The Need for Hope: Are we All Just Doomed?

Looking on rabble.ca, I found one of the bleakest and most despairing columns I have ever come across. Written by an American who seems to be having a really bad day, he basically says Bush will continue to do damage until early 2009, the Democrats will not be any better if they get one of their own elected as president in 2008, most Americans will continue to work harder for less and won’t seriously question it, freedoms will continue to be eroded, then after oil production peaks and supplies run low, we will face the double-whammy of economic collapse and environmental catastrophe. And so on….

All these things are real, or real dangers anyway. But piling them on like this is no way to resist the “inevitability” of such a feared future. When fears become that overwhelming, people are demobilized. Actually, speaking of inevitability, this guy says “of course this will happen”, and “of course that will happen”.

We can’t just paint the future in dark colours, nor in rosy colours. Without fear of what might happen, people won’t change their lives. Without hope of what they might be able to achieve, they won’t either. They’ll just ignore the warnings and hope they don’t come true. And who could blame them, really.

I wrote something recently in which a character cries out “We need hope! It’s the only hope we’ve got!”. Although it sounds facetious, there’s still some truth there, isn’t there?