Latest news with #RebeccaSolnit
Winnipeg Free Press
2 days ago
- General
- Winnipeg Free Press
Holding out hope
Not knowing how everything is going to turn out is a crucial component to facing existential challenges and navigating change, according to Rebecca Solnit, acclaimed essayist and award-winning author of more than 20 books including the groundbreaking work Men Explain Things to Me. 'The state of unknowing is both normal and so wildly uncomfortable that we engage in foolish and delusional imitations of knowing,' she writes in her latest collection No Straight Road Takes You There: Essays for Uneven Terrain. The urge to hold on to 'delusional imitations of knowing' is at the crux of some of the world's greatest problems, resulting in inaction — or worse, the wrong action, Solnit argues. Further, social media allows people with only a limited understanding of certain issue to become 'would-be pundits and false prophets,' encouraging those without all the facts to make summary judgements. In an essay entitled Tortoise at the Mayfly Party, Solnit makes the case for taking the long view instead of trite, summary judgments. Before throwing up our hands and proclaiming that feminism has failed because there's a current roadblock in the onward march toward equality, or that the race to thwart climate catastrophe is lost because of current inaction, she suggests an alternative: remember the oak tree was once an acorn. In other words, don't give up. Keep pressing forward and refuse to be lulled into despondent complacency. Solnit urges her readers to remember a time when there was something better than chaos and decline. As an advocate who has been on the frontlines of the global climate crisis and the fight for women's rights for several years, she rails against those who have been lulled into inaction. Don't choose 'grim certainty' over the uncertainty of what else might happen next, she pleads. 'If you pretend the future is preordained, you don't have to do anything.' The book then becomes a meditation in favour of certain progress while offering a roadmap. Yet none of it is easy; all of it demands a reappraisal of the current status quo. For example, as another summer sky fills with wildfire smoke, an essay aptly entitled Sky Full of Forests becomes a call to action against forgetting. 'Memory of how we slipped into trouble and misery and what came before can help us journey out of it,' she writes. It becomes a plea for reversing the damage of fossil fuels through a peace offering with nature. She also takes aim at an 'ideology of isolation,' describing it as a flawed and fundamental tenet of modern right-wing worldviews. This ideology, she argues, offers people a way to believe their individual actions (or inactions) are disconnected from the larger whole. For example, refusing to prevent the spread of illness by wearing a face mask and not curbing behaviour to mitigate climate change are actions in opposite of an interconnected world. 'Isolationists and interconnectionists might be more useful terms for the political divides of our time than left and right,' she writes. Inseparability is the pathway forward, a mantra that we truly are all in this together. In caring for each other's well-being, we are caring for our own. At its core, No Straight Road Takes You There is an invitation to remember a time when things were vastly different from now, and begin telling a new story of how vastly better things will be within a caring, interconnected society. Rochelle Squires is an avid book reader who is no longer uncomfortable with uneven terrain.
