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The Current Transcript for May 28, 2019

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: When you get up there and you're stuck in those lines, you only have a limited time of oxygen and if it runs out, you're waiting in line and you add oxygen then it's game over.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: American climber Roxanne Vogel was in the line-up that you've been seeing pictures of for the last few days of mountain climbers squeezed together along a perilous trail waiting to summit Mount Everest. Also in that line-up, Ottawa-based climber and filmmaker Elia Saikaly who was documenting the success of four Arab women at the summit. But after eight trips up that mountain he says what he saw this time, the crowding, the desperation, the deaths, he's had enough. Elia Saikaly joins me in just a moment. Also today, a few years ago Peggy Allen went to a community meeting enraged with the people who had built a homeless shelter next door to her dream home.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: I got up and I just lost it. I screamed I yelled I cried. I was furious and finally I said, screw you guys, I can't do this because there's not one of you in here that knows what's happening. Someone live at my house. Come and be at my house.

AMT: She was afraid to go outside. She constantly called police. She saw no way out, but then she began to talk to the people she thought she loathed and that changed everything. We'll bring you her story in half an hour. And then Mark Manson the man who wrote The Subtle Art Of Not Giving A F*ck is back, musing about hope and why we seem to live in a world with so little of it.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: If you're sad about something, it still implies that something matters. Hopelessness is the place where nothing matters, where we're all going to die anyway, so why bother?

AMT: You know he's messing with you, right? The man has lots of hope and he'll explain in an hour. But before we get to any of that, can we just stop the music for a moment. If you listen and track what we're up to on this program you know that I've made a decision to stop hosting The Current at the end of this season. On the one hand it seems like a dumb decision. This is a really good gig. We and by we I mean the producers and I, can choose to cover whatever issue we believe is relevant. We work in teams to do that. Dream teams really. Collaborative, inquisitive, smart and by the way they'll continue to do that next season. I like it when they push me out of my comfort zone. When they book a topic about which I know nothing and tell me to start reading. I'm grateful when people with deeply personal stories to share agree to share them with me, even when it's tough. I even like it when people who aren't so keen agree to answer questions of accountability and can I just say, you guys, and you know who you are, you need to step up and do that a little more. When I got this job I wasn't even sure I wanted it. I was a field reporter after all, telling stories with pictures, but I quickly realized sometimes you need a thousand words. Sometimes a conversation is the best way to understand. I also quickly understood that we could be as smart as we wanted to be, tackle issues that were complicated. Things people wouldn't touch because we had an audience that wasn't afraid to think and think again. And that's been the joy of hosting this program. I have a smart engaged audience. A few trolls, but what can you do? The audience has been generous in its willingness to hear new perspectives and to listen to more than just a quick clip. And for that I thank you listening today and every day. But you know I like to keep learning and challenging myself, so it's time to move on. Technology that didn't exist in any real form when The Current began now offers new formats for journalism and storytelling and I want to explore and experiment in that space as well. So you'll hear a new offering, some different conversations in a podcast from me, sometime in the fall. But what we've built here at The Current has never just been about me. So that's going to continue. Strong and engaging and here everyday without me, but not yet. This is May. My last day is in June. June 20th, a Thursday of course. So until then please keep listening. We have some great programming planned and right now, we've got work to do. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

[Music: Theme]

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Veteran Mount Everest climber describes crowds stepping over bodies in the snow

Guests: Elia Saikaly

SOUNDCLIP

Sound of mount climber reaching the summit of Mount Everest.

AMT: The sound of a mountain climber's final push toward the highest summit on the face of the Earth. Those who conquer Mount Everest do it in frigid temperatures with limited oxygen and increasingly there is an added challenge, a long queue of fellow climbers, as many as a couple of hundred in front of them. A British climber named Robin Haynes Fisher making the trek earlier this month posted his fears on Instagram that the overcrowding could prove fatal. Days later he died of what appeared to be altitude sickness on his descent. Eleven people have died on the mountain so far in this year's climbing season. Elia Saikaly is an adventure filmmaker based in Ottawa. He has made eight trips to Everest. He has reached the summit three times and that was the sound of his breathing as he was climbing that we just heard a moment ago. We have reached Elia Saikaly in Kathmandu, Nepal. Hello.

ELIA SAIKALY: Hi there. How are you?

AMT: Well I'm fine. I'm so interested to know what you saw and what you did. First of all, what does the traffic look like on Mount Everest?

ES: I mean you're looking at a lineup of people. Over 200 were heading up the night of my personal summit and it's just a very long queue of human beings that are all heading to the top of the world.

AMT: And Elia, you have summited before, how does this compare to what you've seen in the past?

ES: Well I've never seen anything like this to be honest with you. I had the absolute privilege of standing on top of the world twice prior to this expedition. The first time there were 20 people on the summit when I arrived. In 2013 we had the summit to ourselves and actually you know that sound that you were just playing, if you were to look at that footage, you would see that nobody was climbing the Hillary Step, that famous iconic crux of Mount Everest at you know 28,000 feet above sea level. This year was incredibly different.

AMT: And what were the most shocking images that stick in your mind from this climb then?

ES: The most shocking thing that I saw was literally 20 minutes out of camp you know heading towards the summit at 9:30 p.m. on the 22nd and a deceased climber that was being brought down by two Sherpas. And this is 20 minutes into your climb, so it's obviously very alarming. And you know two hours later there was unfortunately another deceased climber and it's devastating. Your mind is not operating properly, so it's very hard to make sense of what's going on around you. You're trying to survive and you know you're moving otherwise, you could potentially end up with the same fate.

AMT: How jarring is it to see that kind of death on the mountain?

ES: It's very disturbing. You know I'll be honest with you I unfortunately encountered quite a bit of loss and devastation on Everest. I was there in 2014 during the deadly avalanche that killed 16 local people. The Sherpas in 2015 there during the avalanche again. The Nepal earthquake which claimed the lives of over 18. And it's a strange thing to say that you know you're somewhat accustomed to it. You know the loss of life. And all I was thinking about where the women that I was with. I was filming a documentary about four Arab women climbing to the summit of Everest from Saudi Arabia, Oman and Lebanon and they had never encountered anything like this and so there was just so much worry and empathy and care for their experience and at the same time trying to deal with my own. At the same time trying to survive.

AMT: And how was your team? Did you summit successfully? Did you run into problems with oxygen or issues because of that queue?

ES: It's a really great question and I think that opens up a whole portal as to sort of what's going wrong on the mountain and what's going on right on the mountain. I'm incredibly proud of this team of Arab women. I mean they were amongst the strongest climbers on the mountain. They trailblazed to the top there successfully. No issues whatsoever. And beyond that you know we we hired a responsible and ethical Western company that partners with a local company. We had over 28 Sherpas on our team. Everybody on the team paid some additional money to get extra support, extra Sherpas support, extra oxygen and because we had all of that support and because we had that high level of organization and strategic planning, we were able to pass you know 60 to 80 climbers. Get everybody up to the summit and get everybody back down safely.

