Yet despite these objections raised the popular world-view of our time we seem drawn to hope. We see it everywhere. The most obvious place is in the stories we tell ourselves. Most popular movies are stories of hope fulfilled as are many books. Our advertising uses a very short term version of hope. And our conversations are dominated by it. Hope permeates our culture.
Many of the great stories follow the pattern of hope. They start with some problem in the world, or the main character. The world is not as it aught to be, or the character is in some crisis. The rest of the story is then about how the world is put to rights or the main character overcoming. This is often achieved through great trial and mighty feats on the part of the main characters. Then, at the end of the tail, they live happily ever after, the bad guys overcome and the good guys living in peace love and harmony.
These are fundamentally stories of hope fulfilled. At the start everyone admits that the world is not as it aught to be and hopes it will get better. The story is then about how it is made better through some or other course of action. The story ends with everything as it aught to be, or better.
Thus most of the stories we tell ourselves are stories of hope.
Most advertisements also follow this pattern, but on a smaller time scale, and to manipulate.
The advert starts by pointing out or otherwise convincing you of some deficiency in your life. Your life is not as it aught to be, or it could be so much better. Perhaps your cooking is inefficient or perhaps you have not experienced enough of the world. The advert then promises that this problem could be solved, it offers hope. The means to overcome this problem is by buying their product or using their service.
Adverts offer hope and propose that their product is the action that will achieve it.
Our conversations too are riddled with hope. It is a mailing how often we hear or say “Our country would be all right if only we could educate everyone” or “that would be so much better if they could just get along” or “I’ll be happy if I could just get my hands on that perfect bar of chocolate!”
All the ingredients for hope are here: “it would be better if…” We imply that it is not good enough , hope it will get better, and propose a course of action to achieve our hope, all in one statement.
Our conversations use hope all the time.
So again, I will reiterate: no matter what we say about hope and it’s usefulness we have many vague hopes, some grand “the would could be saved if…”, some small “I just have to get to lunch and I’ll be OK.” It seems that this way of thinking is firmly engrained in us. We readily admit that the world is not as it aught to be, long for it to be better, and propose actions 1 2 to get it there.
However these hopes are often vague. We hope the world will get “better” but never really discuss what “better” means. I suppose that is inevitable because we so seldom articulate what is wrong.
We imply what is wrong and what is “better” through what we propose to do. As a simplified example if the means is education then the problem could be lack of education or capability. The goal is everyone being educated or having the means to support themselves. Of course most people who propose education have bigger views: The problem is discord and intolerance in society. Education would help people see the value in cooperation and the value in differing views and so help create a society where people live in harmony with due respect for each other. They have a high estimation of the power of education indeed!
So our society and culture are permeate by many varying expressions of hope and many proposed solutions. Many of them vague, an odd feeling that something is wrong or someone should do something, some of them are concrete but wrong, he is evil and I must kill him, and some of them unattainable, world piece though smiling. But all are expressions of hope.
It seems that hope is foundational to how we understand the world. The hope we have shows what we believe about how the world is and works. Thus thinking clearly about it can lead us to truth, as well as comfort.