Irish Times
14-06-2025
- General
- Irish Times
Ireland's Greenest Places: From Dún Laoghaire's active travel to Kiltimagh's biodiversity park - some of the entries so far
The search for genuine sustainability is challenging when there is so much rampant greenwashing, especially in a country where environmental commitments too often fall short of what is required. The competition to find Ireland's greenest places is an attempt to identify locations where true sustainability is being pursued successfully. There are some reassuring aspects in entries to the competition so far: strong commitments to farming in regenerative ways; an easing of increasing environmental pressures on urban places; adoption of renewables at scale; sustained commitment found in volunteerism – a powerful mode of collective action; and indications that impact can be hyperlocal. Such an impact can be evident within the confines of a single street. It is evidence of what writer Rebecca Solnit has called 'hope in the dark', in the face of accelerating climate disruption and unrelenting nature loss. READ MORE People in every corner of Ireland are looking to their immediate locality and taking grassroots action. While despair can lead to inaction, it's a luxury we cannot afford. No human can justifiably do nothing in the face of accelerating global warming, species wipeout and pollution (most obvious in poor water quality). [ What are Ireland's Greenest Places in 2025? Share the places you feel are contributing to a better environment Opens in new window ] A flavour of entries outlined in this piece may prompt other communities (in the broadest sense) to consider entering. By any measure the scale of local environmental betterment with the help of many hands is impressive. It ranges across groups engaging in bog restoration – enabling vast tracts of land to become carbon stores, slowing water to mitigate flooding and enhancing biodiversity – to towns transforming cityscapes into more liveable locations. So this is a call-out to them; an opportunity to get recognition for their endeavours. There is also the option of individuals nominating their home place, where they work or where they visit. Highlighting projects here is not indication of likely winners, who will emerge from a separate judging process. The categories are Ireland's greenest suburb; greenest village, greenest town and Ireland's greenest community – from which an overall winner will be selected. The ability of an area as small as a suburb to pursue transformative actions is typified in the work of Connecting Cabra , which is involved in a multiplicity of activities, including staging biodiversity festivals and helping to convert gardens and open spaces into mini-nature reserves. This extends into adopting renewable energy, helping people pursue retrofitting in some of the poorest areas of Dublin and facilitating authentic 'circular living'. At the Starling Pond off Faussagh Avenue, Cabra are Connecting Cabra's Stephen Shanahan (right) showing a froglet to St Finbarr's BNS students Caden Ledwidge and Carter Ledwidge with Louisa Moss, Dublin Northwest Partnership, and Michelle Nolan of Connecting Cabra. Photograph: Dara Mac Dónaill 'I could list dozens more activities that Connecting Cabra and other groups run ... but that would miss the main point; that Cabra is addressing climate action and sustainability together as a community in a way that involves and actively empowers everybody and is focused on climate justice,' says Connecting Cabra chair Brian Gormley. With two of the top 10 electoral districts most affected by climate change being in its locality, Connecting Cabra is determined nobody should be left behind, Gormley, a brother of former Green Party leader John Gormley, adds. Through Cabra Warmer Homes Project, group members go door-to-door to help residents to apply for retrofitting grants. Residents of Seafield Road in Booterstown , Co Dublin, illustrate how a single action can be impactful – in their case the planting of 60,000 flowering bulbs (seven different varieties) and 60 trees, along a 300m stretch of a residential street. The initiative adds to the visual appeal of a neighbourhood but also plays a crucial role in supporting local biodiversity. Flowering bulbs bloom in succession, providing a continuous source of nectar and pollen throughout the growing season, giving pollinators and other beneficial insects a reliable food source. Adding to ecological benefits is an innovative rain garden, designed to efficiently harvest stormwater. This not only mitigates flooding but also promotes 'groundwater recharge' ensuring a greener landscape. Dublin Landscaping was entrusted with the project, which showcases how, with community engagement, a residential street can become an environmentally friendly haven, benefiting both people and the wider ecosystem. The coastal village of Castlegregory , Co Kerry, illustrates the benefits of building on a TidyTowns platform of consistently ensuring that thriving green areas are well used by local people and visitors, and with minimal littering. In tandem with this, pollinator-friendly planting, use of native trees and a 'no spray policy' promoting sustainable, chemical-free practices, allow biodiversity to thrive. 