Hope Changes Nothing

Hope springs eternal in the human breast
   — Alexander Pope, An Essay On Man

This post is not for the faint-hearted, because I am going discuss "hope" honestly without illusions. This post was prompted by a TED talk by Lawrence Lessig (brief discussion and video below).

First, what is "hope"? Common definitions include—

wanting something to happen or be true and thinking that it could happen or be true

or

a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen

Clearly, wanting or thinking (believing) something could happen or be true is not the same as a derived reasonable probability that something could happen or be true. In the latter case, where we have good reason to believe that something could happen or be true, "hope" would seem to be justified, but quickly reduces to something we might call "reasonable expectations" that some desired goal is achievable, etc.

Hope is therefore always reserved for those cases in which miracles are required—no reasonable probablility exists that the desired goal will be achieved, etc. Hope replaces rationally derived probabilities with emotionally-laden fantasies.

Yet we might say that "hope" is the most basic human response to undesirable situations, both of an "objective" nature (overcoming bad luck, like beating cancer) and a "subjective" nature (human-caused, like mitigating climate change). Hope is what gets humans out of bed.

But we must distinguish between these cases. In the former, "objective" case, hope is a positive response which often creates benefits for the sufferer. In the latter "subjective" case, hope is a poison, for it blinds us to what is potentially real (probable) and what is not. That is beautifully illustrated in this short video from 2008.

A majority of Americans believed that Barack Obama would turn the country around.

Obama was able to run a very effective and cynical marketing campaign based on his "Hopey-Changey" theme because hope is so deeply ingrained in the human animal. What we got consequently was a lot of hope at the beginning, and very little change thereafter. By mid-2009, the hope was gone.

Americans had had a sentimental moment, and like all such moments, it faded quickly. Hope is a warm, fuzzy feeling—an affect or complex. In "subjective" and seemingly impossible cases, voicing one's hopes is obligatory. One can not write an article, make a movie, etc. about some game-changing and apparently intractable human-caused problem—ongoing destruction of life in the oceans, wealth & income inequality in the United States—without adding a dollop of hope at the end.

Hope is not only natural (and thus oligatory) with humans, but is also perhaps the most limited and limiting response to big human-created problems. Hope (in these "subjective" cases) is merely an ephemeral emotional state, a counterfeit and spurious feeling, an ersatz replacement for reality-based thinking and action which might have the potential, however remote, to intiate small changes toward some desired goal (preserving life in the oceans, re-distributing the wealth in the U.S.). And of course there will be many times when you simply throw up your hands and say "fuck it!"

All of this comes together in this video featuring Lawrence Lessig, an academic at Harvard and political activist who has long been interested in getting money out of the political process. Lessig's talk illustrates every single thing I said about hope in this post.

He starts off reasonably enough, but you've got to watch the whole thing (13:45) to understand what's going on—why is Lessig's goal of changing the American political system from within merely a hope-fueled pipedream?

Doesn't it make far more sense to urge people to boycott a corrupt process which doesn't serve the needs of the vast majority of America's citizens, and which all truly thoughtful people understand to be fucked-up beyond all repair? And then see where that goes? If a system is illegitimate, then remove its pretence to legitimacy. A boycott may not work, but it's a reality-based option.

I found this video very hard to watch, but watching it will put across the points I made today in a visceral way which is impossible to convey in mere words.

 

Comments

[Brian]

Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning. - Albert Einstein

Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man. - Friedrich Nietzsche

I find these two quotes about hope interesting. Einstein, the scientist, allows for hope, but requires that we question everything. Presumably, this includes the need to question our own hopes.

Unfortunately, as most humans are not so self-aware, we are not able to question our hopes, and it stops us from being able to recognize the reality of our problems and predicaments. Instead, we are left to "prolong our torments".

Perhaps there is a glimpse of human reality in the contrast between the scientist and the philosopher. The scientist, having observed human limitations, offers the warning that might, if heeded, allow humans to better deal with reality, and the philosopher, having also observed human limitations, offers the likely outcome when the warning, inevitably, goes unheeded.

Somebody once said, "Hope is not a plan." Unfortunately, we tend to treat hope as if it were not only a plan, but the only and obviously correct one.

Torments indeed.