Optimism versus hope
Monday August 6, 2007
Categories: Culture
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...
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Rod Dreher is an editorial columnist for the Dallas Morning News, and author of "Crunchy Cons" (Crown Forum), a nonfiction book about conservatives, most of them religious, whose faith and political convictions sometimes put them at odds with mainstream conservatives. The views expressed in this blog are his own.
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http://www.beliefnet.com/story/222/story_22246_1.html
At least give your source material, Rod!
Rod Dreher wrote:
"Optimism is the superficial view that everything's going to work out fine "because it has to.""
If that's how you're defining optimism, then I can see why you don't like it. I would define the dominant American tradition as optimistic, but not in a way that makes optimism inconsistent with sanity. When Larison criticizes "optimism", I think he's defining it much more broadly.
Optimism is the belief "that everything's going to work out fine 'because it has to'" while faith-based hope is the belief that "everything works to the good in the fullness of time."
Sorry, I don't see the difference.
By the way, when George W. Bush talks about Iraq, it's not optimism you're hearing. It's desperation.
I'd carve the distinction between optimism and hope a bit differently. What makes this semantically confusing is that hope means two very different things: (i) Christian hope, which is a certainly about the general nature of an ultimate future based on faith in God's sovereignty and God's character -- a conviction that perseveres through all manner of grief and loss; and (ii) a desire for things to turn out well, which may or may not have much foundation in the facts as they exist (e.g., "family members haven't given up hope that more survivors will still be found").
Re optimism, Poulos says: "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." The only change I would make is to say substitute "mighty unlikely" for "impossible," especially when taking a long-term view that can persist through setbacks.
The optimists I know don't think that something will succeed "because it has to." That's just plain dumb, and I don't think optimism as a whole should be tarred with that brush.
Optimism is the little train that says, "I think I can, I think I can." The optimist realizes full well that derailed engines litter the sides of the tracks. He's also quite sure that there have been some little trains that got over the mountain because they thought they could.
So when the buoyant Churchill used "victory" five times in rapid succession, all the while cautioning how hard the struggle would be, he seems to me to be an optimist.
That's not quite right. The most important thing to say about the difference between optimism and hope is that the former is a personality trait or temperament, and the latter is a virtue. Optimistic and pessimistic personality types are characterized by a tendency to always look for the silver lining in every situation, regardless or whether they feel hopeful or despairing. They are sunny and upbeat personalities characterized by low levels of neurosis (because they don't let problems get to them) and low levels of openness to experience (because that which doesn't fit into the bright side of life is poorly perceived).
In contrast, hope is a virtue (and despair is a vice). Rod correctly identifies that it has more to do with feeling and affect than mere belief, but mischaracterizes it as pertaining to a feeling that there is ultimate meaning. In fact, most hope is for relative meaning, relative comforts. I hope that there is low traffic on my commute. I hope that a book I write is well-received. Etc. If Rod is talking only about Christian hope, then what he says is probably correct for the amber altitude version of hope (but incorrect for Christian hope at altitudes other than amber). [for definition of amber, see my Until blog]
I love how everything has to boil down to an anti-Bush stance. By the way, do things look different in Iraq today, Oct. 30th, 2008 than it did when you wrote this article in 2007? I have hope and optimism that you will see fit to update this article and that you can see the world in a more complex way than anti-Bush, pro your favorite Democrat.
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