Some musings on "hope" [View All]

[PurityOfEssence]

Yes, he may very well wind up being our standard-bearer, and if so, it would be best if support for him can also be kindled with rationality and other emotions than just hope.

Some of the connotations of this word aren't the greatest, and they'll rustle about and echo the more we have the word drummed into our heads like the unstoppable emotional panacae that it isn't.

For one thing, there's something very wistful about the word: it's yearning or projecting for some external force to grant one one's desires. It's like praying. It's a wish. It's a dream. It's essentially passive: desiring something that will somehow come to pass.

There's a strong flavor of willing submission to greater forces that can grant us something if we're just good enough, and this dovetails quite well with the religious flavor of the movement and the actual religion that's continually being used.

It plays to our desires for an orderly and good world, but there's an odd tinge of powerlessness to it. It's only active in the sense that it can spark action, but it's not the action that rings through the repetition, it's the longing for it. There's something rather cloying about all that, and the harsh rebukes to dissent that come from those lost in the bliss show the danger of an emotional bender, no matter how noble the cause.

Life and politics can be awfully prosaic and pedestrian, and poetic dancing can wear thin in the face of that.

It's a condiment or a spice, not a main course.

Just a thought or two...