What is hope?

I've been mulling this over for about two or three weeks now after seeing Gustavo Gutierrez Jim Wallis and Daniel Berrigan give various lectures where the subject of hope came up in each to varying degrees.

So what is hope?

Hope is when we allow ourselves to, despite what the past may have taught us on our specific situation, to have faith in the idea that things will get better.

And how did you like Jim Wallis? I thought he was pretty good when I saw him speak.

The desire of something the procurement of which is in doubt.

"Hope sees the invisible, feels the intangible, and achieves the impossible." -Anonymous

Hope is what you just can't cope, without.

Hope is the embodiment of the human spirit, the American dream, and world peace.

Hope is a newborn child.

Hope is the fuel that drives dreams.

Hope is the very best gift we as humans can give ourselves.

would you all view hope as passive, or active?

You mean does it exist whether you do something or do nothing? The individual creates that role based upon the situation. In the end I guess hope is a survival mechanism of humanity.

Hope is both. It is underlying, but to an extent, it is there because we wish it to be there. Despite what the situation may appear to be like.

I think I agree with Delta6 more.

Hope is potential. It is not something that is totally voluntary, like moving your arms. That we have hope is as sure as knowing that not only do we have a brain, but we also have a mind. We know that we have a heart, but how is it that we know we have a soul, or a spirit? Define a conscious. Hope is a part of us, whether we say so or not.

Some people say they have no hope. God forbid that ever being a true statement. Because, in that day, you will listen to someone speak who has no soul.

So I think hope is potential, lying within each of us. But it is meant to be kinetic, active, and driving our moment-by-moment living. People are sometimes afraid to hope, because they say it only leads to disappointment.

So what??

To screw up a phrase:

"It is better to have hoped, and felt disappointment than to have never hoped at all!" (Sorry Bill!)

Meh. I kinda thought hope was a defense mechanism of the mind to help ensure continued survival. It prolongs the will to live. Sometimes this mechanism works with another called transference/projection so we pass it onto others.

To an extent I agree. However, there comes a point where it changes from that almost passive reaction to a controled feeling. Even to the point of convicing one that things are other than they truely are.

So hope can be self delusion? Yes. That's why it works as a survival mechanism. When all is seemingly hopeless we cling to HOPE.

Yeah, I agreed with you on that one...

D6, I'm not so sure about passive/active.

I believe we have the ability (even the mandate) to activate our hope. But, I see people who spend a lot of time attempting to convince themselves that they can moderate it. I am an idealogue. Another way of putting that is that I am a hope addict. When there is a choice, I hope--and the more, the better. I get disappointed more often, but MAN when it works, it works.

There are those who are not realists, but much further to the opposite end of the spectrum (at least in their representations to the world). Those are not even pessimists, they are fatalists. And those are the folks that I see working the hardest to pound their inborn hope into submission. These folks share something in common with (no offense to anyone intended here, gang) Atheists.

I never met a real one. I've known many who like the tag, but don't have th juice to pull it off when it matters most.

So, I guess I would say that having hope is involuntary. Utilizing it for your own good, and the good of others, is voluntary. We moderate not how much we feel inside, but rather how much we display outside.

And, I think that is what gave Freud, Skinner, Adler, et al. the grist for their individual mills.


:)

I hope that helps. B)

I've been told I'm a fatalist. I guess I kinda am. It all leads to death in the end. It leads to alternating "why bother" moods against "why not" since the results will end the same way. My daughter seems to have a knack at how to phrase things to persuade me where others fail. Its nice that she understands me, annoying that others don't, & the realization that she developed the skill in childhood to manipulate me.

No way can a brand new parent look at a newborn baby, and see no hope or no future.

Disillusioned, perhaps. Maybe even wounded. But no way a fatalist. She wouldnt spend the amazingly small amount of time they require to wrap you around her finger otherwise. Kids know, trust me!! :)

Just cause the parents (or even <gulp> sometimes Grandparents) feel that way, doesn't mean they are that way.