AMT: I was looking at your Instagram posts and at one point you say that there was literally a body that everyone had to step over.

ES: Everybody who made their way to the summit faced loss and devastation that night. Everybody. You know I took a risk online and I wanted to create a dialogue around what's going wrong on the mountain and how we can prevent these deaths. You know these are human beings you know who all shared the same dream and I really feel like those deaths were preventable. Right now what we're seeing in the media quite a bit is everybody blaming the line-ups and blaming the queues and of course this is a problem. You know there are way too many permits that are issued there's an unlimited amount. And we also have a short weather window only got a couple of days every year where you can summit Everest. But we're not talking about is how prepared were those climbers. How obsessed where those climbers with reaching summit were they in a position where they were ignoring signs. Were they ignoring their bodies. Was their body saying Turn around. You're not capable of doing this. And of course you're there it's your dream it's the top of the world. You're starved of oxygen and you know you have summit fever. A lot of the time. And people are not generally humble enough to accept defeat. And I've turned back twice from the summit because of poor weather conditions. And I'm here today because I had that humility to accept defeat and turn around because wasn't it wasn't worth losing my life over. So I feel like you know if people are a little bit more educated, they make more responsible decisions about who they hire to support their expeditions. A lot of this could be prevented.

AMT: You had a conversation with one woman about that very thing. Can you tell us about that?

ES: I can. I ran into a couple of climbers and I took the time to try to convince them to turn around because they looked exhausted. They weren't moving they looked they looked very cold. They didn't have a team supporting them. And there was a young Indian woman who I was speaking with and her Sherpas were speaking to her in Hindi and obviously couldn't understand what they're saying. But the body language was saying you know you either need to turn around or you need to just keep moving because you know you're going to jeopardize your life. They moved ahead a couple of meters and I took a moment to speak with her and she appeared to be crying. And I tried to console her and I checked her oxygen levels and they were lowered and I just said you know it's it's not worth your life. You know there's no shame in turning around there's no shame in not reaching the summit. You know the mountain will always be there and your life is far more important. And of course the cues are coming up behind me my team is right behind me and I had to keep moving. So I don't know what happened to her you know but I did have to keep moving and I did the best that I could to try to encourage her to turn around.

AMT: Can you remind us how long it takes to get to the summit. What kind of deal it is physically.

ES: It's a seven week expedition and it really comes down to one day. So you've prepared for over a year. You've been on the mountain for seven weeks. You've acclimatised. You've climbed up and down the mountain numerous times and then it comes down to your summit window. It's an average of 12 to 16 hours return trip from Camp 4 to the summit and back. We left at 9:30pm in the dark in -30 degree temperatures and we reached the summit by 7:00 a.m. and everybody was down the mountain by 11:00.

AMT: What's going through your body as you go up there? You talked about you have low oxygen levels, you're kind of in a daze, but what else are you feeling in your body as you get to those final steps?\

ES: Once you get onto the summit ridge, it's high exposure. You know it's very, you know the body is only interested in protecting organs, so the first thing to go are your fingers and your toes. You know in my case I'm holding a video camera, so I'm constantly losing feeling in my fingers and my toes and I've got to keep moving. You know you're not quite right in the mind and you know the consensus is that most people get up there and they barely remember the experience and it isn't until they get back down where you know you really begin to process you know the fact that a, you've stood on top of the world, not to mention everything else that you've gone through. But yeah no it's it's exhausting for some people. It's debilitating. I'll be honest with you I've I've never been up there in a state of mind or state of body where I wasn't 100 percent certain that I could get all the way down. That's not always the case. You just see a lot of people that are almost you know walking dead up there they're not speaking you can tell that they're incredibly stressed out you can tell that they're tyred and that creates an inability to pass people. And when we were coming down from the summit you know it was 10:00 o'clock in the morning and there were still a hundred people or so that were coming up the mountain and to make matters worse. You know there was a little tequila cloud on the neighbouring mountain and that's an indicator that bad weather is coming in. So we got down as quick as possible and quite a number of people had to deal with adverse weather conditions coming down.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: And that's the thing to remember as well. Sometimes coming down is even more difficult than getting up there.

ES: Coming down is always far more dangerous than getting to the summit. You know people are exhausted. They've given everything they can to get to the top. And you know there's the saying that getting to the top is optional and getting down is mandatory. And I I I don't believe most people are in touch enough with their body to recognize how much energy they have left to get down and on top of that. Energy is one thing but oxygen is a whole other problem. And this this sort of brings it back to who you hire your leadership your sherpa support you know. If you look at the team of sherpas that we employed I mean we had this incredible team of over 28 sherpas and these guys they're well-trained they're very well paid they're very well looked after and they were monitoring our team like hawks. You know they're checking their oxygen constantly. They're there to support every single step of the way. And not everybody is willing to afford that money that they can't afford that sixty five thousand dollar price tag. So they cut corners they hire a cheaper company and they compromise quality. They put everyone else at risk including themselves. So there's an opportunity there to make a more responsible decision from the beginning in terms of how you plan, who you climb with because you know it's not just important to climb or to summit, but it's how you get there and it's being ethical about it along the way.

AMT: And the considerations you're talking about are only considerations you can make if you know what you're doing already, if you're an experienced climber.

ES: This is true, however you know in the age of the internet there's just so much information out there. And I don't know that it necessarily comes down to education. I think a lot of the time it comes down to money. I think that people are just trying to save money. They don't necessarily know any better and they make poor choices. And that's part of why you know this call for example is such a wonderful opportunity to us to educate people and to really think about you know who you're climbing with, how you're climbing and the strategy behind the climb.

AMT: How varied are the costs depending on what company you use?

ES: You know the average Western operator cost begins at approximately $65,000. Over the past couple of years the trend that we've seen are that you know there are local companies popping up, statistically speaking, I won't name the company, but you know there's one company in particular that holds the highest death count and the death rate and the fatality rate of their clients. And this is a known fact in the mountaineering community and what you're seeing are climbers that again are trying to save money. They end up working with these companies and disaster strikes.

AMT: And disaster is not new to you. Tell us about your very first trip with a man named Sean Egan.

