Hope and Hopelessness.

[cali]

Given a choice, I'll take hope. Clliched as it may be, you can't achieve much without it. Hopelessness impedes one from acting. Hope can act as an impetus to action.

If it's all over, if America is dead, if truth is dead, if Obama is better than bush only because of style, then why do anything? Why vote or work on campaigns if dems are simply another corrupt, right wing party? Why write letters or make phone calls? Why be involved in any way if it's all so completely hopeless?

[WillParkinson]

1. Because Hope will always exist...

Hope that you might one day find someone who will do what they say. Hope that a politician (ANY politician) will be true to their words. Hope that one day your family might be considered a true family, and not just two guys or two women.

You're right. It's better to Hope, but Hope after so many disappointments is hard to keep sight of.

[cali]

4. where I live, gay and lesbian families are considered just that- families

where I live, my politicians live up to their words and promises, more often than not. That may well have some influence on how I think about things.

[BeFree]

12. Where you live

Is just a little nook of America. Kind of an alternate world. In the larger world there is so much hate that all we can do is hope the hate somehow dies off. In fact, the hate is so large that most people in this country support the Afghanistan war because it gives them an outlet for their hate.

The support for the billions of make war dollars in this country is more evidence of the hate for everybody different.

[arcadian]

2. Is this a Pepsi commercial?

[cali]

3. yes, pepsi now owns the word hope. they bought it from Obama.

[Vickers]

5. Well now you're just being a cheerleader.

:P

Seriously though, some of the doom-and-gloom posts around here recently seem almost...orchestrated.

[cali]

6. doom and gloom is a fascinating and time honored mentality that actually

has changed very little through the ages. I don't regret having formally studied it.

[Odin2005]

7. I have to stay hopeful simply to stay sane.

Once I start feeling hopeless it's a slippery slope to falling back into mind-numbing, self-hating Depression. If that makes me a fool in denial in the minds of the Naderites I don't really give a damn.

[cali]

8. I actually think Vickers is right. It's more about an infatuation with

non-religious apocalyptic thinking, and wanting the whole construct of society to crash and burn in order to usher in a gloriously transformed new age.

[PufPuf23]

9. I thought you hated stupid? You dish disdain for stupid

at DU daily.

Look at the idiotic statement you just posted.

One may strongly support POTUS Obama and still be disappointed and even astonished in any of a number of current directions for valid reasons. Individuals reasons are not as simple as not getting a pony.

[cali]

15. actuallyl, dear, it's you that's exhibiting, well, faulty critical thinking skills

an inabiltiy to read for comprehension, and a pathetically high quotient of teh stupid.

I said nothing about being or not being disappointed, genius. I hate to break this to you, but no, disappoint is not synonymous with hopeless. Nor did I bring up ponies. I spoke to something that's clearly way over your wee head- simple as it is. how pathetic.

[PufPuf23]

16. My response was specifically to your post #8

Your posts are ubiquitous at DU.

I probably agree with your posts 80% on content.

You daily insult posters that even agree with you.

This is not helpful at DU nor within the Democratic Party nor in our society nor world.

Your own thoughts are weakened by this approach. Your voice would be stronger and more productive sans snark and insult.

I basically agree with your OP. We are on the same side.

The thread was enjoyable to me because of the mythology posts.

I do not come to DU to argue in general nor did I imply that disappoint is a synonym for hopeless.

Project much?

[cali]

17. you insulted me

I hit back. that much is clearly illustrated in this thread. Take your own advice. And please do explain what was stupid about post 8. Having spent two years of my life studying millenarianism and related phenomenon, in order to get a MA in the field, I'd love to know what was so stupid about it from your surely educated pov.

[blindpig]

10. Concerning Hope

Here's a little something penned by a friend of mine 15 months ago.

The Audacity Of Hope

Yea, the phrase is trivial and empty and meaningless, but operating under the idea that even the trivial and empty means something in the present society, let's take a quick peek. What the hell is "Hope™"? Let's crawl into the way-back machine and go way way back... before the spiritual rebirth of Hope™ in the modern era, before the early Catholic resurrection ("Faith, Hope, and Charity") and go all the way back to the Greeks, with whom almost everything starts (and not just the good "everything", either). What, dear Greeks, is Hope™?

