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Hope - the little revolution against reality. A column by Samira El Ouassil

2020-11-20T14:49:48.759Z


2020 --- what a year! And yet an almost forgotten feeling breaks through in November: hope. To feel it, in the face of the world situation, is like a tender protest.


Icon: enlarge

Hope bearers: Joe Biden and Barack Obama (at the 2008 Democratic Nomination Party)

Photo: NBC NewsWire / Getty Images

In Barack Obama's autobiography the word "Hope" appears 63 times - 64 times even if you include the word "hopeless".

To be honest, I would have expected more entries.

So more entries of the word "hopeless".

In a dark year, the year of the pandemic, the year in which George Floyd was suffocated in agony in front of all of us, the year of conspiracy theories, a year full of terror, the year of Moria and several accepted deaths in the Mediterranean, the year in which climate change lethargy becomes fatalistic, a year of fires and populists around the world - so this year the feeling of relief that broke in November was sparked by good news like Biden's election victory and the prospect of a vaccine against Covid -19, so unfamiliar that you didn't even dare to feel this almost forgotten feeling: hope.

If each month of this year was a separate episode of the dystopian TV series "Black Mirror", then November is clearly the one cautiously confident "San Junipero" episode of the 2020 season.

Samira El Ouassil Right Arrow

Photo: Stefan Klüter

Born in Munich in 1984, is an actress and author.

In 2016 her book "The 100 most important things" (with Timon Kaleyta and Martin Schlesinger) was published by Hatje Cantz Verlag.

In 2009 she was candidate for chancellor of the PARTY, which at that time was not admitted to the general election.

She was recently awarded the Bert Donnepp ​​Prize for media journalism for her media critical column "Wochenschau" (uebermedien.de).

At the same moment when a certain joy of hope set in, however, a cascade of concerns, warnings and disillusionment warned not to rejoice too soon.

Perhaps there was also a self-critical awareness that the problems that will remain, even if the pandemic should be brought under control at some point, cannot be suppressed with forward-looking optimism alone.

Returning to any kind of carelessness is a luxury that no one should afford, because more than ever it is clear: We cannot make the breakpoints of reality unseen with a little good humor and gaffer tape.

So is there a point where you could ever lapse into contentment or even happiness without being cynical, childish or inappropriate?

So is hope in itself and always a completely utopian feeling that serves to deny oneself and preserve a broken reality?

So is hope alone a selfish feeling?

Hope contains the desire for change

The philosopher Slavoj Žižek postulated in his book of the same name to have »courage to be hopeless«.

But maybe it's exactly the other way around: betting your chips on improvement despite fear of the future is the much more daring form of betting.

Hope does not suppress, because in its ambivalence, in addition to the longing for a desired state, it is always a complaint about the current state, which is why every hope always inevitably contains the desire for change.

Every time we hope, we travel back in time to a future reality that might occur, the events of which that have not yet occurred might affect our now.

Such a remarkable feeling is the hope that it has been repeatedly examined and depicted artistically, theologically and philosophically, from antiquity to now, from what lies at the bottom of Pandora's box to Obama's campaign slogan.

Defiance through imagination

Nonetheless, it wasn't until the 1990s that psychology began to look at hope as a cognitive state and as the basis of our actions.

The pioneer of hope research, the American psychologist Charles Snyder, identified with his studies and in his book "Psychology of Hope: You Can Get Here from There" the three forces that prevail in hope: have a goal;

perceive the ways to achieve this goal;

and a sense of agency.

Hope can be seen in two areas in the human brain: in the amygdala, our almond-shaped center of emotions, and in the anterior cingulate cortex, the brain region that is responsible for our self-reflection, but also looks at our past and simulates possible futures.

Hope always arises when people can establish a connection between their current situation and a desired state, but at the same time the brain understands that it is not enough just to want this to happen, but also has to find a realistic path, this own utopia to realize.

It is willpower through imagination and becomes: self-efficacy.

more on the subject

Icon: Spiegel Plus Icon: Spiegel Plus Scientists on fear: The feeling of crisis

That is why hoping as a recommendation for action is also more peppy than pure resilience.

To be resilient is always subordination and accepting resistance, but hope adds another ingredient to pragmatic and purpose-oriented resilience, which turns resilience into a small revolution against reality: Defiance through imagination.

Because hope knows about the possibility of failure.

To feel it anyway, given the world situation, is like a tender protest: You put up emotional resistance against a seductive apocalypsism.

The German philosopher of hope Ernst Bloch, who wrote his "Principle of Hope" in exile in the USA from 1938 to 1947, declared: "Hope is critical, hope is disappointing, but hope does at least nail a flag to the pole."

Hopefully we can hope for more hope in 2021.

Icon: The mirror

Source: spiegel

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