Beyond Hope: Response 1

Daryl Alexsy

Jensen describes in his article both the hopelessness of the state of our environment and the importance of losing the hope that is chaining us to the system that created it. He explains the futility in placing hopes on and beliefs in some higher power that will fix everything and states that hope belonged in Pandora’s box not as a savior against the other curses, but in the same league as them. He thus encourages that we unshackle ourselves from hope and do all that can be done after hope is gone, do the work ourselves.

After hope is gone, Jensen explains, people are then also freed from the ability to be manipulated towards other unseen forces, such as promises or threats. No longer can you be exploited in the same manner as hope or molded any further, and all is left is what you actually think. I found his exploration of hope to make me see a side of what I would have associated with the goodness of optimism as instead a useless and passive defense against the world around us. Assuming an active role in our own lives will I guess only logically be the only route for change.

I also found it interesting that he mentioned the way hope can be as exploitable as fear when taken against the backdrop of our most recent elections. Bush won in 2004 on the wave of fear generated by the war he had begun and garnered many votes from the panic created there from, while Obama campaigned in 2008 with his message of hope. Both campaigns maneuvered through these two emotions that “chase each other’s tails” in order to win voters, but before reading this article I would have never have related the two.