Light and Darkness

Finding Perspective without losing hope

Hello again.

Well, 2025 sure was a year, with 2026 picking the baton up with nary a pause. We’ve seen the outcomes of a whole year of Trump presidency 2: Electric Boogaloo, the horrors of the (ongoing) genocide in Gaza, a new conflict in Iran, the continuing war in Ukraine, conflicts in Sudan, droughts, floods, fires, and so much more. Last year seemed both eternally long and to have passed in a heartbeat - the start of last year feels a lifetime away, yet the past few months have vanished, leaving us suddenly in April 2026, wondering what new chaos awaits.

An Overdue Update

The past year has been far from smooth for me on the personal side as well. Whilst I feel like I’m now in a remarkably positive place, I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that it has been one of the hardest periods of my life so far. And all that despite avoiding all of the aforementioned global chaos and living a life of relative comfort, safety and prosperity.

So what gives? Well, the eagle-eyed amongst you may have noticed my name/bio has updated. To cut a long story short, I’m transgender, and this past year was the time where I’ve finally brought all of that out into the world (a world which is, unfortunately, increasingly hostile to trans people of late). I came out to family, at work, fought more admin than I can shake a stick at, battled healthcare systems aplenty. It’s been a heck of a ride (and is far from over), but I come to you from a more OK place than I’ve been at in my entire life to date. I’m sure I’ll have many future ups and downs to weather, but for now, I’m relishing this period of ‘OK-ness’ and, dare I say it, moments of joy.

But, as happy as I am in my new, truer self, I didn’t break my year-long silence just to share the ins and outs of my personal life, as unusual as it may have been of late.

The State of the World

The world is awful. The world is much better. The world can be much better.

I love this set of statements (shamelessly lifted from this excellent article on development). I find, especially in our current world of social media and quest for pithy soundbites, it’s easy to be reductive about the state of the world. Consult the news and you can be left with a profound sense that the world is awful, and going in the wrong direction.

However, those who want to push back on this, whilst noting very real improvements in the world, can fail to balance that with reality, and end up with a sugar-coated, almost toxic positivity that denies many people’s lived experiences. However, by balancing the three together - the world is awful, but the world is also much better than it was, but it can be so much better - it tells a more nuanced, realistic, but also profoundly hopeful narrative.

Narratives are key to help us make sense of the world. The world is so massive and complex, it can be nigh on impossible for us to grasp it all, it’s overwhelming. We’re not so far from being hunter gatherers who lived in small tribal groups, and being connected to everything, everywhere, all at once is too many signals, too much noise. News, social media, influencers, and the like promise to make sense of it for us, but, especially in a world driven by engagement, often err on the side of showing us emotive, conflict-filled narratives that leave us feeling worn down, isolated and small.

This combines with the complex and rapidly changing state of the world at the moment. Western narratives of constant growth are faltering, with geopolitical dynamics shifting rapidly, often on the whims of key figures (looking at you, Trump, amongst others). We’re told all must be thrown at the altar of growing the economy, but not only has growth been slowing, but life on the ground for many feels profoundly bad. For the average person on the street, if growth is good, and things are growing, why has their salary barely budged in years, they’re working more hours, all while their cost of living has sky-rocketed?

This malaise only strengthens in the face of crises like the climate, which looms behind everything. Meanwhile, our political choices are ‘more of the same’ or ‘hateful rhetoric disguised under nostalgia for the “good old days”’. It’s no wonder people are losing hope, drifting into apathy. Why vote, when votes don’t meaningfully change anything? Why care, when everything will get worse regardless? People disengage from the social fabric, retreat into their bubbles. Narratives that lean on fear of the other, ‘us vs them’ become more appealing. It’s easy to see how we’ve got here, but also, we know where this ends, and it isn’t good.

Ideating our way to a better future

I started this newsletter because I wanted to believe that there was a different path. One that didn’t sugar-coat the truth, but also tried to find a more hopeful path. Over time, it drifted into more of a regular climate news letter, and I myself became more of a passive consumer of the news, unsure whether my opinions or thoughts on things mattered.

I still am not sure whether anyone does want to hear my opinions and thoughts, but I may as well share them, and let you decide. I’m not forcing anyone to read my words, and I assume that if you stick around, and especially if you like or otherwise respond to what I say, then it has resonated in some way, good or bad!