ES: Yeah my my friend Dr. Sean Egan in 2005 aspired to become the oldest Canadian to summit Mount Everest. And I was incredibly fortunate to have been offered an opportunity to travel to Nepal with him. I've never slept in a tent. I didn't know where Everest was I'd never climbed a mountain. I was young that was 26 years old and just very excited and enthusiastic and I was making a film about his mission to inspire people to live healthier happier more meaningful lives. And Sean unfortunately died during that expedition. He died of heart failure. And I returned to Everest never having climbed a mountain before and I climbed in his honour. I turned back from the summit twice on two various expeditions trying to honour his life because of bad weather. And it was a very hard lesson to learn. It was very humbling as a young man who was driven and passionate and eventually in 2010 I made it to the summit. I took his ashes up there with me. We had twenty thousand Canadian kids that were following you know from the safety of their classrooms every day. So it was incredibly meaningful and Sean's tragedy became a beautiful legacy.

AMT: But are you telling me the first mountain you ever climbed was Everest?

ES: In 2019 unfortunately yes I'm telling you that the first mountain I climbed was Everest. I had incredible support. I had wonderful leadership. You know my best friend guided me up there and I think the 15 years of sport background that I had really translated into this ability to carry cameras and to create calm and to tell stories in this 8000 meter environment above sea level. So I was fortunate that all of that experience and fitness carried forward which enabled me to summit safely.

AMT: And you have since continued to be up that mountain many times. What do you say to those who who are critical of some of the climbers today who like you at one point, this is the first mountain?

ES: What do I say? I tell them to you know take this incredibly seriously. You know to be honest with yourself, to inform yourself, to educate yourself to learn as much as you can. You know to to look at these devastating circumstances such as this year and try to understand what really happened up there you know inform yourself on what went wrong not to necessarily look at the headlines you know which are blaming you know line-ups solely and really look deeper into the problem which which includes you know lack of preparation and poor planning and just a bad decision sometimes to try to save some money, which really sadly and unfortunately cost a number of people their lives this year.

AMT: Has this latest experience changed how you feel about climbing Mount Everest?

ES: It certainly has changed my perspective. It was disheartening. You know I love this mountain. I love this country. More so, I love the people, you know the Indigenous people, the Sherpa people of Nepal. And as I was climbing up this year and I was just watching everything that was unfolding around me and the loss of life and you know I just asked myself, will I ever come back to this place? I'm not sure.

AMT: This might be it for you.

ES: It's quite possible. Absolutely. You know and you have to remember, you know I'm not up there chasing the summit. You know I'm up there chasing stories. And you know in our case everything went off without a hitch. You know we were a very successful expedition. Our four Arab women from the Middle East, North Africa region all made it. So on that level it was very successful, but you know just watching everything else unfold, you know you ask yourself, do I really want to be a part of this and you know am I contributing to the problem? Which is a tough question to ask because you know you're up there doing what you love, but you know that's unfortunately part of the problem.

AMT: Well Elia, thank you for taking the time to talk to me today and to take us through what you saw.

ES: My pleasure. Thank you for having me.

AMT: Elia Saikaly, an adventure filmmaker based in Ottawa. We reached him in Kathmandu, Nepal. We did request a statement from the Nepalese tourism ministry. We did not hear back. Let us know what you think about what he said, what you were thinking as you listened to him. You can tweet us @TheCurrentCBC. Find us on Facebook. Go to our website cbc.ca/the current. The news is next and then we're going to hear about Gladys Avenue and one woman's change of heart. This is The Current.

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This B.C. woman lodged hundreds of 911 complaints about the homeless. Now she's advocating for them

Guests: Peggy Allen, Ron Allen

AMT: Hello. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

AMT: Still to come, the best-selling author Mark Manson whose book The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F*ck resonated with readers around the world. He's back. His new message has to do with hope because as he said we all need hope to live. But keep in mind hopes can be dashed and hopes can hurt. He joins me to talk about Everything is F*cked in half an hour. But first, finding hope in Abbotsford, BC.

[Music]

AMT: Well this is a problem facing municipalities across the country. What to do when homeless citizens set up tent encampments on city owned land? In British Columbia the problem has become particularly acute and in communities such as Maple Ridge and Abbotsford there have been stories in the news about conflicts between property owners and what they call campers. Today we bring you the remarkable and surprising story of how one woman's campaign over a 15 year period to deal with the homeless people on her street evolved. Here is Vancouver producer Anne Penman with her documentary, On Gladys Avenue.

SOUNDCLIP

PEGGY ALLEN: That's my street. So if you were coming along here, you'd be turning. Well I'll show you.

ANNE PENMAN: To get to Peggy Allen's front door, you turn off Gladys Avenue and drive about 50 metres up a bumpy unpaved road. There's a lot of security here. There are too heavy locks on the front door. One's a deadbolt and the other is a six inch graft bar bolted through the floor. All the doors and windows are alarmed. And there's something I've never seen before, a six foot high mirror directly alongside the front door. Designed so the security cameras can record intruders coming and going. These safety measures were not always here. A lot has changed over the past 15 years and I'm here to find out why.

PEGGY ALLEN: So I told my husband I'm going to find the house with a stream and a little acreage and he said will never happen, we can't afford it and I found this house driving down. One day I found this little sign that said house for sale by owner. I fell in love with it and it was so beautiful to us. Right? It's no mansion, but to us it was amazing.

RON ALLEN: It was a very safe area. We used to take her dog and just go you know. And we were never worried about it because it was very safe.

PEGGY ALLEN: Our kids could run free and we could have animals. We love animals. We had lots of dogs, we had cats, you name it. We had a bird, everything, we had chickens. It was the perfect life for us.

[Music]

ANNE PENMAN: But that life on Gladys Avenue would soon fall apart. Peggy takes me into her home office. She's laid out file folders and a year's worth of daytimers, containing records of what has happened here. More than a decade after they moved in, they got word that the City of Abbotsford wanted to build a Salvation Army emergency shelter next door.

PEGGY ALLEN: In 2004, we went to City Hall to a meeting one night, 30 residents and myself and we all spoke against it and they passed it before midnight. So our life changed overnight. Right up top is all the living quarters for the people that are transitioning.

ANNE PENMAN: From Peggy and Ron's home you can see the salvation army just over the fence. People on their way to and from the shelter mill around the front and sides of the property. Meals, some overnight beds, as well as addiction and mental health services are offered year round. I counted 14 tents on Gladys Avenue the first day I visited. Peggy and Ron say it has brought very troubled people, addicts and sometimes criminals to their doorstep.

RON ALLEN: It's ruined our life. We have a nice piece of property here that we can't sell for what it's worth. It's devalued down to not worthless, but certainly nothing that it could be. Nobody would want to bring a family in here and raise their kids here.

ANNE PENMAN: It became nearly impossible for Peggy and Ron to have friends over.

PEGGY ALLEN: Every time they came here, something was happening. Some crazy person was knifing somebody or chasing somebody with a stick or you know I mean that's the way they lived out there. I couldn't sleep, I couldn't think. Every time we left the house, we had to lock the doors, we had to get an alarm, we had to use the alarm. We had to make sure.

