Hope in the Anthropocene Age

Most of the graduate students I teach are preparing to work in the Catholic Church. Many of them think, without question, that hope is always a good thing. This is understandable, given that they, like Christians from other denominations, believe that hope is a virtue and despair a vice. I remember chatting with a student about this during a break. At one point I said, “There are some situations in ministry where there is no hope.” A student who overheard the conversation piped in from across the room, with some degree of categorical annoyance, “There is always hope.” I am fairly confident that the student who responded would find it difficult to care for people who are in despair. In speaking with students, my intention is to problematize hope, as well as to acknowledge the emotional challenges of sitting with people in their hopelessness “without irritable reaching after fact and reason”—that is, without defending against their own feelings of hopelessness and helplessness that are evoked by the situation. The danger is that students will project their particular hopes onto others. When students ask, “What do we do when there is no hope?” they are implying at some level that caring is necessarily contingent on hope. This too is a problem.

Outside the walls of academia, the problems of hope are evident in the public-political realm, especially when situated against the backdrop of the current and looming disasters linked to the climate emergency. Before identifying some problems with hope, it is necessary to say a bit about what comprises it. Briefly, hope consists of desires or needs, visions, motivations, and actions that are largely shaped by the ethos (e.g., narratives and practices) of the society in which one resides. A person's present desire is linked to a vision that is shaped by the collective narratives of their society. Joined to this ethos is the means/action that a person employs to realize the vision. It is important to point out that in daily lif