The closest person I ever came to knowing as a fatalist was a bummed out, brain-fried hermit. After about 2 weeks of talking to this guy every day, I discovered he was so far beyond the average person's mentality that he just got tired of trying and shut up for about 20 years. But, he wasn't a fatalist. He was just wayyyyy out there. A really cool guy, actually. We were good friends til he died about five years ago.

I never understood that mentality. As one who does not believe in a life after this one, I would imagine it would be kinda easy to fall into the trap of saying that this life is just some crappy joke, but I don't. Its not the final destination, not at all. Its what you do to get there, how you act, what you learn. And if it is all "for nothing" then thats just the end result. It doesn't have to directly affect the actions leading up to that.

I agree with kybudman that hope is rarely depleted. Again, this goes back to my definition of it as desire of some future event.

I wonder, however... how is hope different from desire?

I think the word desire is generaly given to a physical contemplation. I hope he lives. I desire a glass of water. Its just the general usage of the word that's different. A subtle slant in how people use the words. I want, I desire, I hope all have basically the same meaning but are given different weight in literature & prose. They try to give different measurement of unmeasurable things. They add diferent textures to a sentence.

In terms of word usage, I would propose that we tend to use "hope" in the context of outcomes which we feel we do not control, while "desire" tends to be used in situatuions where we feel we can obtain the desire result through our own action and power

Good distinction! Yeah I think hope definitely carries the connotation of something that is left to fate.

I would tend to agree with your distinction but carry it further.

Hope necessitates action, it does not wait.

This question came out of a series of musings I'd been having with myself after seeing a lecture by Gustavo Guiterrez. Who gave his own reasons for why hope requires action, but I'll lay out my own case as well.

Hope is one of those funny nouns (abstracts) that can and does have a verbal form (as keys pointed out, I hope he lives) as such it has a capacity for action, and as such I feel requires it to truly be hope.

I may hope that Congress passes a just health care bill, but if I truly hope I must act on it. I should call my congressperson and let them know I either support or oppose the current legisltation, I should attend rallies and encourage my friends to do the same either in support or in opposition. In short, it is believing in spite of evidence to the contrary, and then making that evidence change.

Well, then. Perhaps hope is a potential that does not truly realize itself without some kinetic action on our part. Could it be then that hope is the fuel, or at least the spark that causes our action. If we hope something happens, does that mean that we are in some way, to at least some degree, responsible for its (whatever we hope for) realization?

I think I like the distinction made between hope and desire. Perhaps it is a way too-often misused word. "I hope it doesn't rain today!" doesn't really leave me much room to realize or control the outcome of what I hope. There seems to me to be a line of what we hope for, and what we realize. Is it purely fate? In some cases, I think yes. I also think that, in those cases, we misuse it. "I wish it wouldn't rain today!" Hmm.

I think maybe we are narrowing the grey area. What do you think?

just pointing out that I am an atheist (wanting membership to the Church of Satan too be a bit more precise but the fact is my beleif is very very much without a god) and since I decided that there need not be a god in my life, even through the death of a close relative and other crisises I maintained my solemn beleif there is no god.

My bit on hope, I agree partially that it is a survival mechanism, but it is also an excuse ot be damn lazy. In terms of this if you imagine:

there is an oppressive king, who obviously oppresses his people and leaves them horribly poor.

every single citizen of that country is hoping against hope (what a stupid phrase) that a hero will step forward and save them, so because everyone is hoping for a hero nobody steps forward. Hope is the excuse to be lazy.

whereas the "realists" or "fatalists" as they have been dubbed, think either:

"hey, life sucks under this King, so lets just accept it and get on with it trying to make things as good as we can for ourselves"

or

"hey, life sucks under this King, let me do something about it, nobody else is going to"

whereas our "hopist" is thinking "hey, life sucks lets wait for the hero to come along"

hope is a good adrenaline rush in some situations- i.e hoping your teacher hasnt noticed you havent handed in your homework on time. hehe. and its that rush that can get things to work.

(I think this is my maiden post so go me)

I partly agree. You can both hope and act at the same time, hoping that your actions come about in the way you wish them to. In order to be a realist you mustn't give up on hope.

yes there is a difference between realism and pessimism.