ANNE PENMAN: The chaos began to take a toll. Peggy and Ron were raising their granddaughter who was just a preschooler.

PEGGY ALLEN: We had her fourth birthday here and invited all her friends and their parents. So they're out in the back and I hear the doorbell and I've got this fruit tray and I figured it was somebody's parent coming. It was a crackhead from next door and she started to come after me.

RON ALLEN: Chased my wife through the house, it was a birthday party and I didn't have a railing on the patio at that time and she chased her right out through the back door and she slipped.

PEGGY ALLEN: And I went right off four feet down.

RON ALLEN: Landed on the concrete. She ended up in the hospital on my granddaughter's birthday.

PEGGY ALLEN: And I ended up in a neck brace. So that was our fourth birthday.

ANNE PENMAN: And that was just the beginning.

RON ALLEN: And we've had some strange things. I mean I had a guy banging on my door a few months ago.

PEGGY ALLEN: On the twenty seventh of July last year, in the middle of the night yelling at 2:00 in the morning Ron, Ron, you have to help me.

PEGGY ALLEN: I heard somebody screaming and banging on the door and ringing the doorbell.

RON ALLEN: Yelling and I knew him. He lived in a tent on this property here.

PEGGY ALLEN: And there's a man out there and he's leaning over and there's blood everywhere.

RON ALLEN: Help me, I've just been attacked by a guy with an axe.

PEGGY ALLEN: A man had come after him with a hatchet and tried to cut his arm off.

RON ALLEN: I look and here's this guy bleeding all over my carport.

PEGGY ALLEN: And he bandaged him up with all we had was Scott towels and phoned the police.

RON ALLEN: You know and I stayed with him until the police and the ambulance came, but those aren't everyday occurrences and they do put fear into your hearts. You know because you don't know if that fellow with the axe might come and start chopping your door down or something and you know probably he won't, but they could because when people are desperate and maybe addicted and maybe they're having a bad trip or who knows what it is. Certainly they're desperate. They're all desperate.

ANNE PENMAN: As shocking as these incidents are, Ron was not shaken in the same way Peggy was.

RON ALLEN: It's not that her fears weren't warranted. It's just that I just looked at it differently so and I just hated that she was always so upset. Always upset.

MICKEY BOLEYN: So I can't quite remember when the situation on Gladys Avenue started. By then we became quite good friends.

ANNE PENMAN: That's Mickey Boleyn. She met Peggy through the Valley Women's Network, a community group in Abbotsford.

MICKEY BOLEYN: One time I had mentioned I was knitting toques for the homeless and she said don't even mention them to me here. Perhaps a little stronger than that but.

ANNE PENMAN: Mickey was well aware of the safety issues Peggy was dealing with on a day to day basis. It was hard not to notice.

MICKEY BOLEYN: And even driving over to her place to pick up something or drop something off you had to be real careful you didn't run over anybody in the driveway. Things got progressively worse. M.

ANNE PENMAN: Ickey tried to help Peggy.

MICKEY BOLEYN: My husband and I were able to get some barb wire donated and he went and helped her. They tried to put up a fence on her side of the creek, but of course it wasn't fully closed down in and it didn't stop a lot, but it may have helped.

ANNE PENMAN: In addition to the barbed wire, there were security cameras and fencing around three sides of the property. Mickey knew it was her young granddaughter that Peggy was most concerned for.

MICKEY BOLEYN: Her granddaughter saw a lot of things sexually that she shouldn't have even been aware of at that age because they were, they could be shooting up or having sex or whatever right out in front of the house. A lot of people doing things in trees they shouldn't be doing. Not up in the trees but.

ANNE PENMAN: Mickey remembers watching as anger consumed her friend.

MICKEY BOLEYN: She spent a lot of time attending council meetings, phoning City Hall, phoning the police.

ANNE PENMAN: And when Mickey says she spent a lot of time, she means it.

VOICE 1: August 16th, 2009 at approximately.

PEGGY ALLEN: Freedom of Information documents show she reported hundreds of incidents to the police.

VOICE 1: At Gladys Avenue regarding suspicious circumstances. The complainant, Peggy Allen, stated that someone was knocking at her front door, but she could not see anyone.

ANNE PENMAN: But rarely was Peggy satisfied with the responses she got.

VOICE 1: Were unable to locate anybody.

PEGGY ALLEN: By the time they get here, they come with their sirens. They're gone. Nope, we didn't find a soul. Over hundreds of times. And after a while you get a little choked putting it mildly.

ANNE PENMAN: After helping with the barbed wire, Mickey got a little creative with her input.

MICKEY BOLEYN: When my mom passed away she had this little ceramic dog that barked when you came in the doorway. So we gave that to Peggy for her security, so she could hear. So it sounded like a dog. It was just a tiny little thing and it ran on batteries, so she put it in the window and she could hear them come to the yard. The dog would bark yes, but I mean it was you know make sure your door is locked in.

ANNE PENMAN: And the doors are always locked and the windows covered with boards and sheets. On the day I visit, there's only one window in the house that's not covered that you can actually look through to the outside to see that it's a bright sunny day.

PEGGY ALLEN: I kept track over the years of different things that happened.

ANNE PENMAN: In her home office Peggy opened some of the files that itemize city council agendas, as well as her diaries documenting her 9-1-1 calls.

PEGGY ALLEN: This one is July. There's one, two, three, four, five, six, that was seven that month. One, two, three, four, five. One, two, three, four.

[Radio radio chatter]

PEGGY ALLEN: Well if they're breaking a bylaw, would you come down and arrest them?

[Police radio chatter]

PEGGY ALLEN: I didn't phone every day, but I phoned almost 500 times in 15 years.

[Police radio chatter]

PEGGY ALLEN: Like what recourse do I have when they're spread all over the street. I can't come down here with almost running over them. I can't drive straight down the street and they're all over looking at my driveway and parked in and out of the area continually like who do I speak to?

[Police radio chatter]

ANNE PENMAN: And as Peggy flips through the pages of her diary, there is a date from last year that stands out.

PEGGY ALLEN: 17th of July of 2018, I was invited to a large meeting at City Hall.

LIANNE RADMORE: There was many issues on the Gladys corridor, which is the street outside Peggy's house and I had been invited and there was lots of folks who have businesses here and residents here that struggle with some of the things that have gone on in this neighbourhood. So my name is Lianne Radmore and I'm the harm reduction coordinator for Fraser Health, for Fraser East.

PEGGY ALLEN: And we were all supposed to sit there and we're supposed to draw on these big pieces of paper what we thought would make a difference and put them up on the wall. Then we were going to all walk around and talk about what's going to make a difference and on and on and on. I lasted it was a three hour meeting, I lasted 2 hours and 57 minutes.

