Does hope REALLY spring eternal?

Question

or are we doomed? Doomed, I say... Chime in...

Answer 1

Here is a quote that says what I believe:
Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The trouble-makers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules, and they have no respect for the status-quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify, or vilify them. But the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.

Because of people like this, there is always hope for us!

Answer 2

I don't see why your choices are mutually exclusive. Hope could be eternal AND we could be doomed.

But let me put it this way: Yes, hope springs eternal... because it's completely not real.

You may have already noticed that there are any number of things that are eternal and infinite in nature, none of which are actually present in the world you and I occupy. There are no perfect lines stretching flawlessly out to infinite length. There are no perfect circles etched somehow around the granularity of atoms and perhaps even space itself. There are no infinite accumulations of ANYTHING that we know of. Large, and numerous, yes. But infinite? No.

So that's where hope lives. Not in the real world, but in the world of ideas. This doesn't make it unimportant (lines and circles have certainly given us quite a few things!). Just different. And eternal.

Kind of like despair. ( :

Answer 3

Perhaps not. The best way I've heard of what its like to be depressed is lack of, or the abscence of hope. I've been depressed and that is the predominant condition, the lack of hope.
I don't believe we are all doomed yet. At least I hope not.

Answer 4

I'm only answering to pay homage to Brite, who recognized this as Pope, as very few people nowadays would have. That gifted Catholic dwarf had the greatest intellect of his place and time, spare possibly Berkeley and Swift, but is now altogether forgotten.

Answer 5

False dichotomy. The saying means there is always hope, even if you were doomed (whatever that might mean).

Answer 6

Absolutely "Hope" flows eternally.

The Virtue of Christian Hope:
* responds to the aspiration to happiness which God has placed in te heart of every human.
*it takes up the hopes that inspire men's activities and purifies them so as to order them to the Kingdom of heaven;
* it keeps man from discouragement;
* it sustains him during times of abandonment;
* it opens up his heart in expectation of eternal beatitude.
* Buoyed up by hope, he is preserved from selfishness and led to the happiness that flows from charity.

Answer 7

The ultimate answer must come through understanding the human condition. Our tenure on Earth is contingent and filled with uncertainties, the most frightening of which is the time and place of our personal demise. In fact, this and taxes, as the joke goes, are the only things we can be certain of in an uncertain world. So we become credulous. We cannot accept such a bleak reality, so many people cheat on their income taxes and many more turn to spiritualism. Our critical faculties for rational thought break down under the onslaught of promises and hopes offered to assuage this greatest of life's anxieties. Wouldn't it be marvelous if we did not really die? Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could speak with our lost loved ones again? Of course it would.

Skeptics are no different than believers when it comes to such desires. This is a human trait, probably evolved in the two million years of Pleistocene conditions in which one's life was as uncertain as the next meal - whether one was predator or prey. It is only over the past century or so that modern medicine, health and life insurance, and crime prevention have brought some relief from this most basic of fears.

But this represents a mere 0.00005% of the human past. For 99.99995% of our existence life's tenuousness was the norm. No wonder our ancestors all over the globe developed beliefs in an afterlife and spirit world. Who wouldn't under such precarious conditions? The provider of hope has only to make the promise of an afterlife and offer the flimsiest of proofs of his power. Human credulity will do the rest. Alexander Pope, in his 1733 Essay on Man (Epistle i, 1.95), offered this insight on the problem:

Hope springs eternal in the human breast;
Man never Is, but always To be blest
The soul, uneasy, and confin'd from home,
Rests and expatiates in a life to come
Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutor'd mind
Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind;
His soul proud Science never taught to stray
Far as the solar walk or milky way,
Yet simple Nature to his hope has giv'n,
Behind the cloud-topp'd hill, an humbler heav'n.

Hope springs eternal is what drives all of us - skeptics and believers alike - to be compelled by unsolved mysteries, to seek spiritual meaning in a physical universe, to desire immortality. and to wish that our eternal hopes are fulfilled in reality. It is what pushes many people to spiritualists, New Age gurus, and television psychics, who promise hope for eternity in a Faustian bargain requiring a willing suspension of disbelief (and usually a contribution to the provider's coffers). Unfortunately, many are willing.

But hope springs eternal for scientists and skeptics as well. We love the mystery. We are spiritual in our awe of the universe and our wonderment at the ability of humanity to achieve so much in so little time. (Look what science has accomplished in that 0.00005% of human history.) We desire to achieve immortality through our cumulative efforts and lasting achievements. And we too wish that our eternal hopes are fulfilled in this reality.

Answer 8

We are doomed, but it's nice to think that there still hope, and maybe there is.......................