Agreed. You seemed to be going along with the definition of "realist" as someone who is hopeless. Prehaps I misread.

I do not see a possible error on your behalf- I had assumed that is what the original post was claiming.

How can you say this AND agree with the distinction between hope and desire, namely that hope is used in contexts in which we do not have control?

D6, do you agree with the distinction made between desire and hope? If so, why can't you be a realist and not be a person of hope?

Desire can be a feeling born out of an action that you have taken towards a goal. So can hope. You can realistically hope or desire that somthing you've worked your hardest for and see as a strong possiblity of occuring occurs, and you are still a realist.

Probably because I misread that part and thought Great Dane was saying the reverse. But at the sametime, we can still have hope in things we can't directly affect but still work towards.

For example, I can hope that a more just world will come. I can work towards that by volunteering at organizations working towards structural change that I feel will make the world more just, I can also donate some of my money to other organizations. I can engage other people in intellectual discourse designed to make them reevaluate what they believe about how the world works... etc, but at the same time I have little control over the situation.

I'd honestly say it's more the scope of the thing. We desire small things, whether or not we have control over them, and hope for big ones.

I'd disagree with that. I can hope that I beat you in rock, papers, scissors, and desire to be a millionaire.

Seems to me there's an overlap between active & passive forming a grey area. Choosing to do nothing is still a choice of action if you remain present in a situation. Perhaps this is the cause of our muted understanding? We have to judge how much force of presence is implied by the usage of the word by the user?

Hope is having an idea of how the future should be. It's not as wishy-washy as making a wish, it's more enduring. Hope may or may not be tied to desires, except to say the general desire is hope itself.

It is hard to believe that there are those having given up on it completely. The hermit someone spoke of earlier in the thread is indicitive of how that person will behave. There are people that have given up on some of it, especially those that are disappointed too greatly. Sometimes, even they still sub-consciously hope, while going about their lives.

Yes, it's easy to see it as a survival instinct... but I tend to think it's entwined with a person's unconquerable spirit. Not giving into failure or submitting to death is the spirit's will not quitting. Sure, it takes a beating. Depressed people will try to give up "expectations", not hope. Being morose can't prevent what's within.

Hope can be conscious too. People learn of tragedies or catastrophes, that concern for others is there. We have to choose to feel that for others. There are quite a few individuals in the world that do not have that kind of concern. It doesn't bother them what happens half a world away if it doesn't directly affect them.

Religion can be thought of to either build upon it or to take advantage of it. For the unknown mystery of what is soon to come during life or after mortality, it helps them cope. It doesn't mean that you have to have religion to have hope. Faith is believing in something without having factual basis. Hope is the wanting/desiring/wishing/needing it to be true.

Sometimes it seems mankind should fight another world war. The horror of what it brings, the terrible wounds to man and soil, the sapping economies and destablizing certain markets; all of that is forgotten in a generation or two. No one hopes for that kind of war, but not enough hope to avoid it with that kind of understanding. Then there are times when mankind seems like it would be better off it it were almost obliterated, to start all over with the remaining few. That seems hopeless, but it's more acceptance that the more the world changes, that the human race is still the same. All of the hope in the world hasn't changed that.

Hope is an interesting thing. I think in some ways we choose to hope, and in some ways we're gripped by hope.

I'm inclined to agree with that.

There are days when the world seems to align just right so I can't HELP but feel hopeful, no matter what has come before.

And there are times when I choose to hold onto hope through a conscious act of will, or by putting myself in a place where I know I'll be gripped by it if you will.

Sartre suggests hope is a result of idea that humanity has brought "negation" into the world. Negation, the non-reality, the potential, NO, the anti, doubt, the untrue, the possiblity that something can be false, and of course the "negative." I agree with this definition. If you think about it, hope is what keeps us going, that the unexpected is possible. I think hope is an extremely important part of the human condition.

I'd agree, and feel it needed to point out that it is both the aid and the bane of our existence, at times.

What do you mean? How is "hope" the bane of our existence??