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Hope is a shallow fantasy that facilitates our turning away from reality. It saps our emotional and intellectual processes that in times of unrelenting depression and stress are needed by us to confront and productively participate in the situation at hand. Because we do not know everything nor can we with great assuredness predict the outcome of many things we often have data. This information (data) is subject to interpretation and abuse but too is subject to our envisioning and achieving a greater good. The interactive direction it takes is more worthwhile than the inactive vagaries of hope. Hope is an abdication. Interaction is confirmation of life.
Many will claim that their hope (I intentionally do not yet mention the word prayer) was validated by the outcome. But these aberrations are statistically recognizable if not predictable. Even when the most ideal of outcomes are unpredictable Black Swans, the nature of the aberration attributed to hope is at best, wishful thinking. The idea that hope is what controlled the outcome is unprovable.
As children we effectively use fantasy to explain those artifacts in the world we do not yet understand. This is understandable owing to our lack of experience on the playing field of life. The process of employing fantasy is one of diminishing returns as our knowledge and experience increases along with our empowerment. Seen in this context the power of hope is similar to that say of levitation… maybe it happens maybe it doesn’t but it remains so rare and inaccessible to most of us that it is not useful… even if we “hoped” we had such abilities. Hope is an example of a childhood device that when carried forward into adulthood creates dysfunction through disassociation.
Artists, poets, musicians and the like traffic in metaphor which is a sophisticated adult device to help us express and cope with concepts and artifacts we do not understand or are unable to express within the limitations of language and culture. The world in which we live is not necessarily all-factual as we define the word factual but thus far we suspect if not believe there is some as yet undetermined (or understood) suggestion of order which in turn represents the factual. Perhaps an order which in its magnitude we cannot with our current intellectual capacity recognize or understand. Hope is not a metaphor.
There is a difference between hope and optimism. One is a pleading (but to whom or what I know not) and the other is position or point of view. Increasingly we should be aware that in a world where many devices can and will perform things that we or others once did for ourselves we can be more active and involved with the multidimensional environment in which we exist. In this “brave new world” of longer life and gifted time we can consider things that before we paid little or no attention to. We become increasingly aware and thus empowered. This is akin to the time long ago when humans, through some rather odd anthropological circumstances, found they could cast their glances and speculations away from the endless task of eyes to the ground hunting for roots and nuts. This was a critical turning point when, among other things, humans became less absorbed with the daily task of finding carbohydrates and entered into the great pantry of stored energy. The consumption of longer burning protein instead of short brief energy carbohydrates gifted us the time to connect the bright dots in the night sky and develop ideas of immortality and individual points of view. Our ancestors found they could, in fact, interact with their environment on many previously unimagined levels, seek and find new explanations that ultimately would go beyond the superficial trappings of superstition, helplessness and the dictatorial mandates of others. Thus the world truly became an active place for human beings. If this were not enough the empowering acceptance of personal engagement and eventual responsibility at many levels brought deeply imbedded human values forward into the light of intelligent scrutiny. In spite of the many abuses and setbacks time allowed them (us) to exhibit traits of compassion, inquiry, greater intellectual and emotional development. The speculative connection between reality of the known (experienced) world and one which was imagined began to rapidly unfold. Along with it we continue to experiment with a variety of intellectual and emotional devices. Hope is one such device. In a time when magic and mystery dominated our understanding of life’s processes, nebulous concepts like hope were placeholders and for a time facilitated our relentless forward momentum. But in the world today we have less use for some of these concepts because our accumulated knowledge has become (we think) more precise. Less spooky. Just as long ago we now have more time and with that we need to dispose of some of the obsolete concepts and replace them with new furnishings inside the grand palace of our existence. On another day many of these current artifacts too will wind up on the curb. That is, it appears, as it should be.
Hope is a place where we can escape the reality of the situation and while that time out may contribute to our temporary mental health it can also be seductively addictive. Such is the grist of lotteries, the unrealistic yearning for those things we cannot have, the deferred reality of life, as we know it. These fantasies distance us from the consequences of both our own actions, those of others and the natural world. Better that we seek newly formed access into the (a) situation, which will contribute to some tangible resolution that will effect others and us in a more lasting and meaningful way. What appears to some as the less desirable alternative of hope is to allow a situation to unfold in a way that at the worst possible moment confirmed our darkest fears and then knocks us down as if there was no warning. An additional aspect can be that of utter helplessness when if we had chosen engagement we would have, at the very least, stood on the firm ground of empowerment. What we seek is a sense of place, which we can inhabit with some reliability. A place where we can continue to live and move forward engaged with the sometimes-serendipitous life process. To be left behind is to have engaged in the deferral of hope and at some future date be faced with catching up or worse the election of isolation and ultimately irrevocable withdrawal. E.g. giving up.
There are constructive alternatives to the emptiness of hope. Engagement, however difficult that may be is the difficult choice that will be rewarded with continuance. The place where we continue to live is the place where we understand consequences, accept the unknown and live in the question instead of seeking answers whose temporary truths become elusive and to often unreliable. Answers are the moving target of change. It is bedrock we want to stand on and regain strength and in doing so reach out to life and contribute by banking our varied experiences to be later drawn upon or shared on another day.
That which we frequently hope for is that which we can instead confront. With this new reality we can build an ever-higher watchtower from which to look further onto the landscape of our existence and thereby contemplate the beauty and richness of the diversity that is revealed in the emerging details of our lives.
Jk 5/08