pandolin.

[00:10:14] Without an honest and supportive government, all our best efforts are doomed to falter and fail.

[00:10:20] And if the population grows and grows, resources will not be enough to go around.

[00:10:26] While Goodall's insight into the vicious effect of extreme poverty is demoralizing, it also illustrates latent resilience that will to live.

[00:10:34] Goodall realized very early on as an environmental advocate that if you wanted to nurture animal habitats, you best look after the people who live nearby.

[00:10:44] Pressure for resources around the gong reservation meant that as well as humans praying on wild chimpanzees, the hungry chimps would sneak out of the forest at night and raid the human's crops.

[00:10:55] The two communities were interconnected.

[00:10:58] It was a waste to focus resources on nature conservation without caring for local people.

[00:11:04] The best way to combat hunting was to provide credit so that farmers could afford to buy seeds and teach them how to look after chickens.

[00:11:11] In this way, to survive, they did not need to hunt.

[00:11:15] That is the end of the first conversation between Goodall and Abrams.

[00:11:20] It took place at Goodall's home near the gong reserve where she first observed chimpanzees in the wild.

[00:11:26] Goodall got her once in a lifetime opportunity with only a secretarial qualification and no university education.

[00:11:34] Her original insight into how chimps used tools made her famous.

[00:11:38] Next, Goodall took up the mission to protect the chimps shrinking habitats.

[00:11:43] It was a big challenge. She needed hope.

[00:11:47] In the second conversation, Goodall will tell us more about hope.

[00:11:51] Today we are just sharing limited content.

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