2024 and Hope

One of my watercolours. I gather leaves, twigs, etc. from around where I live and then paint them life-size in trompe l’oeil. This one spells the word UTOPIA.. Which seems fitting for todays’ post.

The news media always seems to welcome the new year by striving to cheer us up with reasons to be hopeful. But they’ve been working harder than usual this year!

In fact, the daily news provides ample and depressing evidence that people will invest their hope in the most bizarre things. QAnon, for example.  The motley followers of QAnon know that hope is fundamental to the meaningful life, and after their own fashion have the expectation of a positive outcome. But like so many hopeful people throughout the length and breadth of history, their expectations were not realized. But also like people in the past it seems that even in the face of disappointment many QAnon supporters have been able to rebound, regroup, re-calibrate, and keep on hoping for the same old mad things.

But unlike our ancestors and too many of our contemporaries, most of the intelligentsia know that hope is all too often founded on delusion, over-confidence, over-simplification, errors of judgment, and moral, practical, personal, and collective failure.  Especially worrying, however is  not so much the fact that the beliefs of QAnon followers and the like are obviously delusional and not founded on the sound and reasoned assessment of the possibility of a positive outcome, but that nowadays it seems to be becoming extremely difficult to feel hopeful through rational appeal to the facts or through a balanced assessment of the situation in the ways that  we in the ‘reality-based’ community consider essential.  

Then again, to borrow a metaphor of the poet Seamus Heaney, hope and history sometimes try to “rhyme”. It is our responsibility to continue to struggle to identify abiding hope-filled ideals robustly capable of carrying us through such uncertain and dangerous times.

Here are 15 dimensions of history and experience that, for better or worse, will bring people hope in 2024:

1. HUMANITY

Hope is primordially rooted in confidence in the efficacy of the human species, our collective capacity to overcome terrible adversity and prosper. In looking at the beginnings of human culture, we can see the origins of hope in fundamental evolutionary prerogatives. Upper-Palaeolithic cave-paintings made as long as 40,000 years ago tells us a great deal about the power to communicate across thousands of years a message of hope through the celebration of humanity’s capacity to exercise influence over events that affect human life.  The cave-paintings in Grotte Chauvet in south-west France, discovered in 1994, are twice as old as the oldest cave paintings known at that time - about 36,000 years old. One of the cavers who made the amazing discovery saw a drawing of a mammoth on the cave wall and spontaneously cried out in excitement: “They were here!”

2. NATURE

As every springtime in particular reminds us, the natural world is a deep source of hope.   In terms of evolution, the powerfully uplifting responses we have to nature are probably closely linked to the fact that for our ancestors the sight of new plant shoots and blossoms, and the migration of animals, signalled the end of a period of dangerous lack. Hope is inextricably linked to notions of the sacredness of nature. The primordial Mother-Goddess, also known to anthropologists as the Great Earth Mother or Earth Mother Goddess, was loving, protecting, and inviting, but she was also fierce, destructive, and terrifying.  Humanity owed her everything.   But it is also an indication that we are part of nature, of the non-human whole. Within the pagan view of the sacred, nature was understood as the source of bounty but also of the devastatingly destructive, and demanded total reverence. Pagan myths remind us that from the moment of birth human existence is a struggle with the begetter of life - the life-giver and life-taker, the regenerator all-in-one, and that hope resides in aligning human life with this process.

3. TRANSCENDENCE

Buddhism teaches the idea that unconditioned hope is  rooted in the transcendence of the ‘illusions’ generated by physical and emotional craving. Hope resides most certainly in our capacity to transcend the perpetual cycle of suffering. The Buddha argued that there is a reliable way to release humanity from suffering, protect other beings, mitigate harm, and build a better world. He claimed there was a ‘threefold’ path to overcome suffering based on a realistic and tangible form of hope.  These ideals also have certain parallels in Greek philosophy, especially as taught by the Stoics, and it is possible that both hope and fear are equally dangerous because they irrationally bind us to external circumstance over which we have little or no control, and as result are both primary sources of anxiety.

