Hope is one of those fuzzy words like joy, love, peace, goodness, faith, God, sport, us, them; words that evoke emotions whether or not we have worked out what they mean, which is fine, I think, as long as we understand that understanding is not involved. When the wolf is eyeing you for dinner, that is not the time to contemplate the role of the predator-prey dynamic in stabilizing populations. In that situation it is OK to be hopeful without knowing why. If you don't give up, you may have a chance to think about it later.
Before we get all enthusiastic about emotion and dismiss understanding as pathological, clearly some threats come at us slowly so we have time to think, investigate, make a plan, fix things, and so live to emote another day. We have many tools in the kit. Don't use a squeegee on a broken window.
In the matter of the climate crisis, the world is broken, and hope is perhaps a squeegee unless we put some thought into making it a more appropriate tool. Maybe hope is a collection of tools, like a sponge and detergent, spray-on wax, duct tape, an acrylic repair kit, a replacement window, and a squeegee. So what do we mean when we speak of hope?
Different Sorts of Hope
(a) denial: bad stuff is not going to happen; nothing to worry about
(b) passivism: not my job; it's up to the government or the experts or God
(c) fatalism: party on; eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow...etc.
(d) pragmatism: doing our best and risking the uncertain outcome
(e) expanding perspective: knowing that we are a small part of something wonderful and enduring
I'm sure there is more to it than that. Hope has a dark side. When you are hopeful, you drag the possibility of disaster along with you dressed up for a party that may not happen. Michael Dowd's postdoom conversations describe the path some thoughtful people have travelled through despair and grief to a place where hope is irrelevant. What if the party has been cancelled? How do we live in a world that is already collapsing? Maybe we give up. Or maybe we do the unselfish, just, compassionate, loving, regenerative things we are able to do whether or not we can fix what is broken.
Hope option (f) being hope-free; just do what is right because it is right.
What do you think?
Finally finished (using the word loosely) the Dowd videos. Much good stuff there, I like his L rules on how to live.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure I am entirely ready to abandon the concept of "hope." Could be that I've just reread the Bruggemann book on the Prophetic Tasks. I think our definitions of the word may be different. Almost certainly. I think humans DO need something we're calling hope to "do the right thing." Without hope we're unlikely to engage, to not sink into despair and inaction.
I don't think we necessarily see hope as some supernatual belief in "eternal life", or "everything will be OK" but we need to feel a sense that what we do IS the right thing, or that it will be efficacious (one of Dowd's five-dollar words). Isn't that "hope"?
Maybe hope is an evolving process rather than something absolute and done. That is what we do with the fuzzy words. We live meaning into them. I suspect the twenty-year-old version of me wouldn't have made much sense out of this discussion. He hadn't been through grief on out the other side. Let's talk again in sixty years.
DeleteNo don't wait. We can talk again any time.
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