Hope is a way of addressing imperfect world
Dear Joe,
It's interesting how you mention hope and optimism in your essay, "The Sucker Bait Called Hope". Strangely enough, I just finished reading an essay about Christopher Lasch by Louis Menand. Menand's essay is called "Christopher Lasch's Quarrel with Liberalism", and it's a very good read. I don't know if you've read Christopher Lasch, but as I have read your writing over the last year, it has struck me that you have a lot in common with him. Like you, Lasch deplored the "we know better" attitude of liberal elites. He also had a lot to say about mindless consumerism and narcissism.
In one of his last books, "The True and Only Heaven", Lasch entered into an extended discussion of liberalism's failures, and specifically sought to invoke the notion of "hope" as opposed to "optimism". For Lasch, hope is "an acceptance of limits, without despair" (Menand), not a blind and stupid hope, not a mug's game, not a gee-whiz optimism in the future, but something far more substantial, far more solid, far more well defined.
Here is Lasch himself on hope:
"The optimistic, progressivist teleology in its specific American incarnation that Lasch challenged holds that the more we change, and the more we have, the better things are bound to become. Lasch's insistence on limits, by contrast, speaks a recognition of human vulnerability and finiteness as well as does his insistence that an ever-expanding culture of productivity must eventually spiral downward into a terrible cultural entropy. For the more we produce, the more we consume; the faster we run, the sooner we will exhaust ourselves and the natural world upon which we depend. How, then, would Lasch urge us to cultivate that upon which we depend? What habits of mind must we construct and cherish in order that limits be acknowledged and a genuine rather than a false and illusory political hope be kept ever fresh?"
So there you go. Something to ponder. I'm sure you'll find something in Lasch to agree with. He was also a big fan of Reinhold Niebuhr, who wrote:
"Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in a lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope."
I'm sure Obama has read this stuff. I know for a fact that he has read Niebuhr, and I'd be very surprised if he had not read Christopher Lasch, though he'd be reluctant to admit it for fear of being called an "elitist". So, I think you're a bit hard on the notion of hope. It's not necessarily sucker bait. It's a posture, a way of addressing this imperfect world, and a way to keep on going, despite overwhelming odds and eight years of of a spoiled fratboy fuckup moron running us into the ditch. I have hope.
By the way, I've purchased four copies of Deer Hunting with Jesus already. I give them away to deserving readers. They all love your work, as do I.
Mark
Lake Leelanau, Michigan
http://www.downstreamer.com/ (my site)
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Well, Mark, that's a pretty big philosophical chaw you're talking about here. After ruminating on it and reading the suggested links, here are my thoughts:
Firstly, when I used the word hope in the essay, it is in a general and generic sense, the broadest understanding of the term. In writing public essays to fellow members of the public, I find it best to simply use terms in the way most readers, including myself, think of them and use them in daily life, despite that much more specific and detailed examinations of terminology and concepts are possible. And the reason I do that is to avoid putting readers to sleep. I feel an obligation to use the readers' valuable time in the most efficient way possible in dealing with an overall theme or idea. Readers may choose later to consider it at length, or not to do so. Of course even using the words "theme" and "concept" is a bit grandiose on my part, given that I simply sit down and write about whatever wild hair happens to be up my ass that particular day. Don't get me wrong, I am not defending my intentional sloppiness here. Hell, I don't even proofread my work. I'm just saying that I write about things in the same way folks talk about things in everyday life.
For instance, people do not say "I have a desire with expectation of obtainment -- and I do not mean in the Old English hopian sense of the word, but rather as an intransitive verb -- that it will not rain today."
They say, "I hope to hell it won't rain today because my wife's fat-assed chain-smoking sister is coming over and I intend to go fishing before she gets here."
Indeed, it is entirely possible to split too many hairs about a thing. And I work on the assumption that my friends and readers, being mostly fellow Amurkins, read like I do. Which is to say skimming for laughs and dirty stuff, and if a little substance happens to splash on us during our textual waterskiing, well good for us! But split one hair and we're gone, gone, gone like a cool breeze. Outta here. After all, there's also porn and good stuff to buy on the Internet. That's the good thing about being a consumer nation of Zippy The Pinheads. We do have other consumer choices! That's what makes America great.
For instance, there is an entire website dedicated to what kind of tie CNN's Brian Williams is wearing today. http://brianwilliamstiereportarchives.blogspot.com/
And to be honest, I take a certain smug delight in learning that Brian Williams doesn't know there is such a thing as a winter tie. Really, Brian, a blue silk cravat in December!
Seriously though, I read the Christopher Lasch material with genuine interest. Really. And I honestly found it most enlightening. Especially learning that Lasch's theological understanding was " ... drawn from a variety of sources, but prominently dependent upon a tradition of Augustinian Calvinism that found an American voice in Jonathan Edwards, advances a complex interplay of belief and doubt, faith and anxiety, affirmation and renunciation."
But I suspect most of my readers are like me. We just hope for stuff. Personally speaking, at the moment a fifth of Old Grandad would be real nice. But I'd settle for pulling the troops out of Iraq.
In art and labor,
Joe
PS: I hope you do not mind me having a little fun at your expense. In truth, you've made me a fan of Lasch. And beyond that, you have an absolutely delightful blog. I particularly liked the Cherokee wolf story. Good luck in healing that broken foot. And good luck to Mr. Obama in healing the nation.
