un salary increase, a love affair, a vacation, a purse on sale. May he call you back, may she not leave you. Whether they take you to X Factor or Masterchef. May your likes increase (ah, become an influencer!). That a child finally arrives: you’ve been trying for a long time…
Still have hope
Hopes actually smaller and smaller. There Iard research on adolescents it indicates among the most important that of traveling (65 percent). The latest Censis report indicates, with evident pragmatism, that 9 out of 10 Italians “hope for the return of the escalator”. Nothing wrongbut, as the psychiatrist Eugenio Borgna says, «we are fascinated by what happens in the instant and, in the illusion of not wasting time, our daily life is shipwrecked on the rocks of a present emptied of past and future, of memory and hope».
Hope is not desire
It is from the inner strength that many today draw to see their desires come true. No more from hope. (Getty Images)
Harsh words, shared by philosopher Nicla Vassallowhich he just released Women, women, women (Mimesis): «We no longer have great hopes, on the contrary, we have a limited horizon, for ourselves and for others. Our perimeter has shrunk, our vision shrunk. We confuse hope with desire, even impossible, with the illusion. Perhaps we are a little afraid of the future, of war, of climate change, of an artificial intelligence that will do everything for us, therefore, for many hope becomes a target around the corner. It saves us from disappointments, from the risk of complicated questions about the meaning of life, from the weight of expectations».
Of course Ernest Bloch, the twentieth century philosopherauthor of the monumental The principle of hope: he saw in hope a hunger for justice, freedom, dignity, happiness. Not that of a discount on the invoice.
An ultrahuman force
Yet this minor goddess, little loved by the Greeks, enters our experience. You have a lot to do with medicine: living more, healing.
«In the Anglo-Saxon world» explains Roberto Boffi, head of Pneumology at the National Cancer Institute of Milan, (co-author of Quit smoking with gustoSperling & Kupfer) «there is a more statistical approach: how likely are you to live, what your insurance pays. We Latinos are more optimistic: while maintaining the realism of science, without unjustified optimism, we always leave the door of hope open, we adhere less to a quantitative vision. Maybe it’s the culture, maybe we’re influenced by our historybut we have a more open gaze, which seems to me in harmony with the medical profession”.
Will we exist after death?
Well, for those who are sick. Hope has a lot to do with the Big Questions: who-are-we-where are we going what about us? He answers Federico Faggin, the physicist inventor of the microchip (“Without him, Silicon Valley would be just a Valley,” Steve Jobs is said to have said).
At the conference Kum! of Ancona, organized by Massimo Recalcati, the intervention “Will we exist after death?” was enormously successful. We are immortalassures Faggin, consciousness is “irreducible” – as he explains in the essay Irriducibile, consciousness, life, computers and our nature (Mondadori). It comes before matter, it continues to exist when biology has completed its cycle. It’s good to hear that. In fact, many have asked him for further information.
Immortality yes, it is a great hope
“There Consciousness is a purely quantum phenomenon and this proves that it cannot cease to exist with the death of the body, because it exists in a much vaster reality than that of classical physics». Faggin calls it “UNO”. It all started twenty years ago. It was seen “from the outside”: impossible, if not being part of a more universal consciousness. The one that Faggin, with his Foundation, has been studying since 2011 with the Socratic guide of “Know thyself”.
Immortality yes, it’s a great hope, but it’s not enough. In the delicious and moving Not that closeOtto Anderson (Tom Hanks), a cranky widower whose heart is literally too big, finds her again thanks to a loud, pushy Latino family. On the contrary, in the award-winning The spirits of the island when the priest during confession asks the lonely Colm (Brendan Gleeson): “How’s it going with despair?” There is no answer. It’s terrible. In the island’s unbarred prison, hope is absent. Happens. Therefore we often have to exorcise loneliness and fear with positive thinking, optimism, self-healing, “wanting is power”.
Manifesting, help yourself…
Helped by an endless amount of manuals. the latest arrival, the magic word that replaced “hope” is “Manifesting” (make something happen). manifest by Roxie Nafousi (Mondadori) hailed in America as “the essential guide for anyone who wants to empower their lives“, he says in summary: “You can have it all”.
The magical power of Manifesting by Kristen Helmstetter (Corbaccio), a self-published and sold out essay, proposes a routine to start the day full of positive energy: «All it takes is five minutes of self-talkof reflections to constructively reshape the image you have of yourself. Opening your mind to happiness, success and love, you will be able to increase self-esteem and focus on dreams. In the book you will find some customizable patterns and a diary to track your unstoppable progress.
Kristen Helmstetter reveals she used self-talk to find the man of her dreams, travel and become a bestselling author. She has written ten books and now divides her time between Florida and a medieval Umbrian city with her husband and daughter.
The space of the imponderable
Someone disagrees: “I consider it a great misunderstanding to equate optimism and hope,” he writes the psychologist Ada Moscarella. «I understood this while working with serious patients, who most of the time are sent to me with the indication “there is no more hope”. I may not have optimism, but I always have hope. Which has nothing to do with positive thinking, but with the possibility, with not seeing things in one way, “optimistic” or “pessimistic”.
Hope, in its Greek root, refers to the meaning of “to suppose”, to be able to make hypotheses. And the less partial our vision is, the wider the possibility and the greater the possibilities for change that we can imagine». Hilary Swank said it in a more pop way, the Million Dollar Baby actress, at 48 new mother of twins, interviewed on the Golden Globe red carpet: «When you really believe that something can happen, you have a different pattern of thought. The sky really has no limit if you believe it.
An immortal root
But to go back to the Greeks who gave this drive a name: for them, the human being lives according to his Moira, his destiny and his measure already marked out; he is subjected to Týche, the Fate; to Anánke, Necessity; and if he tries to rebel he commits the gravest sin, the Hýbris, the excess. It took Christianity to make hope one of the theological virtues: we desire and expect eternal life from God.
But how do we manage in the meantime? Gianni Rodari was right, in one of his poems: «If I had a small shop / made up of a single room / I would like to start selling you know what? / Hope». Someone does. In 2005 it was called The Secret, by Rhonda Byrne (How to change reality with the law of attraction) and now, Manifesting.
Even in our limited horizon, changing its name, distorting it, bending it to contemporary anxieties and new age philosophies, hope refuses to die.
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