'Castlegregory is a small village with a big environmental commitment, where community, climate action and biodiversity go hand in hand,' says Bettina Pickering, who nominated the village. The breadth of activities keeps volunteers 'connected and involved', she adds. 'Our green efforts go beyond TidyTowns. The community council hosts annual circular economy events ... A tree planting group runs meitheals for native planting in private gardens and the nature park behind the secondary school also uses this space for biodiversity and geopark learning.' Emigrant Park: The pond has been planted with native aquatic species, such as water lilies, and the surrounding marsh area has been seeded with wildflowers like ragged robin and kidney vetch, alongside native oak and larch. Photograph: Michael McLaughlin Emigrant Park: Kiltimagh's community-driven biodiversity and amenity park. Photograph: Michael McLaughlin Kiltimagh in Co Mayo has a green heart; a 6.5-acre biodiversity park at its centre, which opened last year. It is called Emigrant Park, in tribute to Bill Durkan, a native of the area who emigrated to Britain and donated €100,000 for its creation. Gary Smyth of Kiltimagh Amenity Park, a voluntary group that developed the park, says some initial reaction was negative; people said paths were not maintained, some even said 'it's too wild'. But when members explained thatno pesticides or herbicides were used in the best interests of biodiversity, attitudes quickly changed. 'Now they say, 'we love it' ... It's a place to go for a coffee to de-stress.' The park has features such as a nesting wall for sand martins, designed to be educational on the importance of nature. 'In many ways, it's replicating a bog road,' says Smyth. He describes the village as an island surrounded by rivers. This includes the Pollagh, 'a bluedot river' indicating that it is one of the highest-quality rivers in the country. 'Our community are deeply invested in protecting and enhancing our natural heritage,' says Smyth. Dún Laoghaire blends smart urban planning, environmental care and inclusive values, making it a model suburb for green and resilient living in Ireland — Rob McCullagh Dún Laoghaire , Co Dublin, is tilting private car usage towards public transport and active travel – walking and cycling. This has been facilitated by residents backing a 'living streets' project, says Claire Macken. 'It will be implemented through 2025-2026. It involves sustainable mobility and public realm improvements. It aims to make our local streets safer and greener, our communities more connected and to keep our economy vibrant,' she explains. It is complemented by Dún Laoghaire Harbour Master initiatives, that 'reimagine urban spaces to prioritise pedestrians and cyclists and access to the marina, reduce car dominance, and enhance biodiversity with more trees, seating and shared public spaces'. 'Dún Laoghaire blends smart urban planning, environmental care and inclusive values, making it a model suburb for green and resilient living in Ireland,' says Rob McCullagh, who nominated it in the suburb category. Rathcroghan Mound, Co Roscommon, where the Farming Rathcrogan project has 60 participating farming families, with others waiting to join. Photograph: Joe Fenwick/NUI Galway The Farming Rathcroghan project in Co Roscommon is addressing the critical challenges of rural depopulation, sustainable land use and climate change. That alone is challenging in modern Ireland, but the project is operating in an important archaeological landscape. 'The farmland comprising the ancient 'royal' landscape of Rathcroghan is a little greener than most, due to the initiative of the local landowners, farmers and the surrounding community,' says Joe Fenwick. It was the prehistoric capital of Connacht. Rathcroghan Mound was where the kings and queens of the province were inaugurated in a ritual 'mating' with the local Earth goddess. Established in 2018, the project is supported by the EU Just Transition Fund, and has 60 participating farming families, with others waiting to join. Its 'success can be measured in the positive impact, ambition and cohesion that it has brought to the wider community. It is based on a simple model of collaborative, community-led governance', says Fenwick. It promotes solutions and innovations devised by local people with a view to sustaining fulfilling farming livelihoods, while promoting the stewardship, conservation and protection of the archaeological, ecological and cultural heritage of the area. It also addresses wider environmental concerns; maintaining groundwater quality, carbon sequestration and other actions in support of achieving climate neutrality. Those involved have demonstrated the benefits of embracing farming traditions that are as old as the locality's archaeological monuments, Fenwick believes, but also apply modern, imaginative, green innovations. The Millbrook initiative shows how the GAA community can contribute to lowering carbon emissions, teaching people about biodiversity and the benefits of green spaces — Ealma Purcell The greening of Millbrook, surrounding Oldcastle Gaelic Football Club 's pitches in Co Meath, is a perfect example of starting small and reaping benefits over time. '[It] shows how the GAA community can contribute to lowering carbon emissions, teaching people about biodiversity and the benefits of green spaces,' says Ealma Purcell. Pitches are surrounded by a walking track beside the river Inny. Extensive recent planting is delivering rich biodiversity. 