From where I’m standing, we face a crisis of narrative, of hope. We don’t lack for solutions. I’ve written about a host of technologies and approaches in this newsletter previously, and indeed, in my day job I’m doing what I can to work on one of these areas. There’re also a host of people working on smart policy, new governmental systems, you name it.

However, most people outside of these focused areas know little to nothing about what is being worked on, and even where they do, they lack hope that it will make a difference. That is a gap that sorely needs filling. Whilst we often try to act rationally, we’re emotional creatures. We hope and fear, love and hate - even where we know something rationally, there’s a gap between knowing it and truly feeling it.

Stories and narratives speak to our emotions. They fuel our imagination, they give us hope, give us ideas, inspiration. They provoke us to act, they give us something to push for. That groundswell of momentum helps create time, space and resource for those practical-minded folks who do specialise in the nuts and bolts to get going and work their magic. Without that support, they’re fighting uphill, working with scraps in the periphery in the hope that somehow, they’ll be able to move the needle.

This is why I can’t help feeling that right now, we have a major deficit of narratives showing us where we could be going. Hollywood tells a darn good dystopian tale, and indeed that seems too much of what’s on these days, but what about more positive futures? I don’t mean saccharine utopias, I mean real people doing real things that are positive. By all means throw in some future tech where it fits, but focus on stories, on people, characters. Imagine Black Mirror, but instead of bleak warnings about things that might go wrong, it’s hopeful but nuanced visions of where we could go?

Hope is an action, and it can be nurtured

In my last post, over a year ago, I mentioned the idea of a project I have had brewing away in the background, called ‘Postcards from the Future’. This is one avenue I’d like to pursue further - showcasing short stories, poems, artworks, music from a future you’d like to see.

Those visions of a future may not always align, and that’s not only OK, but actively desirable. Everyone’s idea of a possible future is a little different, as it should be - we’re all different, and our future shouldn’t and won’t align perfectly with any one person’s vision. But when we see a little of ourselves in an idea, a story, it allows us to dream, and to hope.

I’ve talked in the past about my love of Cory Doctorow’s writing. I may not always agree with his stance, but he has an excellent way with words, and this snippet stood out to me:

“Hope is the belief that if we change the world for the better, even by just a little, that we will ascend a gradient towards a better future, and as we rise up that curve, new terrain will be revealed to us that we couldn’t see from our lower vantage-point. It’s not necessary – or even possible – to see a course from here to the world you want to live in. You can get there in stepwise fashion, one beneficial change at a time.”

This post of his also highlights how things that seem fundamental truths and eternal states of being are often much more recent inventions than we may realise. Why does that matter? We can change things, even things that seem impossible to move.

Places and Spaces

Of course, art and narratives - movies, music, poems and stories - they are but one part of the picture. There are a host of other ways to inspire hope. Another that has been on my mind recently is spaces and communities. Modern life is increasingly isolated, and we spend far too much time absorbed in our phones, mindlessly scrolling to escape, instead of engaging with others.

This excellent post highlights the issues that that causes in the wider discourse, where we become disconnected from direct experience and feedback, but even leaving that aside, we’re a social species. We depend on connection, but increasingly, our lives and the spaces around us actively discourage that.

We need more third spaces that allow people to come together, to form connections, to have deep, meaningful dialogues allows communities to build. Communities are complex, messy, difficult creatures, but allow us to share, to be vulnerable, to rely on others, rather than going alone. When we build communities and movements, we are no longer dependent solely on our own actions. We build from individuals into something larger, which is how real change happens - people coming together around causes, ideas, places. People collectively caring about something and making change happen.

Onwards, and maybe outwards?

I’d love to be able to wrap this up with a clear next step - some concrete progress I could share on one or more of these avenues. However, given my own limited capacity, that’s not really feasible - I will get to these ideas eventually, but I can’t say how long it will be. Instead, perhaps maybe I’d ask that you sit with the idea of a better future, of narratives, of community. What does that look like for you? Do you have that already? If not, do you know what you would like it to look like? If any of this resonated with you, I’d love to hear from you.

I hope it’ll be less than a year before my next post, but life is far from predictable these days, so no promises!

Until next time,

Nix