LIANNE RADMORE: At that meeting Peggy stood. I think was probably halfway through.

PEGGY ALLEN: Then I got up and I just lost it.

LIANNE RADMORE: You could see how upset she was and how frustrated she was.

PEGGY ALLEN: I made a complete ass of myself. I screamed, I yelled, I cried. I was furious.

LIANNE RADMORE: And she said you people don't understand. You people aren't listening to us.

PEGGY ALLEN: And finally I said screw you guys, I can't do this because there's not one of you in here that knows what's happening, knows what it's like. You don't live here.

LIANNE RADMORE: Like you need to come to my house.

PEGGY ALLEN: Come and live at my house. Come and be at my house. And I stormed off.

LIANNE RADMORE: After the meeting I said, people were like wow she was so upset and I said well why don't, she wants us to come to her house. Why don't we go to her house?

PEGGY ALLEN: I got a phone call and these two ladies Lianne and Camilla wanted to come and see me and I said forget it and they said, well you invited us and okay fine and I was going to really give it to them right.

LIANNE RADMORE: Myself and Camilla who's a community health specialist for Fraser Health, we came here and we came here for about two and a half hours and all we really did was listen.

PEGGY ALLEN: So they came and I just let it all out. And then when they were leaving they said well there's nothing we can do. We can't understand, we can only care for you and can we call you and follow up with you? And I said don't bloody well bother. Don't call me ever again. I said, what are you going to do? It's not, is it going to help you on your resumé or something? Don't call me.

LIANNE RADMORE: I said that's fair. That's totally fair. And I said would you be okay if I bring what you've told me today, if I bring that to the drug war survivors because the drug war survivors are people with lived in living experience who are you know could be actively using substances or historically have used substances in the past and so she was like well you can do it, but it's not going to do anything for me. And so I did. I brought it to the drug war survivors and it kind of just took on a life of its own from there.

PEGGY ALLEN: And then all of a sudden one day the doorbell rang and here's this man and this woman and this kid and they're standing there with this plant. And so they said are you Peggy? And I said yes and they said we'd like to thank you for what you said at that meeting and we hear that you need some love to come your way and we would like to invite you to our drug war survivors meeting. And I said are you serious? And then I looked at this kid, he was like five or six years old just staring at me and I just well anyway I said well thank you very much. And didn't say what I wanted to, went in the house. And then they phoned me back and a week later and I said fine I'll come to your bloody meeting, but I'm telling you, I'm going to tell it like it is.

ANNE PENMAN: And the day came in early September of 2018.

PEGGY ALLEN: I didn't even know who these people were. I didn't know anybody there. I walked in there, thought there'd be about ten homeless people there right. There was 105 homeless people there.

ANNE PENMAN: Peggy had to wait or turn. She was third in line to speak.

PEGGY ALLEN: They got up and one speaker talked about something and another speaker talked about something else and then I got up there and I thought boy you guys are going to be sorry. And I opened my mouth and everything came out.

ANNE PENMAN: Everything. Her troubled and tragic childhood, her own father.

PEGGY ALLEN: About my dad. About my dad. He was a very, very bad alcoholic in Regina. He was a beautiful brilliant man. He was a land developer. He was a classic piano artist. We had Satchmo you know, Louis Armstrong in our living room.

[Trumpet sound]

PEGGY ALLEN: And he brought them home and I mean this is who my dad was.

ANNE PENMAN: She loved him, but when he was drunk, he was violent towards her mother. Finally her mom kicked him out of the house.

PEGGY ALLEN: He went to a hotel downtown and wanted us all to come for dinner. And so we all got in the car and we had to stop at the school to get my sister and by the time we got there, he had blown his head off in the hotel room.

ANNE PENMAN: And if sharing this to a roomful of strangers wasn't enough, Peggy continued, detailing her own drug use.

PEGGY ALLEN: It was just pot and stuff like that and then it got into a little bit more than that like acid and the fun stuff. I've always been an entrepreneur. I was selling out of my locker.

ANNE PENMAN: Peggy surprised herself. She had not come to the drug war survivors meeting expecting to reveal such deeply personal and painful memories.

PEGGY ALLEN: I just wanted to tell these people that I understood, but I didn't go there wanting to do that, but in my talk I did that. And so I finished my talk and not one person moved. Not one person spoke. And then all of a sudden they all got up and walked into a line and I went I was getting ready to leave and every one of them hugged me. It was so unbelievable. I just, here I am by myself, don't know anybody and they just embraced me like I've never been embraced in my life. The last man that was there, he said to me I had to wait to be last because I want to tell you something. He said I know you. I went to school with you. And he's pretty drugged out this guy. And I looked at him and he said I can change. I know I can change. He said you were the worst drug addict I had ever met. I mean it was just pot and stuff, it was nothing compared to now. And he said our family was told to stay away from you, that you had drugs and that wasn't good. And he said I got so drugged out and so screwed up in my life and he said, here you are and you're OK and I'm not. And he said, I can be.

ANNE PENMAN: Peggy went home in a daze. She had felt such love from her audience, but she was still Peggy, angry at what was happening outside her home. And then later that same day, she stepped outside to pick up her mail. Two strangers were coming up her driveway.

PEGGY ALLEN: And I don't know if I should, anyway I'll just spell it. She says oh there's that F and C word and I looked at her and I just went crazy and I started running towards her and I was going to hurt her. Like I'm not that kind of person, but I wanted to hurt her. And I stopped halfway down there and I said Peggy I hate the way you are. This isn't who you are. And I stopped and literally it was like the light switch switched and I turned around. I went back into the house and I just bawled my head off.

ANNE PENMAN: Something fundamental had changed for Peggy.

PEGGY ALLEN: It just was a gift from God or somewhere I'm sure. Instantly, I just became filled with love. I can't tell you that, like it's been an incredible metamorphosis in my life.

RON ALLEN: Oh my. Well she next to never calls the police anymore for one thing and she for some reason, the noises have not stopped. The kerfuffle, all the things on the street have not stopped, but it's almost like she doesn't hear them, but they just do not affect her in the same way. She doesn't have the same level of fear. She has more of a feeling of contentment in her life. She isn't constantly, did you hear that and sort of attitude about constantly her ears out on the street rather than doing the things she needs to do for her own life and our life here. It's just an incredible difference. It's like night and day. It really is. She's a much different person, her personality.

ANNE PENMAN: Incredibly, Peggy now volunteers on projects to help the homeless. Her current passion is the Business Engagement Ambassador Program or BEAP. It's organized by the drug war survivors and it pays members to clean up around local businesses.

PEGGY ALLEN: Great to meet you. Nice to meet you.