4. HEAVEN

Religious faith is historically one of the surest foundations of hope. The Monotheistic religions teach that  it is necessary to believe  that when misfortune strikes  it is through  moral failing. It is because we have transgressed and God  has punished  us. But Christianity is unique amongst world religions in stating that along with faith and charity (or love), hope is one of the three theological virtues.  The realisation of all our hopes, the ultimate goal of securing of eternal life, lie in God’s hands alone. In practice, this often means stealing oneself for a lifetime of sacrifice, the model for which in the Christian  religion is Jesus Christ. In being crucified, Christ showed his immeasurable love through  dying on the cross, thereby sending a message of transhistorical and enduring hope. Both Christianity and Islam guarantee eternal life in heaven to the faithful, making the hereafter the ultimate goal, and insuring the faithful’s life against fearand disillusionment. While the pagan Greeks used the term elpis - ‘hope’ - to refer to a positive attitude to an open-ended future, Christian belief in the Resurrection of Christ transformed hope into something far more powerful: the eschatological hope in Christ’s Second Coming.

5. LOVE

Love of another person can be described as our willingness to prioritize another’s well-being or happiness above our own.  Neurophysiologists describe love as a neurochemical state of being that has probably existed since humans became human, and as such, feelings about love, involving attachment, attraction, and the sex drive, remain more or less the same through time and place.  Love can be   fleeting or involve long term commitment.  Psychologists have classified love according to four kinds, each of which involve hope: attachment or protective love, compassionate love, companionate love, and romantic love. But is love a choice or biologically or culturally programmed?

6. WAR

Although nowadays we prefer to deny it, war is a powerful vehicle for hope, especially when it is considered a righteous way to remove an obstacle.  War is often the result of the clash not only of power groups but of different values, of different conceptions of hope.  It is often said that from the rubble of death and destruction, hope is born. Historically, religious differences often merged with the violent struggle over power. Both sides believe in the justice of their cause and are willing to die for it.  Both sides see violent struggle as a means of achieving deeply hope-infused goals.  The current conflict in Israel/Gaza is rooted in opposing visions of hope.    

7. THE MARKET

In the modern period it has been assumed that the market was naturally self-governing, and that economic intervention was generally unnecessary and usually unproductive. Within this system, hope becomes intimately linked to voluntary exchange and private property.  Following Adam Smith, the great majority of economists believe the market economy works most efficiently when left to regulate itself., and the economic orthodoxy of neoliberalism assumes that central authority and government planning stood in the way of the market economy. But as Karl Marx warned, free markets  can easily be manipulated,   and that is why he advocated  that the state should take away all private ownership of the means of production. As a result, two radically different visions of economically-rooted hope emerged: the socialist and the capitalist.

8.   SCIENCE

The character and goals of our hope have been transformed by the rational, mathematical, and experimental principles of science and scientific discovery. In the seventeenth century in Europe the Scientific Revolution evolved out of the worldliness and secularism of the Renaissance., and hope grounded in super-naturalism was supplanted by hope founded on naturalism. Mysticism and faith were replaced by hope in reason and appeal to the senses. The scientific method involves systematic observation, measurement, experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses. Applying objective and rational thought to all aspects of life, the methods of the natural sciences hugely increased human understanding of the world. Reason and empirical research became primary sources of hope, challenging those previously enshrined within traditional religious faiths.  Evolutionary theory transformed our understanding of humanity’s relationship to other living organisms and to the material world in general, and became a powerful a new source of hope by offering a key to the mystery of life. But evolution could also be perceived as a profound threat to traditional belief systems, to the foundations of the meaningful life.

 9. FREEDOM  

The struggle for freedom in the modern age has been fired by hope-driven struggle against injustice. Traditional ideals of duty and sacrifice have been replaced in the West by the pursuit of happiness and the desire to challenge oppressive authority. Humanity is no longer judged to be born in sin, but  instead is compared to a tabula rasa that is free to self-create. In the eighteenth century in Europe, the idea of universal progress, of confidence in human potential through the application of reason, became a dominant value when moral and political philosophy began to see freedom as a universal right. The influence of the French Revolution is especially strong in relation to the development of modern ideas of hope, binding it closely to the rights of citizens and the power of the nation-state. It created a new language of hope based on institutions following the secular values of natural rights, democracy, and republicanism, which during the next two centuries would help direct what kinds of hope was most valued.  Yet the evocations of individual and collective patriotic hope jostled with the revolutionaries’ preoccupations with the very different hopes of the counter-revolutionaries. 

