Peter Hutchison is an award-winning documentary filmmaker, best-selling author, educator, activist, and musician whose film, The Invisible Doctrine: The Secret History of Neoliberalism, screened at the Latchis Theatre in Brattleboro on March 15 and followed with a discussion, which the filmmaker joined via livestream. For a profile of the film and its accompanying book which appeared in the Arts section, visit bit.ly/809-hutchison.
NEW YORK, N.Y.-Following the screening of The Invisible Doctrine: The Secret History of Neoliberalism at the magnificent Latchis Theatre in March, the vibrant discussion went well overtime.
The next day I was informed, however, that an important question - a question that so many of us are asking these days - was cut off, just as the mics were being powered down and packed away.
That question was: "Where is the hope?"
It's a central question The Invisible Doctrine seeks to address, and an important question I wish we'd all been able to explore on the night.
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As we propose in the film, our belief is that the hope lies in the creation of a story - one that provides an alternative to neoliberalism, that articulates and fosters a politics of belonging.
The hope lies in rejecting the neoliberal assumptions that we live in competition with one another, that our relationships are a zero-sum game, that the world is comprised of clear winners and losers, that our lives are merely transactional, that we're meant to operate as consumers rather than citizens.
The hope lies in our awakening to the fact that, instead, we are the ultimate altruists among the species - an attribute embedded in our DNA - and that, were it not for our empathy and innate ability to cooperate, our collective survival would not have been possible. (How else could we have prevailed in the early days of our evolution on the African savannah, a world of horns, tusks, claws, and fangs?)
The hope lies right in front of us - in our communities. In the realization that we are intrinsically linked with one another, as well as the planet that sustains us.
It can be difficult to generate hope on our own, in a society that - by design - has rendered us divided, isolated, siloed, lonely, despondent, and lacking a feeling of agency.
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But together, we can create a new story.
A story based in community and the politics of belonging.
A story that unfolds in our own backyard and in the expansion of the commons - where we can most easily wrest control of our shared destinies, and continue to build upon that.
A story that recognizes that when we engage and collaborate, we feel less alone. We empower ourselves and one another, and we learn that we share far more values than those we allow to divide us.
And, as a result, we're inspired to reinvest in that community - because it's ours, and we feel a part of it. We create our own sustainable virtuous circle of hope.
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Sound trite? Naïve? Reductionistic? Panacean? Well, I disagree - and I can tell you why.
Over the years with my work, I've had the opportunity to observe and learn from communities across the country - and I can tell you with absolute certainty that the strongest and most resilient ones are those which have come to the realization that neither the government, nor any particular political party, is coming to save them.
In many cases, these were communities that had suffered the most government neglect and that had been ignored and written off - literally, left for dead.
So they stopped waiting.
Instead, they chose to take control of their own communities, created their own versions of participatory democracy, and got busy building the world they sought.
They harnessed that altruistic and collaborative DNA that we all carry within, took inventory of all the rich personal and community resources they had in front of them, and got to work on the things that mattered to them most.
It's a cogent reminder that together, we have power - but divided, we have neither agency nor recourse, and we are left to twist in the wind by those for whom we are simply not a priority.
So, let's create that new story together.
Now, more than ever, let's generate hope by coming together to create that better world that we envision.
It's only a failure of imagination that stands in our way.
We have nothing to lose, and everything to gain.
This Voices Viewpoint by Peter Hutchinson was written for The Commons.
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