Hope Being Prescriptive Not

Unrestricted
The theme of this miniature essay has been suggested by this
excerpt taken from the back jacket of Alain Minc's Le Nouveau
Moyen ge (ditions Gallimard, France, 1993): Hier, nous avions
le droit d'tre fatalistes par optimisme; nous devons dsormais
tre audacieux par pessimisme. The book was a shot across the
bow of an economic and political turmoil that was stirring during
the The Roaring Nineties (Joseph Stiglitz), and continues to
percolate to this day with far more consequences Monsieur Minc
might have conceived of when he wrote his book, brilliantly and
prematurely, in 1993. Minc was right. May we say that had he
then been comprehended, we would not find ourselves in the dire
straits we do now?
While Minc warned us of the impending economic and political
quandaries that would afflict us in the 21 st century, he could never
have imagined the ethical consequences of those difficulties he
foresaw before most of us almost twenty-five years ago. As we
survey our area of operations that is so vast and complicated, we
immediately realize that we have gone over the top in trying to
pull together the myriad complexities of the world's functioning.
We have come too late to the realization that what dilemma that
exists before us, is actually, probably, beyond our competence, and
worse, on the far side of our ability to resolve it. Until now, the
political, economical and social methodologies employed to
confront very many horrible realities, have been inadequate and
antiquated. Reactions to events have often been exaggerated and
detrimentalas if the situation has deliberately been made worse.
We have been seemingly left alone and without the means to
initiate whatever necessary actions which might have initially
defined limitations. We are grasping at straws. What might have
been thought once to be a desire accompanied by expectation of or
belief in fulfilment, has in real time been made to be considered
inferior in quality and value. Are we obligated to lose hope? Can
there be hope without despair? Can there be despair without
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hope?
The Cambridge University mathematician, philosopher, revivalist
of British Empiricism, ethical theorist and winner of the Nobel
Prize for Literature (1952) Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), believed
we could be happy if we made an effort at doing so. He wrote The
Conquest of Happiness to explain his thinking on this matter.
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) was a German philosopher who
rabidly denounced humankind through his philosophical
explications of pessimism. In order to cope with our unpleasant
world, The King of Pessimism suggested that we appreciate what
is beautiful in people and things, help others, and live as frugally
as possiblejust as the ancient Chinese philosophers would have
recommended!
Spandau Ballet, in their Through the Barricades (1986), sang this
line: It's a terrible beauty we've made. That melodic line, sung
so grandly by Tony Hadley, offers an interesting insight for us.
First, it intimates that we are doing something terribly
cockamamiesomething beyond that what should be beneficial for
us. Then, it implies that we are those who have concocted this
difficultymeaning that we could also be the ones who might
change it by reversal, the problem we have caused to exist.
The question, therefore, now remains: How do we undo something
we have created?
Hope springs eternal?

Authored by Anthony St. John

25 January MMXVI
Calenzano, Italy
Twitter: @thewordwarrior

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