'Signs carry information for people, and local schools visit for nature walks. We start with a bed of nepeta, adored by pollinators, a hive of buzzing activity. The riverbank is fenced off for safety, allowing it to become a wildlife haven, with otters and a resident heron,' says Purcell. 'We never cut the grass here, making it a totally safe environment for any creature that calls it home, and you can often hear the squeaks of little mammals. We let nettles and all sorts of other native plants [grow], providing food and nesting places for insects and butterflies. We have bird boxes and recently added in 12 fruit trees, the start of our own community orchard.' [ Restoring the Wicklow hills: 'It's like the Sahara at times up there with peat moving around like sand dunes in the desert' Opens in new window ] Jacksmill: An innovative regeneration project by farmer Huw O'Toole, who converted his farm into allotments and created a remote hub for hybrid working in a renovated sawmill. Photograph: Alan Betson Jacksmill: A remote hub for hybrid working in the renovated sawmill. Photograph: Alan Betson Jacksmill is a small farm diversification project in north Wicklow owned by Huw O'Toole and his family. Located between Wicklow town and Bray, it is made up of a large forest garden and 'Hub13', a rural remote working hub repurposed from a disused sawmill into studios with co-working and office spaces. The garden is 2.8 hectares (seven acres) of regenerated pastoral farmland transformed from heavily sheep-grazed ryegrass. Within the project are various small and family-sized allotments maintained through no pesticide use and deploying 'no dig' organic methods. Taking over the family farm in 2014, 'Huw saw the pronounced decline in insects he remembered seeing in the meadow when he was child. He was asked to sell sites for one-off housing but made a decision instead to enhance the environment and restore lost biodiversity,' says Caroline Costigan, who works there part-time. The allotments provide families with space and awareness to care for nature and the opportunity to make sustainable choices to grow their own food, limit food waste and avoid chemicals and excessive plastic packaging. Hub13 provides a rural biodiversity-focused workplace to people including creative artists and those who were feeling isolated working at home or were previously commuters on the N11, she adds. It has become, 'a thriving blueprint of the resilience of small farms and of how they can be diversified to lead climate and biodiversity action'. The Dingle peninsula: 'It's about local people having a real say in shaping their community's future' The Dingle Peninsula-Corca Dhuibhne is a standout example of how sustainability can be multilayered and adopted across a large area embracing every aspect of the local economy. It is about joining forces to find solutions that work, says Gráinne Kelleher. 'Diverse local groups work diligently to help the peninsula move towards being more resilient, having cleaner energy, protecting our natural and beautiful landscape while keeping the local economy strong to ensure a vibrant, liveable place for future generations ... it's about local people having a real say in shaping their community's future.' Footprint for good The concept of a 'carbon footprint' has come to be understood as an indicator of our ecological impact on Earth, but it ignoble origins. The idea gained popularity in 2003 when fossil-fuel company BP launched an advertising campaign asking people on the street what their carbon footprint was. It emerged that marketing agency Ogilvy & Mather's brief was to promote the slant that climate change is not the fault of an oil giant, but of individuals. The company unveiled its ' carbon footprint calculator ' so people could assess how their normal daily life – going to work, buying food and travelling – is largely responsible for heating the globe. Initially, it was a guilt trigger. In spite of the sinister motivation of Big Oil, individuals can address their carbon footprint meaningfully; their actions add up to significant impact. However, it is only by collective action – in decarbonising, restoring nature and using water sustainably – that the necessary multiplier effect is deployed. Ireland's Greenest Places shows this type of combined effort is taking root in rural and urban heartlands across the island. The Irish Times Ireland's Greenest Places competition is in association with Electric Ireland
Channel 4
01-06-2025
- Politics
- Channel 4
Trump is ‘Putin's puppet' – historian on Ukraine support
American author, historian and activist Rebecca Solnit has written on subjects from the environment to masculinity and even helped define the concept of 'mansplaining'. Her 2020 book 'Recollections of My Non-Existence', was longlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Writing. Her latest book 'No Straight Road Takes You There,' explores activism and the power of protest in the face of global political challenges. We spoke to her about Donald Trump, disruption – and more.
