Hope as Praxis
Looking at the idea of hope as something we consciously practice and cultivate, not just a passive feeling. It’s a necessary practice in the face of enormous chaos and crisis.
Hope as Praxis
Hope is not prognostication. It is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart; it transcends the world that is immediately experienced, and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously hea
... See moreRebecca Solnit • Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities
Often, hope works best alongside tools for proactively tackling future challenges. If our work becomes a catalysing force for people to imagine things they would not have been able to imagine otherwise and act upon that imagination, then that’s powerful, and for me, this is a slow form of critical activism.
Medium • Calling for a More-Than-Human Politics
hope is the byproduct of action, not a prerequisite for it, says Sarah Ray, who leads the environmental studies program at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California. Action leads to results, which fosters hope, creating a virtuous cycle.
Maddy Lauria • Hope is not passive: How activism keeps optimism alive
This is how we should approach life’s hardships, finding possibility where we can: the prospect of flourishing despite infirmity, of finding one’s way through loneliness, failure, grief, confronting the injustice and absurdity of the world. The question is not whether we should hope, but what we should hope for.
Kieran Setiya • What’s the Use of Hope?
Thus it is that the world often seems divided between false hope and gratuitous despair. Despair demands less of us, it’s more predictable, and in a sad way safer. Authentic hope requires clarity—seeing the troubles in this world—and imagination, seeing what might lie beyond these situations that are perhaps not inevitable and immutable.
Rebecca Solnit • Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities
Unlike cynicism, hopefulness is hard-earned, makes demands upon us, and can often feel like the most indefensible and lonely place on Earth. Hopefulness is not a neutral position either. It is adversarial. It is the warrior emotion that can lay waste to cynicism. Each redemptive or loving act, as small as you like, Valerio, such as reading to your ... See more
Nick Cave • Following the Last Few Years I’m Feeling Empty and More Cynical Than Ever. I’m Losing Faith in Other People, and I’m Scared to Pass These Feelings to My Little Son. Do You Still Believe in Us (Human Beings)?
Hope locates itself in the premises that we don’t know what will happen and that in the spaciousness of uncertainty is room to act. When you recognize uncertainty, you recognize that you may be able to influence the outcomes—you alone or you in concert with a few dozen or several million others. Hope is an embrace of the unknown and the unknowable,
... See moreRebecca Solnit • Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities
I want to defend and buoy hope – it’s a fragile, quirky thing, but it has the power to help us act in the face of finitude
Hope is vitalising. When it pulses, we aspire toward better futures and conspire with what we have and have been. In its absence, we often grow listless, even court despair. I thus want to defend hope, underscore what we gain i... See more
Hope is vitalising. When it pulses, we aspire toward better futures and conspire with what we have and have been. In its absence, we often grow listless, even court despair. I thus want to defend hope, underscore what we gain i... See more
John Lysaker • Our days are both rough and slippery. Hope brings traction | Psyche Ideas
But hope is not what most of us think it is. It’s not a warm, fuzzy emotion that fills us with a sense of possibility. Hope is a way of thinking—a cognitive process. Yes, emotions play a role, but hope is made up of what researcher C. R. Snyder called a “trilogy of goals, pathways, and agency.”