The Future of Hope

Recently I've been trying to read Hope in the Age of Anxiety by Anthony Scioli and Henry B. Biller (Oxford), which was blurbed to suggest it surveys psychology, philosophy and theology for news on hope. Instead it seems more of a self-help book, with little tests and inspiring examples. But what's most troubling to me is that I can't locate an idea of what the authors define as hope that makes much sense to me. Some of it may be optimism, or faith. Some of it may be courage. But hope? What is hope?

The question was raised again in some of the responses to President Obama's Nobel Prize address [see the post below for more responses.] Here's one from Alex Steffan at WorldChanging (a site I like and find useful), which includes the last paragraphs of Obama's address:

President Obama's Nobel Prize acceptance speech is a truly remarkable piece of writing. He manages, in an incredibly conflicted moment, to neither dodge the conflicts nor let those conflicts define the possibilities of our time. It is a speech that is honest, humble and at the same time profoundly high-minded. The last few lines, in particular, reveal a sentiment that's critical for the era of instability we know we're headed into:

"So let us reach for the world that ought to be — that spark of the divine that still stirs within each of our souls. Somewhere today, in the here and now, a soldier sees he's outgunned but stands firm to keep the peace. Somewhere today, in this world, a young protester awaits the brutality of her government, but has the courage to march on. Somewhere today, a mother facing punishing poverty still takes the time to teach her child, who believes that a cruel world still has a place for his dreams.

Let us live by their example. We can acknowledge that oppression will always be with us, and still strive for justice. We can admit the intractability of deprivation, and still strive for dignity. We can understand that there will be war, and still strive for peace. We can do that — for that is the story of human progress; that is the hope of all the world; and at this moment of challenge, that must be our work here on Earth."

"This is a set of ideas very much the moral core of the politics of optimism that I've written about before," Steffan concluded. And if you follow the link, he expresses a fairly nuanced view of the concept of optimism. But I don't quite buy it--that is, I don't quite buy that it is necessary, or more particularly, that this is what Obama is expressing.

Steffan opposes the negativism that says we are incapable of solving the major problems, of saving the future. I agree with most of what he says, but I stop with this definition of optimism: That we have the capacity to create and deploy solutions to the world's biggest problems."

I believe it's wrong to say solving great problems is impossible: that we can't. But I don't believe that we necessarily "have the capacity to create and deploy solutions to the world's biggest problems." I believe that it is possible we do. But it is impossible to know.

Optimism may help to motivate people, just as faith may. But neither is necessary. In terms in what will or won't happen, or even what can or can't happen, optimism and pessimism are irrelevant.

But admitting uncertainty doesn't mean not doing anything. Envisioning what success might look like, for instance--that's something else. That's useful. Yes we can is a clarion call, an assertion of possibility, although it can equally mean "yes, we can try." But even belief in the possibility isn't necessary for hope.

To clarify what I mean, here's another interpretation of Obama's speech, by Andrew Sullivan. Sullivan and I apparently share a Catholic background, including some knowledge of what they were calling the New Theology in the early 60s. Otherwise, not so much. Plus he's stayed with the Church and I have not. But he writes this:

" Hope is not optimism. We have little reason for optimism given the first decade of the twenty-first century. Hope is a choice."

(He also adds: As much a choice as faith and love, which I don't entirely buy. Love is something of a choice, and something of not a choice, and faith is less of a choice than either love or hope. According to my definitions.)

But I do agree that Obama makes the case, especially in those last paragraphs, that hope is a choice ("we can acknowledge that oppression will always be with us, and still strive for justice," etc.) But I would take the concept further.

To me hope is embedded in a quotation from F. Scott Fitzgerald, which is famous only for the first part: "…the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function." But the full statement concludes: "One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise."

Fitzgerald may well have been thinking of the ending of The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, in which the Time Traveller has seen a future when humanity is finishing its self-destruction. The novel's narrator is his friend, Hillyer, who acknowledges that the Traveller "thought but cheerlessly of the Advancement of Mankind and saw in the growing pile of civilization only a foolish heaping that must inevitably fall back upon and destroy its makers in the end." Though this is not Hillyer's view he still concludes, "If that is so, it remains for us to live as though it were not so."

My own sense of hope takes elements from all of these statements. In terms of fact or reality, hope is based on complexity, on the absurdity of our reflexive either/or: humanity is either evil or good, selfish or altruistic, destined for greatness or damned, etc. And also on fallibility and uncertainty: I am convinced that the Climate Crisis is real and is heading us towards the end of human civilization. But how it will all play out, and whether our efforts can really stop it, no one really knows.

So in that sense hope is a choice. It's not optimism--yes, we will solve it! Or pessimism--not with our selfish genes we won't! It isn't even about what will or won't happen in the future. It's about what we choose to do now. Hope is a condition of the present.

But in another sense, it's not even a choice, at least not as a discreet concept, any more than Samuel Beckett's famous"I can't go on. I'll go on"--is a statement of despair. It's just living. Hope is just another word for choosing to live, although it does imply an embodiment of values: a larger sense of life that includes doing for others, and for the future. Or put it this way, it's not so much a choice as a commitment.

When we do for others, we often can see the results (though not always.) But when we act for the future, we will never know if we were successful. Some people have faith. For me, faith is a trick of the heart, but it's possible that for others it is more, and they aren't deluded. But hope is more humble--it only hopes. Yet hope without works is empty. Envisioning and building a future worth hoping for is the work of hope. Idea by idea and brick by brick (or solar panel by solar panel.) "We can do that — for that is the story of human progress; that is the hope of all the world; and at this moment of challenge, that must be our work here on Earth."