Countdown to Christmas
15 - Hope
- Being surrounded by the climate alarmism of green activists or the so-called “migration crisis” that populists like to invoke, one might be tempted to think that political movement can only be fueled by fear or anger. However, liberalism is different. It rests on hope.
- Hope differs from mere optimism in important ways. Because optimism is passive. It is the thought that things will turn out all right. Hope, on the other side, is active. It implies a readiness to pursue an object or state of affairs. Liberals are actively changing society for the better. Progress is not a self-fulfilling prophecy but is actively pursued by members of the Open Society!
- Judith Shklar coined the term Liberalism of Fear. She argues that liberalism should be mainly concerned with preventing cruelty and evil and that “every adult should be able to make as many effective decisions without fear.” I would go further. A Liberalism of Hope does not only prevent the worst; but also moves us away from evil as much as possible.
Reading poetry is like learning to feel with one’s eyes. It is the encapsulation of a sentiment with words. And that is why I have always taken solace and refuge in poetry in the most dire of times.
For the concept of hope, I could have selected a variety of poems; however, I opted for these two (somewhat related) classics as they capture the very essence of hope. Emily Dickinson describes hope as the bird that lives deep inside our human soul—and that will not stop singing no matter what and without asking anything from us in return. Langston Hughes cautiously adds that we can only harm this beautiful creature and break its wings if we deprive ourselves of our capacity to dream. To me, there is no more beautiful metaphor for the liberal aspiration of freedom than this free-roaming bird deep inside us. Hope is not something we need to artificially create. It is always there. We just need to feed it with our dreams!