Well, according to Greek myth, Hope™ was the greatest of the evils contained in Pandora's Box. When Pandora loosed these evils upon the world, Zeus suddenly had a change of heart. He decided, charitably, that Hope™, the most powerful of all the evils, could be kept from humanity. At his instigation, Pandora slammed shut the lid of the box when all but Hope™ had escaped.

Only Hope was left within her unbreakable house,
she remained under the lip of the jar, and did not
fly away. Before , Pandora replaced the
lid of the jar. This was the will of aegis-bearing
Zeus the Cloudgatherer.
Hesiod

Alas, without Hope™, humanity was immediately reduced to despair and rebellion in the face of the other evils. Reluctantly, Zeus bid Pandora to return to the box and release Hope™. And as this worst of plagues was loosed upon the earth, it was accompanied by universal jubilation and relief... because it made the other evils tolerable through the possibility that their reign might be ended, not by the actions of humans themselves, but by the intervention of others, or the action of the fates themselves. Hope™ was the final excuse, worthy of the Gods themselves, for failing to act in one's own behalf.

Hope. Pandora brought the jar with the evils and opened it. It was the gods' gift to man, on the outside a beautiful, enticing gift, called the "lucky jar." Then all the evils, those lively, winged beings, flew out of it. Since that time, they roam around and do harm to men by day and night. One single evil had not yet slipped out of the jar. As Zeus had wished, Pandora slammed the top down and it remained inside. So now man has the lucky jar in his house forever and thinks the world of the treasure. It is at his service; he reaches for it when he fancies it. For he does not know that that jar which Pandora brought was the jar of evils, and he takes the remaining evil for the greatest worldly good--it is hope, for Zeus did not want man to throw his life away, no matter how much the other evils might torment him, but rather to go on letting himself be tormented anew. To that end, he gives man hope. In truth, it is the most evil of evils because it prolongs man's torment.
Friedrich Nietzsche

It's just a footnote, but interesting, no?

BTW, the Audacity of Hope™ is an oxymoron on the face of it, according to the Greeks. Ain't no "audacity" in it. It is the stuff of denial and cowardice - two other escapees from the box.

Just sayin'...

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

11. Politics and, even more so, politicians are highly overrated as an agent of change.

Obama is doing what I expected a centrist politician to do. Not much more than tinker with a corrupt system that is built on a crumbling structure of exploitation of those most vulnerable. He's taking the middle ground in "hope" of making some slight changes to the system to make it slightly less corrupt while leaving it intact and in the hands of the powerful.

It is in the nature of those who hold power, politicians, CEO's, bosses of any kind, to maintain power as their first priority. To do so, they inevitably have to sacrifice the principles they espoused and, also inevitably, people.

In order to "save" the economy he is propping up the very system that is bringing it's downfall. He is taking the path of easing he pain (hopefully) in the short term while by sacrificing the future well being of people in the long term - somebody is going to have to pay the bills and it isn't going to be the politicians and bankers.

In order to save face, he is continuing 2 lost wars at the sacrifice of lives, real lives, of real people.

In order to mollify the right he is condemning the "detainees" to years more of imprisonment and abuse by retaining military tribunals.

The list goes on.

As for me, I prefer direct action for "change" that doesn't involve the self interest of politicians.

http://www.kiva.org

[Javaman]

13. Pandora's box

After Prometheus' theft of the secret of fire, Zeus ordered Hephaestus to create the woman Pandora as part of the punishment for mankind. Pandora was given many seductive gifts from Aphrodite, Hermes, Hera, Charites, and Horae (according to Works and Days). For fear of additional reprisals, Prometheus warned his brother Epimetheus not to accept any gifts from Zeus, but Epimetheus did not listen, and married Pandora. Pandora had been given a large jar and instruction by Zeus to keep it closed, but she had also been given the gift of curiosity, and ultimately opened it. When she opened it, all of the evils, ills, diseases, and burdensome labor that mankind had not known previously, escaped from the jar, but it is said, that at the very bottom of her box, there lay hope.<7>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandora's_box

[H2O Man]

14. A number of

philosophers and theologians have wrote about the difference between being hopeful and optimistic. My favorites, of course, are Fromm and King. They agree that being hopeful often involves an attitude that one holds despite the sum total of the circumstances at hand, while optimism is an attitude that reflects the circumstances.

I tend to be optimistic, although I will admit to days of being merely hopeful.