Is Hope a Dope?
A conversation with an old friend when you can converse off-guard, being (the weirdest version of) yourself, makes for a decent time. During the conversation, we started talking about hope. Though I am not very good at remembering movie dialogues, this one from Justice League(2017) has somehow made an imprint :
“Darkness the truest darkness is not the absence of light. It is the conviction that the light will never return. But the light always returns, to show us things familiar. Our darkness was deep and seemed to swallow all hope. But these heroes were here the whole time, to remind us that hope is real, that you can see it. All you have to do is look, up in the sky.”
To which there was a rebuttal from Shawshank Redemption — “Hope is a dangerous thing my friend, it can kill a man”.
My first major introduction to the concept of hope was with Senator(then) Obama’s “The Audacity of Hope”. The ideals served as the baseline for his successful presidential campaign. The title was derived from one of his pastor’s sermon, which goes like “with her clothes in rags, her body scarred and bruised and bleeding, her harp all but destroyed and with only one string left, she had the audacity to make music and praise God … To take the one string you have left and to have the audacity to hope… that’s the real word God will have us hear from this passage and from Watt’s painting.”
The two commonalities, if you can spot between the sermon and the dialogue, is that they both are a) way too poetic and b) promises from Superheroes. Is hope yet another concept in the hands of powerful which is served on a platter amongst the masses to achieve the desired — election victory, propagating religious beliefs, selling movie and books? Remember “Achhe Din” in 2014 national elections?
At a personal level, most of us have hopes and dreams for a better future. But what is a better future? Better future is a never-ending fallacy. If your physiological needs are met, you strive for safety, then to belongingness and love, forward to esteem and self-actualisation as mentioned in Maslow’s hierarchy, and there is no end to self-actualisation.
What if we are looking for a future that we can never live up to our expectations? Hope, in that case, gets in the middle of living a more satisfying present. Hope links one’s happiness to unrealistic visions of a perfect future.
What we all forget is that
1. We will all be dead — impermanence
2. There will be sufferings and adverse situations — challenges
3. We are insignificant in the grand scheme of things — egolessness.
Friedrich Nietzsche puts it best, he wants people to embrace the fact that we all will die one day, and that we are insignificant in the grand scheme of things. Once, we are at terms with it, we can go about focusing on the amazingness of all that is in front of us now, rather than concerning ourselves with hope. In Ecce Homo he writes “My formula for greatness in human beings is Amor Fati, that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward. Not only bear what is necessary, still less conceal it and love it.”
He further adds, just like any other kind of belief, for hope to be “good,” something else must be seen as “bad.” A hopeful person, after all, is essentially saying, “I’m unhappy with how things are now and I hope they change.” So while it might feel like hope gives things more meaning, it is really just creating more unhappiness and conflict. Nietzsche further advocates looking beyond good or evil espoused by any belief system.
Immanuel Kant stated, “Act that you use humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means”. One must stop behaving in transactional ways, don’t be kind to your partner in hope of return for favours. Instead, be kind, because it is a good thing to do. Similarly, decide not to steal, because it is a bad thing to do.
The common denominator for Kant and Nietzsche’s philosophy boils down not to do things in hope of favourable outcome. Every act should be an end, unto itself, without expectation of receiving something in return. It suggests one to transforming from being an adolescent to an adult. An adolescent might not steal because of the fear of getting caught, but an adult does not steal, because it is bad to do so. An adult also understands that few things might be painful and uncomfortable, but they are the right thing.
In the Tibetan language, the word for hope is Rewa, while fear translates as dopka. The word re-dok refers to the combination of hope and fear, a feeling whose duality captures our perpetual dissatisfaction with ourselves. In re-dok, we are caught between hoping that we will achieve greater things and the fear of how our failure to do so might reflect on us.
Think of the last time, you were disappointed with yourself — failure at work, crumbling of a relationship, problem in the family. What was the root of feelings of dissatisfaction, embarrassment, or shame? Was it not, that you hoped you could be someone else who was good at it?
By questioning our hopes and fears, we can set ourselves free from dissatisfaction and disappointment. Questioning our own hopes and fears, make them look insignificant and set us free. If we accept that impermanence, suffering or adversity, and our egolessness or insignificance are the pillars of existence we can live a more fulfilling life.
While we rely on hope to pass through the rough patches of our life — “this too shall pass”. The truth being hope causes more anxiety and depression to begin with. For instance, one works to earn more comfort in his life, but the fact is while comfort initially makes us happier, it also makes us more sensitive to the smaller problems in life — those first world problems.
If we accept that life can be difficult and adverse situations will arise, and we rise to these challenges, we will be more content. Being brave is about looking into the eyes of the problems and acting, instead of doping on hope, hope might be another fool’s gold.