In a World of Noems, Be Good: The Neuroscience of Hope

On January 7, ICE Agent Jonathan Ross fatal­ly shot—murdered, let’s call a spade a spade—Renee Good. Good, a Minneapolis moth­er of three, was in the driver’s seat of her Honda Pilot in the mid­dle of a res­i­den­tial street when an ICE agent opened fire. Her last words to the agent were caught on cam­era. “That’s fine dude. I’m not mad at you.” Seconds lat­er, shots ring out and Ross can be heard. “Fucking bitch,” he clear­ly states.

We are all just so, so tired. Tired of hav­ing a front row seat to crimes against human­i­ty. Tired of watch­ing cru­el­ty be enact­ed as pol­i­cy while the machin­ery of pow­er rush­es to excuse itself. People are more “con­nect­ed” than ever and yet feel increas­ing­ly iso­lat­ed and apa­thet­ic. The weight of this over­whelm­ing­ly lands not only on our hearts, but on our ner­vous systems. 

Do you also feel exhaust­ed, fog­gy, enraged, or numb? Same. This is how our brains evolved to process a dan­ger­ous and uncon­trol­lable future. That’s why we need hope more than ever. Hope has sus­tained human­i­ty through its dark­est times. 

The brain is con­stant­ly ask­ing, What hap­pens next? Can I influ­ence it? When the answers start to feel like you have no pow­er and noth­ing mat­ters, the brain shifts into sur­vival mode. The amyg­dala scans end­less­ly for threat and stress hor­mones flood the body. The pre­frontal cor­tex is the part of us respon­si­ble for rea­son, empa­thy, and long-term think­ing. It pow­ers down in sur­vival mode, mak­ing those crit­i­cal think­ing skills very hard to access. This is why sus­tained injus­tice often makes peo­ple either shut down or lash out. Despair is not just emo­tion­al, but neurological.

Authoritarian sys­tems under­stand this intu­itive­ly. They rely on our exhaus­tion. They count on us becom­ing over­whelmed, iso­lat­ed, and con­vinced that resis­tance is futile. Despair is not just a con­se­quence of cru­el­ty, but a ful­ly intend­ed out­come. 

Hope inter­rupts that process.

Neuroscientifically, hope is an active state of the brain, deeply tied to dopamine as a sig­nal of agency and mean­ing. Dopamine is released when the brain believes there is a path for­ward, when it sens­es that effort might change some­thing. This means hope grows not from pre­tend­ing things are fine, but from tak­ing real, ground­ed action, even when the action feels small. So, we call our rep­re­sen­ta­tives. Sign a peti­tion. Donate to a cause that mat­ters to us. Protect a neigh­bor. Bear wit­ness to the suf­fer­ing of others. 

And—good news alert!—the more per­son­al the action, the more the brain releas­es sero­tonin and oxy­tocin, two neu­ro­trans­mit­ters that tell us we are safe and loved. So, when I go out with my friend Lauren for Apps and Yaps to dis­cuss the lat­est cat­a­stro­phe, my ner­vous sys­tem gets the mes­sage that I have agency and pow­er. This helps me main­tain per­spec­tive dur­ing uncer­tain­ty and pro­vides sta­mi­na to stay in the game. These con­nec­tion chem­i­cals are the anti­dote to apathy.

Hope strength­ens the pre­frontal cor­tex, allow­ing us to hold grief and pur­pose at the same time. It qui­ets the fear cen­ter just enough for us to think, plan, and stay human in inhu­mane conditions.

The mur­der of Reene Good shook Minneapolis because it exposed, yet again, how dis­pos­able cer­tain lives are treat­ed by the state. But it also reminds us that human ner­vous sys­tems evolved in com­mu­ni­ty. In these days fol­low­ing Good’s death, strangers all across the nation have mourned togeth­er, orga­nized prayer vig­ils, got mad and spoke up. Community tells us what the pow­ers that be want us to for­get: We are not alone. This is why regimes that depend on cru­el­ty work so hard to frac­ture sol­i­dar­i­ty. Loneliness makes peo­ple eas­i­er to control. 

Maintaining hope does not mean deny­ing real­i­ty. Sustainable hope is hon­est. This is real and this is wrong. It lives in the stub­born deci­sion to stay awake, to stay con­nect­ed, and to keep telling the truth, even when it hurts.

Hope is the ner­vous sys­tem remem­ber­ing that the future is not fin­ished yet.