What America's lone U.N. vote against hope reveals about our collective crisis

The U.S. currently is the punchline to a bad joke, but it doesn't have to be.

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Editor’s Note: On Wednesday, July 16, at 8 pm EST, I’ll be live-streaming a conversation with Kathryn Goetzke, founder of the International Foundation for Research and Education on Hope. Join us and learn practical skills to build hope at a time it’s being collectively tested. Download the app and tune in with your comments and questions.

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Ugh.

This newsletter will get better, but let me start with ugh.

In a stunning display of commitment to our current national brand, the United States has become the only country on Earth to vote against hope.

That's right, when 161 nations voted at the United Nations to establish July 12 as the International Day of Hope, America stood alone and said, essentially, “hard pass.”

Four countries managed the diplomatic courtesy of abstaining, yet the United States actively voted against the resolution recognizing that hope plays an important role in wellbeing, mutual respect, social stability and sustainable development.

Behind America's solitary “no” vote on March 4, 2025, lies something that would be funny if it weren't so devastating. As someone who spends my days exploring the invisible threads between mental health and democracy, the vote encapsulates where we find ourselves. At the exact moment when our social fabric is fraying and the dehumanization of innocent people is being broadcast to blank stares, the U.S. government rejected the very thing that research tells us we need to survive, let alone thrive: a collective commitment to envisioning a better future and the belief in our ability to achieve it.

Edward Heartney, then a representative of the U.S. Mission to the U.N., told the U.N. General Assembly on March 4 that America was opposed to the resolution because of “references to diversity, equity and inclusion that conflict with U.S. policies that seek to eliminate all forms of discrimination and create equal opportunities for all.”

Translation: We're so committed to ideology that we’ll vote against hope if it comes with words that make us uncomfortable. This is like rejecting a life preserver because you don’t like the color.

Equity, inclusion, and dignity aren't progressive talking points. Research shows they represent the structural conditions that enable hope to flourish. When discrimination, poverty and systemic exclusion limit both perceived pathways and sense of agency, even the most resilient individuals struggle to maintain the belief that their goals are achievable and worth pursuing.

Hope is more than a day

I reached out to Kathryn Goetzke, founder of the International Foundation for Research and Education on Hope, to understand what was really at stake in that U.N. vote. She spoke in favor of the resolution at the United Nations — a clear, no-nonsense voice with lived experience about why we must focus as much on possibility as the pain we collectively face. She lost her dad to suicide when she was 18, a trauma that led her to attempt suicide herself. Goetzke has dedicated her life to helping others find their way back to shore.

She has spent more than two decades researching hope not as a feeling but as what she calls “a teachable skill set — one that includes goal-setting, cognitive flexibility, social support and the ability to manage setbacks.”

When Goetzke saw the U.S. vote against the U.N. resolution, she says she felt rage, disbelief and shame that tested even her own resolve to hope.

“It’s so sad to me. Our kids are identified with hopelessness — it’s the leading cause of suicide for youth — and we’re letting politics get in the way of doing what’s right for our world,” she told me. “We are smarter than this. We can do better. We have the science.”

In the past, Goetzke says she would have tried to run from the despair. “I’d eat, drink, smoke, anything to manage my nervous system and not go into any of those uncomfortable spaces because I feel so intensely, and that is terrifying,” she told me. This time, however, she let herself feel. She cried on long walks and asked for guidance on how to move forward. She ended up taking her own advice.

“You need negative emotions to get to the positive, to figure out what you hope for. That’s what we tell kids with our program: ‘It’s amazing you feel so deeply. It doesn’t necessarily mean you have anxiety or depression if you’re afraid. That’s valuable information. Feel that sadness and listen to it. How can you transform that energy to your mission and your purpose?’”

Hope is a skill

Hope is not about ignoring pain or pretending things will improve on their own, she says. “It's about giving people the tools to act when they feel overwhelmed, powerless or lost.”

For many, that means knowing that it takes 90 seconds for stress hormones to cycle through our body. When we’re despairing or hopeless, “if we don’t wait 90 seconds after the last trigger, then we can further the problem,” Goetzke told me, adding that if we’ve experienced a deep wound, it may take longer to disrupt the cycle of reactivity.

That’s why she encourages people to “SHINE Hope” — by cultivating stress management skills, happiness habits, inspired actions, nourishing networks and by eliminating challenges.

Distinguishing between hope as a series of actions versus hope as wishful thinking cuts to the heart of our democratic crisis. When more than 40 percent of American high school students report persistent hopelessness, when suicide remains a leading cause of death among young people, when we're watching genocide unfold in Gaza and the U.S. sanction a U.N. envoy for championing the human rights of Palestinians, the question isn’t whether we need hope. It’s whether we are willing to do the work that hope actually requires.

The science of collective hope

Psychologist C.R. Snyder transformed how people understand hope by showing it is not passive optimism but active cognition. His research identified two essential components: agency thinking, which is the motivation to pursue goals, and pathways thinking, which is the ability to find routes to those goals. People with both demonstrate better outcomes across every domain of life.

But here's what's fascinating — and troubling — about three decades of hope research: It reveals both the power and the profound limitations of individualistic approaches to collective problems.

