Optimism versus hope

James Poulos, commenting about the optimism thread below, says:

Optimism is not, despite what people might tell you, the conviction that failure is impossible. Optimism is not by any stretch the Christian virtue of hope, for example, which is more than a 'sense,' even when faith is battered and weak; more than a 'sense' because it is of a fundamentally different character.

Optimism, in fact, is an attitude, an emotional orientation, a psychological posture, a feeling -- a meta-feeling, even, a feeling about feelings, the feeling that we should feel as if failure is impossible. Notice even how different this is from an intellectual determination, for example, to think that failure is impossible, or from the conviction that the wisdom of history shows, as Churchill put it, that success is never final and defeat is never fatal. An optimist does not labor in such trenches of the human condition.

I think it worth pondering the difference between optimism and hope. Optimism is the superficial view that everything's going to work out fine "because it has to." That's not true, and in fact is a dangerous illusion. Hope, on the other hand, is the confidence that there is ultimate meaning, even in loss, and that (from a Christian point of view) everything works to the good in the fullness of time, even if it is only given to us to know defeat and suffering in our place and time. People can live without optimism -- indeed, I suspect most people in the world do. People cannot live without hope. Hence religion.

In politics, here is a great example of a politician disdaining optimism, but inspiring confidence with the virtue of hope: Winston Churchill's speech to Parliament upon becoming Prime Minister in 1940. Excerpt:

I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined this government: "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat."

We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask, what is our policy? I can say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival. Let that be realised; no survival for the British Empire, no survival for all that the British Empire has stood for, no survival for the urge and impulse of the ages, that mankind will move forward towards its goal. But I take up my task with buoyancy and hope. I feel sure that our cause will not be suffered to fail among men. At this time I feel entitled to claim the aid of all, and I say, "come then, let us go forward together with our united strength."

Did Churchill know that Britain would prevail against Nazi Germany? Of course not. But he telegraphed to the British people a sense of reality about their condition, and of his determination to prevail. G.W. Bush, on the other hand, has never offered anything but baseless optimism, such that today, it is impossible to believe him when he says we're turning things around in Iraq. (Poulos recalls Bush disclosing the essential confidence-man aspect of his optimism when he -- Bush -- said that the surge would work in Iraq "because it has to.")