A Short Case for Belief

History is full of moments when the conventional wisdom got it wrong. When experts said it was impossible. When everyone sensible believed the trajectory was fixed. And then something shifted. Systems can change faster than anyone expects. We have precedent for believing in what looks impossible and being proven right. Why should now be different?

Every single breakthrough in history started with someone believing in something before the evidence existed. The person who believed we could land on the moon. The person who believed slavery could be abolished. The person who believed democracy could work. Belief is not the opposite of evidence. It is what allows evidence to emerge. If you wait for proof before you believe, the proof may never come.

If we stop trying, we guarantee the outcome we fear. That is not a guess. That is structural logic. The problems we face require sustained collective effort. If everyone stops believing they can be solved, they cannot be. But if enough people keep the door open, if they keep trying even reluctantly, the game remains playable. Giving up guarantees loss. Continued belief at least leaves possibility on the table.

Abolition. The moon landing. The eradication of smallpox. Women's suffrage. The internet. When you list the things humanity has actually accomplished—things that seemed impossible at the time—it is hard to argue that we have uniquely lost our capacity for coordinated action. We have done hard things. We can do hard things. The question is not whether we are capable. It is whether we believe we are.

If you believe the future is inevitable collapse and you're right, you get no bonus for being right. If you're wrong, your belief contributed to making it worse. If you believe a different future is possible and you're wrong, you lived with more energy and purpose. If you're right, your belief was part of what made it possible. Game theory is clear: belief is the rational move. Not out of naivety. Out of strategic advantage.

Pay attention to what happens in your body when you collapse into impossibility. The weight. The numbness. The resignation. Now notice what happens when you let the possibility back in. Even a crack. A loosening. A sense that the door is not quite shut. The future you can feel in your own nervous system tells you something. It tells you what you already know: possibility feels different than inevitability. And that felt difference is not insignificant. It is the ground from which different choices grow.

We are not asking for certainty. We are not asking for optimism. We are not asking you to ignore the evidence or pretend things are fine. We are only asking for the refusal to collapse probability to zero. To hold open the possibility. To refuse to guarantee that transformation is impossible. That is the threshold. Not certainty. Just the unwillingness to close the door entirely. If enough of us hold that door open, the future remains available.