Snyder's work emerged from Western cultural assumptions about individual agency and personal responsibility. While this research has helped millions develop cognitive tools for resilience, critics point out what gets lost when we focus solely on individual mindset while ignoring systemic barriers.

As one recent scholarly review by Rachel Colla, Paige Williams, Lindsay G. Oades and Jesus Camacho-Morles of the University of Melbourne put it, the theory assumes “disjoint agency,” or individual responsibility for goal pursuit, while overlooking “conjoint agency,” where goals and actions are defined through our connections to others and our position within social systems.

This matters enormously right now. A person facing deportation needs more than cognitive flexibility. A family losing healthcare coverage needs more than goal-setting skills. A young person seeing their friends be swept away in a flood needs more than individual resilience. They need collective action and systemic change.

The democracy connection

This is where the invisible thread between hope and democracy becomes visible.

Democracy is an exercise in collective hope — the belief that we can work together to create better outcomes than any of us could achieve alone. But democracy requires both individual agency — the belief that your voice matters — and collective pathways — institutions and processes that actually respond to that voice.

When institutions fail, when voices go unheard, when systems seem rigged against ordinary people, both individual and collective hope erode. I’ve felt this. And I’ve watched as others feel the darkness descend. This has real consequences, not only for personal health but for political health, too. When hope erodes, democracy becomes vulnerable to authoritarianism’s false promise of simple solutions and designated scapegoats.

I think about this as I watch the early months of President Trump's second term, as policies target the most vulnerable and many Americans retreat into individual survival mode. I think about it as images of man-made catastrophes flood our feeds, creating a kind of collective trauma around our inability to stop what we're witnessing.

In these moments, hope can feel not just absent but almost insulting. How do we talk about pathways and agency when the pathways seem blocked and our agency feels artificial?

Beyond individual resilience

This is where the evolution of hope research is important. Studies from more collectivist cultures have expanded the framework to include what researchers call “external loci of hope,” the family, community and spiritual resources that provide both pathways and motivation. This broader understanding recognizes that sustainable hope often emerges not from individual cognition alone, but from social connection, shared purpose and collective efficacy.

Goetzke's global work reflects this evolution. Her Hopeful Minds curriculum, now implemented in more than 50 countries and recognized by the World Bank, teaches individual skills while building community connections.

The research suggests that building hope in crisis requires what we might call “both/and” thinking: both individual skill-building and systemic change, both personal resilience and collective resistance, both protecting our own mental health and fighting for conditions that support everyone’s wellbeing.

When I’m not reporting and writing, this is where I pour my energy: coaching people to understand how their nervous systems work so they can build agency and resilience in their body, mind and spirit, and helping individuals, organizations and industries ask new questions and look through different lenses to find solutions to seemingly intractable problems. (Hint: We need to look upstream to identify and course correct the drivers of discomfort, conflict, stress, rupture, harm or loss of productivity.) It’s good work, and the fact that it’s happening ideally will give you hope.

What this means for you and me

As I write this, the first International Day of Hope approaches. America's vote against it would be funnier if it weren't such a perfect metaphor for our current moment: a nation so committed to being contrarian that we'll even vote against tomorrow. I invite you to not be part of the punchline and join the global recognition that hope is essential public health infrastructure.

That might mean teaching young people both emotional regulation skills and civic engagement tools. It might mean building both individual resilience and collective power. It might mean holding both personal healing and political action as equally necessary. What’s your version of this? I’d love to hear.

What’s clear to me is that healing mental health and democracy requires hope. When we strengthen one, we strengthen both. When we neglect one, we lose both.

I dare us to build hope that matches the scale of our challenges. Not the false hope that asks us to ignore structural problems, but the active hope that equips us to address them. Because while America stood alone in its “no” vote, hope doesn't need our permission to exist. It lives in the nurse working a double shift, the teacher buying supplies with her own money, the neighbor checking on an elderly stranger, the activist who knows the world is burning and shows up anyway.

Hope is the most rebellious act there is. Which means, in the end, it's perfectly American after all.

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A couple of notes:

Don’t forget, on Wednesday, July 16, at 8 pm EST, I’ll be live-streaming a conversation with Kathryn Goetzke, founder of the International Foundation for Research and Education on Hope. She’ll share practical skills to build hope. It’s a muscle we need to exercise consistently. Let’s do it together? I know no one wants more apps, but the Substack app is what allows you to tune in live, talk with each other and me:

In my last dispatch, I took a poll to gauge people’s interest in learning about the Red House Journey Framework, a paradigm-shifting tool to disrupt cycles of harm and cultivate cycles of wellbeing on an individual, communal and systemic level. A multidisciplinary team at Georgetown University’s Red House research and design unit that I’ve had the privilege of collaborating with developed the framework based on the science and practice of trauma and healing, and partly informed by the wisdom of global experts convened by The Wellbeing Project. Many of you showed resounding interest in how to bring the framework to your work and world, so I’ll be carving out time to zoom with folks who want to learn more. Stay tuned for that, and let me know if you haven’t already — what makes you curious about the framework?

We built our democracy on trauma responses. Here's how to rebuild it on healing.