Abandon all hope... and be more active

It's rare to view hope as something to be discarded rather than embraced. Don't we need hope? Isn't hope what keeps us going through tough times, with its power to present a vision of a better future?

Maybe not. I found Derrick Jensen's Orion column, "Beyond Hope," to be beautifully written and quite persuasive. 

Though his main focus is on the benefits of environmental activists giving up hope in favor of action, his piece has considerable general relevance.

For example, most religions put a lot of emphasis on hope, which is almost synonymous with faith. Supposedly we should trust that someone or something -- God, angels, Jesus, a guru, Brahman, Zeus -- will make everything all right in the end.

This weakens our own capacity to make life better for ourselves now. We imagine that the power to produce positive change lies somewhere else, not in our own hands. 

Here's some excerpts from Jensen's Beyond Hope. The entire piece is well worth reading.

Frankly, I don’t have much hope. But I think that’s a good thing. Hope is what keeps us chained to the system, the conglomerate of people and ideas and ideals that is causing the destruction of the Earth.

To start, there is the false hope that suddenly somehow the system may inexplicably change. Or technology will save us. Or the Great Mother. Or beings from Alpha Centauri. Or Jesus Christ. Or Santa Claus. All of these false hopes lead to inaction, or at least to ineffectiveness. One reason my mother stayed with my abusive father was that there were no battered women’s shelters in the ’50s and ’60s, but another was her false hope that he would change. False hopes bind us to unlivable situations, and blind us to real possibilities.

...But it isn’t only false hopes that keep those who go along enchained. It is hope itself. Hope, we are told, is our beacon in the dark. It is our light at the end of a long, dark tunnel. It is the beam of light that makes its way into our prison cells. It is our reason for persevering, our protection against despair (which must be avoided at all costs). How can we continue if we do not have hope?

We’ve all been taught that hope in some future condition — like hope in some future heaven — is and must be our refuge in current sorrow. I’m sure you remember the story of Pandora. She was given a tightly sealed box and was told never to open it. But, being curious, she did, and out flew plagues, sorrow, and mischief, probably not in that order. Too late she clamped down the lid. Only one thing remained in the box: hope.

Hope, the story goes, was the only good the casket held among many evils, and it remains to this day mankind’s sole comfort in misfortune. No mention here of action being a comfort in misfortune, or of actually doing something to alleviate or eliminate one’s misfortune.

The more I understand hope, the more I realize that all along it deserved to be in the box with the plagues, sorrow, and mischief; that it serves the needs of those in power as surely as belief in a distant heaven; that hope is really nothing more than a secular way of keeping us in line.

Hope is, in fact, a curse, a bane. I say this not only because of the lovely Buddhist saying “Hope and fear chase each other’s tails,” not only because hope leads us away from the present, away from who and where we are right now and toward some imaginary future state. I say this because of what hope is.

More or less all of us yammer on more or less endlessly about hope. You wouldn’t believe — or maybe you would — how many magazine editors have asked me to write about the apocalypse, then enjoined me to leave readers with a sense of hope. But what, precisely, is hope? At a talk I gave last spring, someone asked me to define it. I turned the question back on the audience, and here’s the definition we all came up with: hope is a longing for a future condition over which you have no agency; it means you are essentially powerless.

I’m not, for example, going to say I hope I eat something tomorrow. I just will. I don’t hope I take another breath right now, nor that I finish writing this sentence. I just do them. On the other hand, I do hope that the next time I get on a plane, it doesn’t crash. To hope for some result means you have given up any agency concerning it. 

Comments

[George Poergie puddin 'n pie]

I would say that 'hope' is the positive counterpart of 'fear'.

Sometimes no matter what actions are taken, it makes no difference at all, circumstances are such that you are farting against thunder.

If you abandon hope, you pretty much give up and then you are poked. It's only from hope that action follows. Fear paralyses. Look at any survival situation, it's the person who keeps fighting the odds - who simply refuses to give up hope and so keeps going.

Faith is the religious belief in something that does not exist. Hope is the recognition that life has its ups and downs and things. It's what keep the light burning in the darkest of times. Hope may be wasted but better to try than nothing at all. If you don't have hope or don't try, you don't have any chance.

[Brian Hines]

But George, you've made the point of Jensen's piece.

"Fighting the odds" doesn't require hope; it requires fighting. "Refusing to give up" doesn't require hope; it requires refusing.

Jensen defined hope as longing for a future condition over which you have no agency. It is passive, not active. Taking action by fighting, refusing, or whatever doesn't involve hope. The person doing these things is acting, not hoping.

I don't hope that I can type out these concluding sentences. I just do it.

[777]

"How can we continue if we do not have hope?"

CERTAINITY is much better.

Rather unethical my first motivation in this life
was lust.
I thought, to acquire as much as possible of it
for myself each day ( and night ) would make a great lifetime

Then - when I was attracted in that strange way, I have already described, I figured out that
the more I would find and experience, the more the pain would be when this method would end :

So I really strived intensively to do this new method of repetition
day and night for the same reason : "lust" the less positive semantic of bliss.
And it worked - for me a special helpful aspect was that you do not really abandon your lifestyle - you just regulate it better being a housefather which is really exceptional in rssb.

Many if you will agree that it makes sense to strife for stability
So, instead of my first rather wild and insecure method, risky because of some ugly new karmas going with that , I changed like many others and tried this "Faith, Hope & Love" Combi
The faith & Hope was given for free by living the stories I described.
If you haven't received and are interested , . . one can pray for it , . . it works

I'm still not do the Brians forbidden preaching - It's just common sense
and it should and will work for any true 'religion'

Rather quickly and as the main factor comes the Love aspect
slowly but fanatically replacing my initial lifestyle

Why I think about Tucson while writing this

I must say
I feel like adding now a lot in words that certainly would be deleted
*the enchanting part, - so this is my take about Hope
It's good and

Love is better

777

[yo]

Hope without action is surrender. But when action is accompanied by hope it gives impetus to that action. If I have no hope, why bother?

[observer]

Yes, “Hope and fear chase each other’s tails"..

777 says: "Why I think about Tucson while writing this..
I must say I feel like adding now a lot in words that certainly would be deleted *the enchanting part"..

Yes, I miss Tucson too... don't we all need some balance from this boring down-to-earth practicality... some enchantment and mystery which lifts the spirit and brings life back into this old body... :)