One of the essential aspects of depression is the sense that you will always be mired in this misery, that nothing can or will change. It’s what makes suicide so seductive as the only visible exit from the prison of the present. There’s a public equivalent to private depression, a sense that the nation or the society rather than the individual is stuck. Things don’t always change for the better, but they change, and we can play a role in that change if we act. Which is where hope comes in, and memory, the collective memory we call history.
Solnit, Rebecca. Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities . Haymarket Books. Kindle Edition.
Hope is more valuable than fear in relationships, research shows.
If you’ve ever terminated a relationship — a romance, a friendship, a business partnership — to avoid being dumped or hung out to dry, you’re not alone. Many relationships unravel precisely because individuals worry about being left behind and preemptively decide to call it quits. As it turns out, our desire for security can prompt us to preemptively strike against an uncertain threat, even if in doing so we also hurt ourselves.
Organizational behavior professor Nir Halevy of Stanford Graduate School of Business explored this puzzling social behavior in a new paper published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. His findings challenge the common assumption that fear is the primary instigator of defensive aggression. Instead, he found these preemptive strikes had more to do with the lack of hope.THIS may be a serendipity moment. After the 2016 election, J.D.Vance's Hillbilly Elegy became a best seller. From a blurb on Amazon about the book.
The Vance family story began with hope in postwar America. J.D.’s grandparents were “dirt poor and in love” and moved north from Kentucky’s Appalachia region to Ohio in the hopes of escaping the dreadful poverty around them.The loss of hope was largely interpreted as a key factor in why America chose Trump over Clinton.
Too many of my friends on social media still express fear instead of hope about the 2020 general election. We KNOW that Trump is ALL about lying, cheating and that he's nothing if not desperately afraid of what will happen to him when he loses this election. The primary objective of Trump's lying and cheating is to get you to lose hope. If you don't let him win that contest, he will not win the election. To me, it's that clear cut.
By the way, director Ron Howard (Opie, from the Andy Griffith show, who has directed numerous blockbuster movies) has completed filming a movie based on Vance's book. It will be available on NETFLIX at some time in the future. HOPEfully very soon.
For my readers and friends, I've tried to be very clear about my vision that Trump is going down in this election. I have hope. But it's not Pollyannaish hope. My vision is based on my reading of American history and of primatology (scientific study of primates).
YES, Trump will cheat. Yes, he will continue to lie. Yes, he occupies the most powerful elected office in the world. But he is NOT more powerful than the American electorate, the voter. He just isn't.
Many of those social media friends have repeated to me the aphorism, "from your lips to God's ear." And as an idiom, that's a valid expression. But taken literally, it boils down to take heart, and use your lips to reach the ears of each voter.
There IS value in hope even though we still see scared Trumpsters rallying and protesting against people who speak up for equal rights. Many of those Trumpsters do not appear to be reachable with any logical message.
But there's a LOT more of us than there are of them. And when we embrace the Value of Hope, we VOTE in droves and droves and droves all throughout the country.
I have a dream. (MLK Jr wasn't the only one allowed to have dreams) That when Joe Biden is elected president of the United States, his voice will reach beyond the cacophony and begin to melt the hearts of many of those Trump has incited to violence.
Remember the Value of Hope.
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