ANNE PENMAN: Rob Larson is a homeless man who works for them. Peggy has made an impression on him.

ROB LARSON: Her story became it's never going to leave me because I mean somebody that's gone through what she has I mean and just to become this overwhelming loving person is amazing, right. We've become really good friends.

PEGGY ALLEN: He hugged me so hard the first time I met him, he scared the hell out of me. But I was the one with the fear, not him. He was the one with the love and that was one of the first steps for me to make a change in my thinking because he hugged me and he cared for me without even knowing me. And it was real.

ANNE PENMAN: Peggy has taken me to meet Rob in an industrial part of town. He looks to be in his 60s and he's thin and neatly dressed in jeans and a jacket.

ROB LARSON: Just cleaned up you know garbage and stuff and all the sharps off the street. And it was just my way of giving back. It makes the community look you know not the greatest, but I mean if we could just out there, just make a little bit of a dent or maybe you can't change everybody's mind, but maybe a few opinions along the way. It's already working because I've got people just pulling over and asking me questions. I get police officers who have stopped and said just thanks a lot for cleaning up our community man. And that hits me, I mean that's all I need. I don't need to be paid for this. Whatever, it's nice, but I mean the way I look at it, if you give back a little bit to your community, you know they're giving back the whole armful of what you might need here or just open arms, right?

ANNE PENMAN: Rob was about to move into a new modular social housing complex when I met him. Peggy tells me he's very happy there.

PEGGY ALLEN: I don't expect anyone to jump on my bandwagon that lives around here because they've been through hell and they've had a lot of bad things happen. But I gotta tell you that what I'm gaining from helping these people is way outweighs what I lost. I didn't realize that I had built my own prison. These walls around me or fences or alarms or cameras, I built that prison and lived in it for 15 years and I don't have to anymore. And the thing is that what I was afraid of is real out there, but it was killing me and that's crazy and I don't want to live that and I don't want to die from that ugliness and that stress. I want to make a difference and I will. I don't know how yet, but I do know I will.

ANNE PENMAN: In fact Peggy Allen is doggedly working on a project to modify a shipping container to become a bathroom, complete with a sink. It would go at the end of her driveway for the homeless who live in tents on Gladys Avenue.

[Music]

AMT: We've been listening to the documentary, On Gladys Avenue. Produced by the CBC's Anne Penman in Vancouver and our documentary editor Joan Webber. Let us know what you think of what you've been listening to. You can tweet us @TheCurrentCBC. Find us on Facebook. Go to our website cbc.ca/thecurrent and click on the contact link.

[Music]

AMT: In our next half hour, self-help author, Mark Manson's new book is not called Everything is Beautiful. It is not called Everything Will Turn Out Right. He joins me to explain the philosophy behind well what he calls, Everything is F*cked. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

[Music: Theme]

Hope can be a double-edged sword when life feels 'meaningless,' says author Mark Manson

Guest: Mark Manson

AMT: Hello. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and this is The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: He's been depressed. All of a sudden he can't do anything.

VOICE 2: Why are you depressed, Alvy?

VOICE 1: Tell Dr. flicker. It's something he read.

VOICE 2: Something you read, huh?

VOICE 3: The universe is expanding.

VOICE 2: The universe is expanding?

VOICE 3: Well the universe is everything and if it's expanding, someday it will break apart and that will be the end of everything.

VOICE 1: What is that your business? He stopped doing his homework.

VOICE 3: What's the point?

VOICE 1: What has the universe got to do with it? You're here in Brooklyn. Brooklyn is not expanding.

VOICE 2: It won't be expanding for billions of years yet, Alvy. We've got to try and enjoy ourselves while we're here, huh?

[Laughter]

AMT: Well that's a thinly disguised Woody Allen as a boy named Alvy Singer in the movie Annie Hall. And the question of how to handle the knowledge that all life is fleeting, that our presence in this universe is essentially meaningless, well that's a question that has kept philosophers busy forever. The latest writer to weigh in is Mark Manson and the title of his new book does a lot to sum up his point of view. It is called, Everything is F*cked: A book About Hope. You may be familiar with Mark Manson's similarly titled best-selling self-help guide, The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F*ck. It sold millions of copies around the world. Mark Manson is with me in our Toronto studio. Hi.

MARK MANSON: Hey.

AMT: You like that word?

MM: I guess so.

AMT: The publishers make you do that though, don't they?

MM: They do. Well apparently the readers like that word, so.

AMT: There you go and everybody knows what it means. So how has poor Alvy Singer twigged onto the uncomfortable truth about existence?

MM: You know it's funny listening to that, I had a similar experience in high school physics when we learned what the scale of the universe was. I was like Wow nothing I do matters. It was a little bit. It was a little bit horrifying at first, but like you said I think this is it's a thought that we all have at some point in our lives. We think about from time to time but I call it the uncomfortable truth because we avoid that thought. We look for like the psychiatrist in the clip you know we look for ways to focus back on the present moment and what's important what we can do today to make our life feel meaningful.

AMT: What do you think then of his advice on how to deal with that angst?

MM: You know I think it's pretty it's pretty typical. It's really the only because you can't function as a person if you're always thinking about you know the heat death of the universe. So. So we need to create some sort of vision for ourselves of like OK well this is what I can do here and now to make make the world a little bit better make my life a little bit better even if it's going be temporary.

AMT: So how does the mind do that? How does it protect itself from the terror of the uncomfortable truth?

MM: So we create what I call in the book hope narratives and they can be something as simple as you know, well if I study I'll get good grades and I'll get a good job and my life will be more comfortable. Or they can be as complex and abstract as you know this is this God is the one true God and I need to follow all the texts because that's what's going to give my life meaning even after I die. So it's -- these mental constructions are always going on in our minds and we need them because they are what sustain us from day to day.

AMT: Do we always even know we're doing it?

MM: No absolutely not. And I guess that's one role I try to have with my work is to just show people these little mechanisms that are always running in our minds, because while we need them they're not always useful. A lot of times they're destructive. And so if we can be a little bit more aware of the games that our brains are playing, it's easier for us to kind of pinpoint what narratives aren't helping us.

AMT: You say the opposite of happiness is not sadness but hopelessness.

MM: Yeah.

AMT: Tell me a little bit more about that.

MM: So my argument his head if you're sad about something or if you're angry about something it still implies that something matters. You know Hope hopelessness is is the place where nothing matters. Where we're all going to die anyway so why bother. And it's hopelessness I feel like is is the most debilitating of all these mental states because it's when you don't have that vision of what a better world could be or what a better life could be. You know why get out of bed in the morning?

AMT: And so many people experience that.

MM: Yeah, more and more.

AMT: In fact we live in times of great progress in technology and health and yet the West is seeing a spike in depression anxiety drug addiction. Is there a connection between times of progress and hopelessness?