Fast Company
22-05-2025
- Business
- Fast Company
Why the best leaders embrace ‘strategic disappointment' (and how you can, too)
When Apple removed the headphone jack from the iPhone 7 in 2016, the backlash was immediate and fierce. Tech reviewers called it 'user-hostile and stupid.' Customers created petitions. Competitors ran ads mocking the decision. Yet today, wireless earbuds are ubiquitous, and the decision looks prescient rather than foolish. What Apple understood—and what most future-ready leaders eventually learn—is that meaningful innovation requires disappointing people strategically. This isn't the leadership advice you typically hear. We're told to inspire, to build consensus, to bring everyone along. But an uncomfortable truth lurks beneath these platitudes: as your impact grows, so does your capacity to disappoint others. And rather than avoiding this reality, the most effective leaders learn to navigate it intentionally. When Success Creates an Expectation Trap Author Rebecca Solnit captures this paradox perfectly. After supporting a friend whose first book had become unexpectedly successful, she explained that 'success is full of failures, at least in the eyes of others, who want things from you, more of them wanting more than you can ever deliver, so you live in an atmosphere of pressure, unmet expectation.' This is particularly acute in technology leadership, where decisions must often be made ahead of market readiness. The moment you create something valuable, people develop expectations about what should come next—expectations that frequently conflict with the very innovation that made your work valuable in the first place. Consider Netflix's pivot from DVD delivery to streaming. When announced in 2011, the company lost 800,000 subscribers and its stock plummeted 77%. Today, that disappointing decision looks like the defining move that secured Netflix's future. Confidence: Not What We Think It Is The paradox exists for leaders across industries, though. Part of the challenge is that we fundamentally misunderstand confidence. As Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman explains, 'Subjective confidence in a judgment is not a reasoned evaluation of the probability that this judgment is correct. Confidence is a feeling, which reflects the coherence of the information and the cognitive ease of processing it.' In other words, our feeling of confidence often has more to do with how neatly our story fits together than with its actual likelihood of being correct. This creates a dangerous dynamic in leadership, where seemingly 'confident' decisions may simply reflect coherent but flawed narratives, especially when those narratives align with what stakeholders want to hear. This dynamic is especially dangerous in leadership, where the pressure to appear confident drives a pattern I've observed repeatedly: the rush to create strategies around emerging technologies ('What's our AI strategy?' 'What's our blockchain strategy?') rather than having the confidence to maintain core business strategies and incorporate new technologies experimentally. Dr. Tressie McMillan Cottom's concept of 'insecure overachievers' illuminates part of this pattern: leaders who achieve at high levels while seeking external validation often prioritize appearing forward-leaning over being truly purposeful. The result? Decision-makers chasing technologies rather than outcomes, pursuing strategies that sound forward-thinking but may actually disconnect organizations from their core mission and meaningful impact. The Mathematics of Confident Decision-Making In statistics, confidence intervals don't just tell us whether an effect exists—they reveal how certain we can be about what we know, which directly impacts our confidence to act. Mathematician Jordan Ellenberg illustrates this: a narrow confidence interval (such as between −0.5% and 0.5%) means you have 'good evidence the intervention doesn't do anything,' giving you the confidence to stop the initiative. A wide interval (such as between −20% and 20%) means you have 'no idea whether the intervention has an effect,' signaling you need more data before making a decisive call. In other words, this statistical principle offers a powerful parallel for leadership decisions: true confidence comes not from eliminating uncertainty, but from understanding precisely what we know and what we don't, and responding appropriately. This distinction offers us a powerful