Beyond Hope Response 1

Rebecca Tulis

 Many of us view hope as a necessary part of our lives for it not only pushes ourselves to grow, it allows us to view the world optimistically in a way that can promote change. Derrick Jensen, however, views hope as a distraction from succeeding in our tasks. Jensen states, “Hope is what keeps us chained to the system, the conglomerate of people and ideas and ideals that is causing the destruction of the Earth.” What he means is that we have a lot of hope, yet we don’t do anything about it to make that hope real.

It is hard to envision my life without hope. I see myself not being able to accomplish what I want. Hope is what keeps me going, it gives me a reason to make changes. Nevertheless, Jensen would say, hoping isn’t action and action is the only way to get things done. In the end of his article, Jensen stated, “When you give up on hope, you turn away from fear,” meaning when you are longing for change, one may not have the utmost confidence in their endeavor therefore do little to make that change happen. Looking Beyond hope is a way to forget about all the ifs and ands. No hope causes action and action defeats all our worries and hesitations.

My work and my beliefs concerning the environment could partake in a drastic change if I were to give up on hope. Nothing would affect myself, it is just me and my ideas. Jensen said that by giving up on hope, one dies but that may be good for  he or she is impervious to other people. In the lecture, we talked a lot about how we could think of 10 stores in our mall but we couldn’t name 10 species of plants in our area. The fact of the matter is, we know we need to make more of an effort to help the environment but questions like; Name a clear cut forest may not make sense to us because while we want there to be improvements, we are doing little to learn about our environment and make a difference.