Thank you Tobin. Delusional Hope. Yup. My entire life and career have been powered by it. I had an associate, who was dying of AIDS, admonish me over the word hope. ‘You can have faith, he said, but hope implies you are eventually going to accept defeat after some hand wringing”. But the great Jane Goodall said that the end of hope ends us all, for the children will have nothing. I’m sticking with Jane, although Dwayne might have been right.
Lonnie – Thank you for your thoughts on this subject. A number of months ago I wrote a piece specifically about the double-edged implications of Hope (https://thecagedmind.com/darkerhope/). In that essay you’ll read that I agree with both Jane and Dwayne. To have hope be a positive influence, it must contain a glimmer of the possible. From my perspective, much of hope is based on unrealistic wishful thinking, which is ultimately unproductive and can even keep someone from realizing their own potential. Just a thought.
“Rampant idiocy, greed, entitlement, self-righteousness, ignorance, and cruelty.”
Tobin, I have had a bit of time to reflect upon your latest essay. Certainly there is a quotient of dark expressions of the collective and individual persona in evidence. Media makes sure that such stories are top of mind for everyone that is informed. You’d agree with me, those are an certain aspect of the range of conditions of soul which we humans entertain within us. An entirely opposite set of emotional potential are also characteristic of our species.
I believe that we run the risk of attempting to quantify, to decide which of our potentials (good / evil) we feel to be ascendant in our species. Metrification based upon our feelings makes no sense. I think we best resist that temptation.
Also, one more caveat came to mind. The future is not predestined by any deity, or the inevitable consequence of the cause and effect chain initiated at the big bang. In retrospect though it may seem to be a logical unfolding, that simply cannot be the case.
May I suggest that there are unforeseeable factors that will influence, perhaps greatly, the prospective survival of human and other life forms. What we label nature, also has a role to play in the drama. It is reasonable to believe a point is coming that climate and weather events are so severe, that globally, enough are willing to rise up against any leader, self-appointed or elected who denies that we have precipitated such events…
Also there is a wildness, an unexpected eruption of freedom that is potential within our species. At present we surely need the right kind of risk-taking leader to step-up at the propitious time, in the right place. Will the place be America? I doubt it.
You know as well as I that words are dynamic, change inducing factors. No doubt you will continue to write. I have mentioned to others that I no longer seek to be happy. I do seek to have a meaningful life. That makes more sense than to increase pleasure.
I will conclude with what Camus writes about Sisyphus, the absurd hero:
His fate belongs to him. His rock is his thing. Likewise, the absurd man, when he contemplates his torment, silences all the idols. In the universe suddenly restored to its silence, the myriad wondering little voices of the earth rise up. Unconscious, secret calls, invitations from all the faces, they are the necessary reverse and price of victory. There is no sun without shadow, and it is essential to know the night…
Sisyphus returning toward his rock, in that slight pivoting he contemplates that series of unrelated actions which becomes his fate, created by him, combined under his memory’s eye and soon sealed by his death. Thus, convinced of the wholly human origin of all that is human, a blind man eager to see who knows that the night has no end, he is still on the go. The rock is still rolling.
I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one’s burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.
Jerry – As always, your words are more than wonderful to read. There are indeed unforeseeable factors in all of life. Who knew we would find ourselves lead by an infantile moron only a few years after the astute and brilliant leadership of Barack Obama. And of course, this too shall pass and our nation will move onto some other cultural ethos. Most likely something else that will rise from the unexpected.
As for Sisyphus, I will add an old poem of mine that I know you have read before. I find a simpatico with Mr. Camus in this piece.
Assumption
Metaphor of futility,
yet Sisyphus is no myth.
Pushing, straining
against life’s weight,
inch by inch, up and up,
towards the inevitable.
Punishment for being born,
for thinking, for understanding.
Repeat, repeat again.
“Poor man,” say some.
Others laugh,
scoffing at his plight.
Me, I envy him,
for he understands
the gravel beneath his feet.
Dawn lights his way,
as herons call from above.
Shadows appear, then vanish.
Still, his calloused hands grip
the ancient, unyielding stone.
When twilight’s edge beckons,
he feels the moonlight
caress his weary back.
Generations pass.
This resolute man, his fate
sealed by narrow-minded gods,
accepts the sentence of his task.
He may wear the mask of anguish
but those who mock his efforts
cannot know the peace within.
The path alone becomes his goal.
There is no need to reach the top.