framework for leadership—what I call the Strategic Disappointment Matrix: Quadrant 1: High Certainty / Low Disappointment These are the easy wins—decisions where data strongly supports a path that few will object to. Pursue these enthusiastically, but recognize they rarely lead to breakthrough innovation. Quadrant 2: High Certainty / High Disappointment Here lie the necessary disappointments—decisions like sunsetting beloved but unsustainable products or implementing essential security measures that create friction. The evidence clearly shows these moves are necessary, even though they'll create disappointment. These require courage, but clear communication can minimize backlash. Quadrant 3: Low Certainty / Low Disappointment These are experimental spaces where you can test hypotheses with minimal risk. These low-stakes experiments often yield what I call 'bankable foresights'—insights about future priorities that you can invest in confidently even without complete certainty. Use these spaces intentionally to gather data that might eventually inform more consequential decisions in other quadrants. Quadrant 4: Low Certainty / High Disappointment This is where the biggest breakthroughs—and biggest failures—happen. When Airbnb suggested people rent their homes to strangers, or when Amazon invested in AWS, these decisions had uncertain outcomes and disappointed many stakeholders. These require the highest level of judgment and often define a leader's legacy. Understanding where your decisions fall in this matrix doesn't eliminate uncertainty, but it helps you respond to it appropriately. Practicing Strategic Disappointment Dr. McMillan Cottom suggests that developing comfort with disappointing others is 'a critical life-skill' worth deliberately practicing. She recommends setting 'the intention to disappoint at least one person, in some real way, over the next 24 hours,' noting that 'the more comfortable you get with the risk of disappointing, the better things go on all fronts.' For leaders, this practice might include: Distinguish types of disappointment. Differentiate between disappointments that challenge people productively versus those that harm needlessly. Create transparent decision frameworks. Develop and communicate clear values hierarchies that show which principles take precedence when trade-offs become necessary. Articulate the 'future-ready why.' Practice explaining unpopular decisions in terms of the longer horizon they enable, not just the immediate benefits. Build disappointment resilience. Develop personal practices that help you withstand the discomfort of being misunderstood or criticized for decisions you believe in. Measure meaningful impact. Create metrics that track long-term value creation, not just immediate satisfaction or engagement. Innovative Leadership Through Strategic Disappointment When Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella decided to shift the company's focus from Windows to cloud computing and AI, many were disappointed. Windows had been Microsoft's crown jewel for decades. Developers, partners, and even internal teams who had built careers around the operating system felt betrayed by this pivot. But Nadella was practicing strategic disappointment. Rather than trying to please all stakeholders in the short term, he disappointed some intentionally to position Microsoft for long-term relevance. The results speak for themselves. Microsoft's market cap has increased from roughly $300 billion when Nadella took over to over $3 trillion today, making it one of the world's most valuable companies. More importantly, this shift has positioned Microsoft as a leader in AI and cloud computing—the very technologies shaping our future. Nadella's strategic pivot demonstrates a crucial truth for future-ready leaders: disappointing people isn't a leadership failure. It's often the necessary price of meaningful innovation. The confidence to disappoint strategically isn't about being certain you're right. It's about having the clarity to recognize when immediate approval conflicts with long-term impact, and the courage to choose impact even when it hurts. In a world moving too fast for perfect certainty, tomorrow's most valuable leaders won't be those who pleased everyone today. They'll be those who had the courage to purposefully disappoint when necessary, navigating uncertainty not by avoiding it, but by embracing it as the necessary terrain of meaningful change.
