Response #1: Hope

Derek Jensen holds an interesting opinion that hope is a deterrent of action. Though there is some truth in the sentiment it is still just an opinion. He maintains that hope is an excuse for laziness and inaction. It causes people to leave things to chance or to 'God'. However there is another side to hope (the more common side in my opinion) that he has ignored. Hope is for many people a driving force that enables them to perform great deeds. Without hope most people would give up without a fight. They would reserve themselves to the phrase Jensen used: 'We're fucked'. That is a phrased used by someone who has lost all hope and has given up.
   It is pessimism and guilt masquerading as hope that Jensen sees. This is when people who believe the challenge is too great sit back, and 'hope' that by some stroke of luck we will survive. These people have been misled, they believe there is nothing we can do. They need inspiration, with inspiration often comes hope and the confidence that a difference can be made. President Obama's election campaign ran on the same principle words 'Hope' and 'Change' holding the belief that the two go hand in hand. In his victory speech he said this concerning hope and change.

"Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek."

While this at first looks like what Jensen is saying, Obama further says.

"Hope is what led a band of colonists to rise up against an empire; what led the greatest of generations to free a continent and heal a nation; what led young women and young men to sit at lunch counters and brave fire hoses and march through Selma and Montgomery for freedom’s cause. Hope is what led me here today–with a father from Kenya, a mother from Kansas; and a story that could only happen in the United States of America. Hope is the bedrock of this nation; the belief that our destiny will not be written for us, but by us; by all those men and women who are not content to settle for the world as it is; who have courage to remake the world as it should be."

   If we are to do anything about changing the world, Hope is one of our greatest weapons.