Thank you Tobin. Delusional Hope. Yup. My entire life and career have been powered by it. I had an associate, who was dying of AIDS, admonish me over the word hope. ‘You can have faith, he said, but hope implies you are eventually going to accept defeat after some hand wringing”. But the great Jane Goodall said that the end of hope ends us all, for the children will have nothing. I’m sticking with Jane, although Dwayne might have been right.
Thank you for your service.
Lonnie – Thank you for your thoughts on this subject. A number of months ago I wrote a piece specifically about the double-edged implications of Hope (https://thecagedmind.com/darkerhope/). In that essay you’ll read that I agree with both Jane and Dwayne. To have hope be a positive influence, it must contain a glimmer of the possible. From my perspective, much of hope is based on unrealistic wishful thinking, which is ultimately unproductive and can even keep someone from realizing their own potential. Just a thought.
“Rampant idiocy, greed, entitlement, self-righteousness, ignorance, and cruelty.”
Tobin, I have had a bit of time to reflect upon your latest essay. Certainly there is a quotient of dark expressions of the collective and individual persona in evidence. Media makes sure that such stories are top of mind for everyone that is informed. You’d agree with me, those are an certain aspect of the range of conditions of soul which we humans entertain within us. An entirely opposite set of emotional potential are also characteristic of our species.
I believe that we run the risk of attempting to quantify, to decide which of our potentials (good / evil) we feel to be ascendant in our species. Metrification based upon our feelings makes no sense. I think we best resist that temptation.
Also, one more caveat came to mind. The future is not predestined by any deity, or the inevitable consequence of the cause and effect chain initiated at the big bang. In retrospect though it may seem to be a logical unfolding, that simply cannot be the case.
May I suggest that there are unforeseeable factors that will influence, perhaps greatly, the prospective survival of human and other life forms. What we label nature, also has a role to play in the drama. It is reasonable to believe a point is coming that climate and weather events are so severe, that globally, enough are willing to rise up against any leader, self-appointed or elected who denies that we have precipitated such events…
Also there is a wildness, an unexpected eruption of freedom that is potential within our species. At present we surely need the right kind of risk-taking leader to step-up at the propitious time, in the right place. Will the place be America? I doubt it.
You know as well as I that words are dynamic, change inducing factors. No doubt you will continue to write. I have mentioned to others that I no longer seek to be happy. I do seek to have a meaningful life. That makes more sense than to increase pleasure.
I will conclude with what Camus writes about Sisyphus, the absurd hero:
His fate belongs to him. His rock is his thing. Likewise, the absurd man, when he contemplates his torment, silences all the idols. In the universe suddenly restored to its silence, the myriad wondering little voices of the earth rise up. Unconscious, secret calls, invitations from all the faces, they are the necessary reverse and price of victory. There is no sun without shadow, and it is essential to know the night…
Sisyphus returning toward his rock, in that slight pivoting he contemplates that series of unrelated actions which becomes his fate, created by him, combined under his memory’s eye and soon sealed by his death. Thus, convinced of the wholly human origin of all that is human, a blind man eager to see who knows that the night has no end, he is still on the go. The rock is still rolling.
I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one’s burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.
BE WELL !
Jerry – As always, your words are more than wonderful to read. There are indeed unforeseeable factors in all of life. Who knew we would find ourselves lead by an infantile moron only a few years after the astute and brilliant leadership of Barack Obama. And of course, this too shall pass and our nation will move onto some other cultural ethos. Most likely something else that will rise from the unexpected.
As for Sisyphus, I will add an old poem of mine that I know you have read before. I find a simpatico with Mr. Camus in this piece.
Assumption
Metaphor of futility,
yet Sisyphus is no myth.
Pushing, straining
against life’s weight,
inch by inch, up and up,
towards the inevitable.
Punishment for being born,
for thinking, for understanding.
Repeat, repeat again.
“Poor man,” say some.
Others laugh,
scoffing at his plight.
Me, I envy him,
for he understands
the gravel beneath his feet.
Dawn lights his way,
as herons call from above.
Shadows appear, then vanish.
Still, his calloused hands grip
the ancient, unyielding stone.
When twilight’s edge beckons,
he feels the moonlight
caress his weary back.
Generations pass.
This resolute man, his fate
sealed by narrow-minded gods,
accepts the sentence of his task.
He may wear the mask of anguish
but those who mock his efforts
cannot know the peace within.
The path alone becomes his goal.
There is no need to reach the top.