10. SOCIAL EQUALITY

Historically, all societies have been founded on hierarchies of power that are inherently unequal. and oppressive. Although women account for half the human population, for most of history and throughout the world they have been treated as inferior to men and refused a role in business and political life. Slavery, required and condoned by agricultural and then industial societies condemned millions to servitude. The empowerment of women and racial minorities in modern times has been the direct result of the ideas of the Enlightenment, which stressed the universal right of equality for all, and was also bolstered by the growing economic power and independence created as a consequence of the Industrial Revolution.

11. UTOPIA

Utopia means ‘no place’,  and the term dates from the seventeenth century. But the dream of a more perfect society which  the term came to embody has fired many hopes across all of human history.  We explore how modern dreams of collective hope have been embodied in radical political movements, and why they have always ended up causing terrible suffering.  In 1917, visions of hope drove millions towards the realisation of a socialist utopia in Russia, towards what they believed was a society that the people themselves in control. Communism embodies hope in its most directly modern political form, wedding it to belief in scientific and historical inevitability. People often continued to invest their hope in utopian social and political agendas despite their obvious failure in the past. History shows that utopianism always fail disastrously to bring about the avowed goals, and instead leads to civil war, totalitarianism, reigns of terror, show trials, concentration camps, mass starvation, and the violent death of millions.   

12.  NATIONALISM

While one of the most fundamental and perennial hopes of humanity is for a secure existence for oneself and one’s loved ones, people have diverged greatly in ascertaining how to achieve such security. In modern times, security has been sought in broadly two ways: collectivistically and individualistically. Love of one’s nation can go far beyond sentimental patriotism, and in the modern age authoritarian nationalism in the contemporary guise of ‘popularism’ is one of the most significant and divisive sources of hope. . Hitler persuaded his supporters that he was the sole embodiment of true hope for Germany,  perverting the religious vision of the Chosen People and transforming it into the German Volks’ exceptional mission in the world by casting himself as the only solution to a crisis. A Nazi  election poster from 1932 declared: “Last Hope – Hitler!” 

13. TECHNOLOGY

In the modern age people’s hopes have been commonly linked to faith in technological innovation which bring realizable solutions to the ever-changing problems faced by society.  As the website to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development declares: “Science and technology bring hope in times of crisis”.  The Guardian headlined an article from 2013: “Technology is our planet’s last best hope.” Technology has the capacity to reduce the burden of labour and bring humanity closer together. Social media and communication technology using the internet  have hugely contributed to the freer distribution of opportunities and knowledge. As social movements like Black Lives Matter and #MeToo demonstrate, to communicate online can be an unprecedented democratizing force, a channel for hope which disseminates new perspectives, draws attention to ignored problems, and allows for organization in the ‘off-line’ world to solve them. But the Internet is also where different meanings of hope clash.

14.  HEALTH

The desire to protect one’s own, one’s loved ones, and one’s society’s health is a a powerful goal.  Modern medical science has contributed to the increased collective hopefulness of humanity, and has reached such heights of confidence that the perennial dream of human immortality  is being brought realm of possibility.  It is estimated that in the age of Shakespeare 150 out of every 1,000 new-born children died during their first year, and a third of all children were deceased before they reached fifteen. In the twentieth century there was a huge reduction in infant mortality, and in England today, only five out of 1,000 babies die during their first year, and seven out of 1,0000 before the age fifteen. Thanks to the success of medical science we have found ways to prevent deaths from such former infant killers as diphtheria, measles and smallpox, general improvements in hygiene during operations, and the discovery of anaesthetics and antibiotics. One of the most important sources of disease and death is pathogens and parasites, and we fought Covid 19 with advanced medical technologies based on the principle of the vaccine first developed in 1796.. 

15, YOUTH

A recent survey of academics working in diverse disciplines found that the single most frequently cited source of hope for the future is young people.  ‘Generation Z’ - those born from the mid-to-late 1990s to the early 2010s – are statistically more likely to be hopeful than ‘Generation Alpha’ and ‘Millennials,’ and are much more hopeful than the ‘Baby Boomer’ generation. Young people are reinventing activism. The potential of younger generations to take on the world’s huge challenges equipped with new ideas, and to be unintimidated by the failures of the hopes of the past, is exemplified by the Swedish activist Greta Thunberg.

NOTES

I highly recommend this website: https://www.existentialhope.com