“Hope Springs Eternal…” in the Believing Breast?
“Man is, properly speaking, based upon Hope, he has no other possession but Hope; this world of his is emphatically the Place of Hope.” What, then, was our Professor’s possession? We see him, for the present, quite shut-out from Hope; looking not into the golden orient, but vaguely, all round into a dim copper firmament, pregnant with earthquake and tornado. … Doubt had darkened into Unbelief…
From “The Everlasting No” by Thomas Carlyle, 19th century essayist
Is hopefulness about life important to how you feel and live in the present? If so, and you hold religious or spiritual beliefs, do you consider them necessary to your hopefulness about life?
If you’ve rejected spiritual and religious beliefs, do you feel hopeless about life? Is that OK or hard to live with?
From “The Everlasting No” by Thomas Carlyle, 19th century essayist
Is hopefulness about life important to how you feel and live in the present? If so, and you hold religious or spiritual beliefs, do you consider them necessary to your hopefulness about life?
If you’ve rejected spiritual and religious beliefs, do you feel hopeless about life? Is that OK or hard to live with?
Posted by Paul at 11:17 AM Permalink
23 Comments:
I hope to wake up tomorrow, and if I thought I would not - what would I do with that time? Certainly I would spend that time carefully - even if I decided that the deliciousness of sleep was the right way to go. And that mundane level of hoping I wake up tomorrow readily extends and colors everything.
Ultimately, my visions of integrated, balanced life have made a huge difference in the amount of aggravation I'm willing to tolerate without fuss. I suppose that is a kind of hope, but like in so many discussions, I see it as knowledge and revelation, not as faith.
When I had no spiritual understanding, I still believed in the science that said we are all related through a vast web of molecules and atoms and mystery, and that the value of a turnips life, or a gnat's life, was equal to my own. That hasn't changed, and I've always derived enormous comfort from the sense that even if we mess up the world for human habitation, mother earth will probably cook up some interesting new inhabitants who will like it better than this one. So - is that a form of hope? It sure made/makes human stupidity easier to tolerate.
sometimes being religious firms up that thought. till i get disillusioned, then i lose Hope, along with my religious convictions.
and the cycle goes on and on.
i hope not to lose Hope.
it keeps me hanging on.
life is really not that long, when you've reached a certain age.
i was just thinking, i might have ten years left of me. and then my colleague said, "how do you know, it might be five."
and i laughed away my blues.
Lee, I've noticed the same thing. It's unworkable: finite planet, finite resources and a population now adding to itself by another billion at regular intervals with nobody talking about it, especially in leadership positions.
In addition to one's own life and that of the species, there's the matter of whatever’s going on with being itself. What's the big picture? What is it we're all a part of and where is that headed?
If you are without hope, you stand a chance of overlooking the answers and missing the solutions.
I am not sure my spiritual beliefs drive my hope as much as my hope drives my spiritual beliefs....if that makes any sense.
When you hope, you keep on keeping on. Hope enables you to keep on keeping on.
After the experience I mention in the book under “June Night, this turned around literally overnight. The recovery of energy came with my recovery of hope.
I've never expected *justice* on a personal level, it's simply not evident to me that this has any foundation.
On a grand scale it's easy to feel despair over the increasing degradation of physical conditions. But... this must be the same feelings of a small entity sitting beside a large decaying corpse. They feel their own world in danger and don't see the larger picture, the critters that will batten and thrive on the local destruction.
I see humans and our planet that way. Looks awful when you think of oil and population etc., but then when you imagine the new life forms that Gaia will create to batten on our waste..... well, it will be interesting, even if I (humans) won't be able to see the results.
I live in hope .. so I keep learning and definitely will do more reading (I still have your book to read! .. it will be read)
Look after yourself and have a good week - Hilary
If I've stated it correctly, then could this be viewed as a hopeless outlook as much as a hopeful one?
Crystal - I make that distinction too - between our species messing up versus, as Hayden says, hope on a grand scale...
Hilary - Please feel free to send an email when you read it, I'd really be interested in your take. I wrote Original Faith in a way that uses quite a lot of language from Christianity since that’s my heritage too, but I avoid all doctrinal aspects - both because it's experience and not doctrine that's made a difference in my life, and because I wanted it to be useful to people outside the Christian tradition.
Go well and you too will enjoy the warmer times .. Hilary
Hope is available to us regardless of any context. It's an attitude, a feeling, not an expectation of a particular outcome. It doesn't work too well if you tie it to a scenario.
Therefore we can fight for the survival of the species, just because it's the right thing to do. Whatever happens, it's OK in the end. It's the fight we are here for, not the result.
That's my concept of hope--like a penny on the street, it's there, why not pick it up? Doesn't matter if you can't buy anything with a penny...
Firebird – Hope for life or for being itself isn’t tied to a scenario, as you say, for me either. It’s existential and not something I have or need reasons for.
I have trouble though with the idea of choosing hope vs. despair. Personally, I didn’t experience it that way.
humm, the problem with that statement is that it is based in values, a values-based assumption that *this* earth is the best of all possible earths.
I'd suggest that had our species come along 3 million years ago, we'd have liked it a lot less (and maybe died out more quickly, never having the chance to mess things up!)
But... we evolved during a time that is absolutely perfect for our species, we are able to adapt ourselves to life on most of the earth...instead, like most species, of being rather limited.
That abundance has given us the chance to expand until we've quite soiled our nest, perhaps irretrievably.
I'm guessing that the critters living on sulphur down in the ocean vents think that hellish heat is the best of all possible worlds, and can't understand how we could like our carbon-dioxide/oxygen poisoned one.
I'm making this up as I go along, Paul - but it seems to me that we evolved at a crucial moment in the life of the earth, and this has enabled us to influence (damage) the evolution of the earth itself, to our own detriment.
I figure the earth will go chugging along without us, and the new voices will be saying things like "oooh, boiling oil, delicious!" OK, not oil, because we're eliminating that, but you catch my drift.
More than a few of my buddies think Gaia is herself sentient, our role is something akin to a nervous system, and our antics are now giving her indigestion. This could be a dangerous move for humans. A major Gaia urp is a pretty scary notion.
Our individual lives
The species
Some other species that comes along after we die off
Life or being itself
hope for our individual lives?
- some hope, not an overwhelming amount. depends on whether or not we, as a species, can evolve quickly.
Our spirit, now - that's a different matter, isn't it?
hope for the species?
- same
other life forms after us?
- of this I have little doubt. I'm confident that other life forms will find our debris yummy. This is being worked on consciously, now, by our species. Paul Stamets has made remarkable progress using fungus to clean up the most noxious pollutants. Will we adopt it (and other techniques) widely enough, and in time to preserve this world for our species? That's where big doubt comes in.
hope for life itself?
I have no doubts. But to me, stones have consciousness, so I cast a broad net. So I guess you'd say I trust/have confidence in spirit.
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