MM: I don't, I don't know if it's progress necessarily, but I definitely think there is something about the 21st century world that makes hope more difficult for a lot of people. I think it becomes a complicated question. You know one of the examples I use in the book is that if you're like let's say you're a subsistence farm you're a goat herder in Africa. Like it's very easy to know what the hope for. You hope that you have enough food to feed yourself and feed your family. It's not a difficult question to figure out, but if you're sitting in a nice air conditioned room in Toronto and you've got food delivered to you from your phone and you have 500 shows on Netflix like it's what the hope for actually becomes a very complicated and difficult question answer. And there's something about having the quantity of options and choices that makes it all feel a little bit meaningless.

AMT: You're talking about consumer values then right, if we have so much at our fingertips. Almost like the best of things, but it's also the worst because we don't have to strive for something or we don't have to like at one point we would strive for some of that stuff and now it's just there at our fingertips.

MM: Yeah. So this is kind of the counterintuitive thing about hope is that the worse things get the more easy it is to know what the hope for and you see this. I mean it's for instance suicide like they've found that not only do safer and more developed countries have higher rates of suicide but you can even zoom in on neighbor specific neighborhoods and cities. It's the richest and wealthiest and safest neighborhoods in each city that tend to have higher suicide rates.

AMT: And why is that?

MM: Because it's again, it's difficult to know what the hope for. If everything is convenient easy and comfortable. You don't, it's a very complicated question to understand why you should get up in the morning, whereas if you are struggling or if there's a war that's breaking out, hope is an extremely easy question.

AMT: You have children to protect, you have things to do, you want to get out of the way.

MM: Exactly.

AMT: Yeah and the politics of it. So do you think we, do you see a society, our society having a crisis of hope right now?

MM: I think so and I think a lot of what we experience as political polarization, outrage culture, a lot of the stuff that's going on in the media. I think a lot of that is is kind of a side effect of these problems of hope. People are comfortable but they're also confused. There's a lot of conflicting information out there and so they they're latching on to these narratives that give their lives meaning and it's just causing the world to become a very conflicted place.

AMT: It's interesting because at one point you like you make the point that anger is something that actually means you care about it and if you're surrounded by that polarization you start to kind of get lost in the swirl of it, right.

MM: Yeah.

AMT: And that becomes a problem.

MM: Yeah and I think you know another big problem that's happening right now is that there's a thing called the Edelman Trust Index, which is essentially they just measure trust among societies around the world and not only trust in government institutions but trust and media and trust in each other trust that like you know I'm not going to get robbed if I walk down the street and this dough in 2018. They put out the index and they said that there's a crisis of trust happening. That trust is plummeting around the world right now in everything. In our institutions, but also in each other. And I think if you don't have that trust that society or other people in your community are going to do what you expect them to do you freak out and lash out at everybody else.

AMT: Got another clip I want you to hear. This is again from Woody Allen movie, the 1972 comedy, Play It Again Sam.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: It's quite a lovely Jackson Pollock, isn't it?

VOICE 2: Yes it is.

VOICE 1: What does it say to you?

VOICE 2: It restates the negative ness of the universe. The hideous lonely emptiness of existence. Nothingness. The predicament of man forced to live in a barren, godless eternity, like a tiny flame flickering in an immense void. There's nothing, but waste horror and degradation forming a useless bleak straightjacket in a black absurd cosmos.

AMT: Sounds like she might like your book.

MM: It sounds like Woody neeeds to read my book.

AMT: Yeah, it sounds like that, especially now. That's an old movie, lots has changed.

MM: Oh yeah.

AMT: So what advice would you give to that character, if you were Woody Allen in that scene or someone else?

MM: Well you know what's funny is you know we laugh about lines like that. I mean obviously the movie is kind of hamming up the the nihilism of that character, but I actually make the argument argument my book that we need to be comfortable with this idea. I think it's the avoidance of this idea that causes us to overcompensate and maybe put way too much hope in things that are very destructive. I think it's there's some there's a kind of liberation that comes with understanding how temporary our own existence is because it's you know the typical assumption is like OK well we're all going to die and none of it's going to matter anyway so why don't I you know play in traffic and steal from people or whatever. And I think that's a very like you could make the opposite argument which is OK we're all going to die and none of it's going to mean anything. So you have no excuse to not love people to try to yeah or to be courageous or to put yourself out there. So it's you can look at it as a liberating force or as like a damning force.

AMT: As in like someday this won't matter, so I can feeling the pressure and I can just go forward.

MM: Yeah.

AMT: What happens to a person when they lose hope?

MM: I think essentially they become they despair. A lot of what we pray diagnosis depression is it's a state of hopelessness it's a state that a feeling that nothing either one has no control over their own future or one has no future or a desirable future.

AMT: And if we as a society are in danger of becoming a bunch of nihilists when nothing that matters, how do we confront that as a society?

MM: Well I think as a society we're finding kind of cheaper and cheaper fixes. You know you mentioned consumerism earlier. I think that's one way that a lot of people are kind of filling the void. I think a lot of entertainment in a lot of sense is is also filling that void. The problem with material world hopes essentially is that they're always temporary. They only last for a short period of time.

AMT: So they delay your feeling, they don't actually get rid of that feeling?

MM: Right. And when the feeling comes backn often it's worse. I have you know there's a chapter in the book about religion and I'm an atheist myself but one of the points that I make is that you know religiosity is dropped off immensely in the past couple of generations and while there are you know we could argue whether that's a good or bad thing. Definitely one. One negative aspect of that is that religious traditional religions have a a permanent source of hope for people. You know there's this there is a God that is outside of this world that that there is an afterlife and nothing that goes wrong in this world can affect that.

AMT: That you're actually working toward a goal that is bigger than you.

MM: Yeah.

AMT: Yeah and that there's a certainty about that.

MM: Absolutely.

AMT: Even in the midst of a lot of questioning, there's a certainty that religion has.

MM: And I think it's interesting because people talk about the drop in religiosity but I think what's happening is that people are actually they're still behaving religiously but their focus has moved from traditional religions onto more worldly things. So if you look at people's behavior around politics around corporate brands around sports celebrity it's far more religious than it was 50 years ago. There's a lot more ritual to it. There's a lot more zealotry and extremism to it. And I think that that's a dangerous game to play because like if you're if you if you put a religious like faith in your political party at some point that political party is going to screw up and do do some awful stuff and you're going to be forced to maintain your sense of hope you're going to be forced to get on board with that those screw ups. Whereas if you have kind of more of a traditional hope in God, you know what regardless of what happens on Earth, you can maintain that hope narrative.

AMT: And so you make the point that you're an atheist. What about the atheist, you say I believe in reason and evidence, I don't believe in faith. How do you how do you confront that?