The Guardian
22-05-2025
- General
- The Guardian
No Straight Road Takes You There by Rebecca Solnit review – an activist's antidote to despair
According to Rebecca Solnit, a lot of us are suffering from something called moral injury. She describes this as the 'deep sense of wrongness' that can infiltrate our lives when we realise we are complicit in something seriously bad. The first time I experienced this in relation to climate change, I was changing my baby's nappy soon after one of the worst Australian wildfire seasons on record in 2020. The nappy featured a smiling cartoon koala on the front. I immediately recalled the scene of a singed, parched koala being fed water from a plastic bottle by a human as it fled the inferno. A disposable nappy takes up to 500 years to decompose. I felt disgust and despair at the degree of consumption, waste and exploitation that even a modest lifestyle in a high-income country seems to entail. From smartphones to food, our daily lives leave a bitter trail of harm. Some become painfully preoccupied with these realisations; others, avoidant and numb – an even more psychologically injurious strategy. I oscillate somewhere between these two positions, which is to say, I am in dire need of some moral first aid. In No Straight Road Takes You There, a constellation of essays with interlinked themes, Solnit provides just that. From a meditation on an antique violin as a symbol of sustainability, to reminding us that radical ideas move from the fringes to the mainstream, this collection of her best work teems with vitality, forming an antidote to political paralysis and despondency. Solnit is a prolific, omnivorous and brilliant writer and this book makes apparent her intellectual wingspan. There is great variety here – one chapter is even titled 'In Praise of the Meander' – but two bright threads run through the whole: the importance of hope, and the power of storytelling. Hope is no casual platitude here. Nor is it merely a more pleasant state of mind than despair. Rather, Solnit sees it as a more accurate mindset, since nobody is an oracle, and history is full of surprises. Uncertainty is the most rational position to embrace, and unlike optimism or pessimism, it does not entrench us in complacency or inaction. Climate doomers are particularly pernicious, Solnit observes, propagating misery and incorrect narratives about how screwed we all are, 'like bringing poison to the potluck'. Above all they are guilty of failing to use their imagination. At heart, Solnit is a storyteller. 'Every crisis,' she writes, 'is in part a storytelling crisis.' The powerful are those who decide which stories are heard and which are silenced. People who tell stories well – like Donald Trump – captivate millions. Citing the non-violent resistance that led to the fall of eastern bloc regimes in the 1970s and 1980s, Solnit sees radical ideas as acorns, campaigns as saplings and the final results – changes in the law, policy, or land ownership – as mighty oaks. 'The most important territory to take is in the imagination. Once you create a new idea of what is possible and acceptable, the seeds are planted; once it becomes what the majority believes, you've created the conditions in which winning happens.' Solnit urges us to imagine a radically different future. She quotes Mary Wollstonecraft's hope in 1792 that the divine right of husbands might be as contested as the divine right of kings, and footnotes this with Ursula Le Guin's hope in 2014 that the seemingly inescapable stranglehold of capitalism will one day yield, just as did the divine right of kings. Solnit herself is strikingly unafraid to wish for more. One of her specific visions is for a world in which people do not rape, not because they fear punishment, but because the very desire to commit rape has withered away. The book's signoff, a 'credo', has something of the sermon to it. In a world where tyranny is on the ascent and shareholder profits are worshipped like the golden calf, this is a comfort. Solnit is like a seasoned boxing coach tending to the spiritually and politically exhausted citizen flopped in the corner. She mops our brows and offers us motivation. 'They want you to feel powerless and to surrender,' she writes. 'You are not giving up, and neither am I … The pain you feel is because of what you love.' Grieve, yes. Scream with fury, sure. But also, keep going. 'There is no alternative to persevering, and that does not require you to feel good. You can keep on walking whether it's sunny or raining.' Sign up to Inside Saturday The only way to get a look behind the scenes of the Saturday magazine. Sign up to get the inside story from our top writers as well as all the must-read articles and columns, delivered to your inbox every weekend. after newsletter promotion No Straight Road Takes You There: Essays for Uneven Terrain by Rebecca Solnit is published by Granta (£16.99). To support the Guardian buy a copy at Delivery charges may apply.
