Hope

Jefforson wrote "among these [unalienable rights] are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

What is the pursuit of happiness, but hope?
What is life without hope?

Hope, perhaps, is the basis of religion being the opium of the masses: "serve in this life and be rewarded in the next." But for all that it may serve the desires of an oppressor, does not such hope still make the life of the oppressed better? And is not hope necessary for the oppressed to rise up and throw off the chains of bondage?

One ought not hope foolishly. One not ought to hope for a return of the past, for example. But perhaps that is not really hope but a retreat from reality.

It can be difficult not to hope foolishly (there is, in fact, an empirically observable optimism bias in people--see the work of Nobel-laureate Daniel Kahneman). So we want to be careful in what we hope for, in the sense that we want to hope for things that can be realized. But we want, nonetheless, to continue to hope.

Wouldn't it be great if we all had hope?
It's so easy to lose sight of it sometimes. Listening to environmental reports, listening to reports on the occupation of Iraq by the US, listening to reports on the economy, with all that it is easy to lose hope. But only hope allows us to strive for the better world that we can envision--however faint that hope is.

I know that Barack Obama has written a book The Audacity of Hope. I haven't read it, but I daresay that Barack is not the only candidate trying to sell hope--McCain certainly is, too. What else does a candidate have to sell, after all?

Wouldn't it be great if we all had hope? What would it take for a world where everyone actually did have hope?