MM: Well actually I'm going to nit pick at that. The argument I make is that we all have faith. Even if you're atheist, you have to have faith in something because we all have to value something and whatever you value, that value is based on faith. So I mean I personally believe like yeah reason and evidence science, these are probably the best things we've ever done. Can I prove that? No. I mean at some point there's just some degree of faith that that says that you know this is what's most valuable to humanity. This is what's most important for our lives. So even if I'm not, even if you don't play the religious game, you still have to behave religiously around something. You still have to have faith in something that something is important that something matters.

AMT: And that when you talk about value, you're talking about then value of other people. Value of the world around you.

MM: Yeah.

AMT: Something beyond yourself.

MM: Yes.

AMT: Former U.S. President Barack Obama made hope a key part of his appeal. Why was that such a successful message?

MM: I think the U.S. was was in a pretty pessimistic spot. You know 9/11 happened. Bush got us into two wars that seemed to be going nowhere. The economy was collapsing. And I think the message of hope resonated period. But I think also Obama very much embodied that message of hope. You know being being an African-American just the fact that he could even potentially win the presidency was a sign of hope and progress that I think that the American people craved at the time.

AMT: I have a clip from him in 2016. He addressed delegates at the Democratic convention. Listen to what he said.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: It's been you who fueled my dogged faith in our future, even when the odds were great. Even when the road is long. Hope in the face of difficulty. Hope in the face of uncertainty. The audacity of hope. America vindicated that hope these past eight years. Thank you for this incredible journey. Let's keep it going.

AMT: Audacity of hope. The very idea that you can have hope and that you can seize it. That journey did not continue. Many Democrats felt a sense of hopelessness after the 2016 presidential election. Is it better not to have your hopes raised and to see them dashed?

MM: No I think it's inevitable that your hopes are going to be dashed. Pretty much anything you place your hope in is going to hand you your ass at some point. So the Democrats experience that the Republicans experience that eight years before. So I think this this whole idea of avoiding having your hopes dashed is actually part of the problem. You know and this is this is one of the central messages of the book itself. I kind of you know my last book pulled a little bit of a switcheroo on readers. You know I think people approach that book they're like oh man I wish I didn't give an F. I'm stressed out all the time. And you start reading the book and you realize that it's about values and what you find important in your life. I get it is a very serious message about you have to care about something so you should be very conscious about it. This book does the same thing which is I think a lot of people are looking for hope right now and they're desperately holding on to what they hope for. And this book kind of argues that it's that desperate desperate clinging that is part of what is making everything so bad or seem so bad. It's this desperate clinging to these hope narratives that are inevitably going to fail and in a society that is technologically accelerating at faster and faster rates.

AMT: So sometimes we have to examine our own hope narrative.

MM: Exactly.

AMT: Are we kidding ourselves? Are we following somebody's propaganda or do we find hope that's real? We have to actually not look at Twitter to figure out where the hope is, we have to look inside ourselves.

MM: Absolutely. And it's and again it comes back to being comfortable with that uncomfortable truth because to to examine your hope narrative you have to be willing to face the fact that like hey this might not mean anything.

AMT: You make the point you know that in every political cycle there's a different kind of hope that is presented. Canada had sunny ways. Ronald Reagan talked about it's morning in America. Right. And does the yearning for hope make society vulnerable to being manipulated by demagogues who promise hope?

MM: Absolutely. And it's I mean you could say that marketing itself is is kind of pitching hope to people. It's a very superficial example but it's you know you watch a beer commercial and it's like some hot girls like hanging dancing next to a guy. You know it's like that's a little mini narrative of hope. I think in politics that plays out on a very big scale. You know we all have these faith based beliefs in these things called countries that exist and define us and we all put our hopes in them and powerful charismatic leaders come or come along and essentially pitch us new hope narratives around that country. And we buy into them because it feels good it gives us a sense of meaning, a sense of purpose, a sense of that life's going to get better. But so there's always that danger that it bleeds over into just fanaticism.

AMT: I guess the trick is to know whether you're being manipulated or whether there is real hope there. Whether someone has a vision that you can be part of or whether it's a way to trick you and they have no vision.

MM: Part of it is is yeah, part of it is whether the hope what they're pitching is valid. I think a huge part of it that we've definitely lost it in the US recently is is the character of the person pitching it. You know it's my my problem with Trump is much less what he pitches. Like I don't agree with all of his policies. But it's like I understand that a democracy needs kind of a give and take. There's like a tension that needs to always exist between different viewpoints. So I'm fine with things moving to the right for a while. What worries me about him and what I think what worries most people is just his character you know. Is he dependable? Is he trustworthy? And I think you know it's interesting you played Obama. You know Obama was I think brilliant at really distilling what the American people wanted to feel is incredible or or greater. Some of the best speeches in my lifetime came from him. I voted for him twice. But it's funny because since he left office I've had to very much re-evaluate you know now that he's gone and that kind of mindless hope that he fostered in people is is kind of waned. I've looked back at his presidency and really thought more rationally about what did he do what didn't he do. And yet it turns out there was a lot of flaws and things that I wasn't so happy about. And so I guess my point with all of this is that our hope narratives push us to being all in on one side or all in on the other. And really it's like the people that we're all in on are generally going to disappoint us and the people that we're all in against most of time aren't going to be nearly as bad as we think they are. And I think we need to remember that.

AMT: It's almost as if you're saying we need to have a lot of hope with a dash of cynicism, as opposed to a whole lot of cynicism, which just a nitty bitty bit of hope.

MM: Yeah absolutely. You know one of the comparisons I draw in the book is that it is between hope and love. So very similar to love everybody assumes that love's always a good thing. Similarly people always assume that hope is a good thing. I point out that the best experiences in your life usually revolve around love but also the most painful and destructive experiences in your life all revolve around love and so you have to be very very careful who you love and what what the shape and form of that love is. I think the same is true with hope. You know it's it's we need hope to sustain ourselves, but if we put our hope in the wrong place or if we hold onto it too tightly, it can quickly turn destructive.

AMT: Thanks for coming in.

MM: Absolutely. It's been a pleasure.

AMT: Mark Manson, his new book is, Everything is F*cked: A Book About Hope. He joined me in our Toronto studio. That's our program for today. Stay with Radio One for Q the hit Broadway show, Dear Evan Hansen has opened in Toronto and cast members will drop by the Q studio to chat with Tom and there will be a performance from the musical as well. Now we don't want to leave you feeling hopeless after my interview with Mark Manson, so we're going to leave you with that old spirit lifter from Frank Sinatra, High Hopes. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. Thank you for listening to The Current.

[Song: "High Hopes" by Frank Sinatra]

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May 28, 2019 episode transcript

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