As we look ahead to the new year, hope seems to be in short supply. Recent surveys have found that sizable majorities of Americans believed the United States was on track to become economically weaker and more politically divided, nearly 80 per cent did not expect their children’s lives to be any better than theirs and more than half feared we would make little progress in dealing with major global challenges such as climate change over the next few decades.
This lack of hope is ominous. Hope drives us to improve our lives and the world around us. When it’s extinguished, despair and paralysis fill the gap, making progress even less likely.
Part of the problem, I believe, is that our modern conception of hope is flawed. It practically invites hopelessness when the stakes are greatest.
In the modern view, hoping for something implies that you think it’s achievable. Research psychologists characterise hope as a positive state in which you feel motivated to reach a goal because you believe you have agency in the world and can identify a clear pathway to that goal. In a similar vein, self-help gurus like Tony Robbins argue that “hope is a start” but that determined action requires certainty that you can achieve your goals.
If that sounds like a high bar for hope, that’s because, when it comes to our most ambitious goals, it is. On our own, none of us can solve the climate crisis or heal political divisions. Even when we come together in groups, trying to change the world can seem naïve and quixotic.
From the modern perspective, the solution is obvious: Dial back your hopes to something manageable. According to most psychologists, aiming for a goal that’s beyond your control, like trying to save a loved one from a terminal illness or ensuring that the government adopts a specific policy, isn’t healthy. It’s a false hope — a hope that can open you to disappointment and despair.
While minimising your hopes can protect your self-esteem and reduce stress — both worthy goals of modern psychology — it comes at a steep price. As challenges become more difficult, we shrink from them. We seem to be witnessing that phenomenon today as a sense of gloom and “Why bother?” sets in among Americans.
Fortunately, an alternative conception of hope exists, one that throughout history has helped ward off despair and motivate action even in the face of seemingly insurmountable challenges. It’s an idea the world’s spiritual traditions have championed for millenniums: Hope is a virtue to be practised, not an aspiration to be managed.
Most of the world’s religions agree with modern science that it’s unwise to base hope on the belief that if we just work hard enough, we can reach any goal. The Catholic theologian Thomas Aquinas cautioned that a feeling of hope that rests on trust in our own power is often misguided. The view in Buddhism is the same: Much of the world is beyond our ability to control; thinking otherwise is an illusion that can lead to despair.
However, for spiritual traditions, the recognition of our inadequacy isn’t a bug; it’s a feature. It doesn’t reduce hope; it redefines hope by freeing us from the burden of thinking that our goals are entirely our responsibility to achieve. Adopting this view means accepting that while effort is important, being human comes with limitations.
Here, hope is a way to be. It’s a norm or, as Aquinas put it, a habitual movement toward the good. Hope compels you to pursue goals with urgency but without the fear that if your hopes aren’t realised, you’ve failed. As a Rabbinic teaching from the Mishna puts it: It’s not your responsibility to finish the work of perfecting the world, but you are not free to stop trying, either.
There is ample evidence that this spiritual conception of hope makes it easier to persevere in the face of adversity. Research shows that the religious among us possess a greater sense of hope in the future — not because religion attracts people who are optimistic in general but because the practice of faith gives rise to hope. Studies following tens of thousands of people for many years as they adopted or disavowed a faith showed that religion clearly boosted hope. The more people engaged with their faith, the more hopeful they felt about the future. When they disengaged, a greater sense of despair followed.
Karl Marx argued that religion is the opium of the people — that it leads people to take their hands off the wheels of society in the expectation that God will cure all. That’s not the case. People who make religion a part of their lives are not only more hopeful for a better future; they’re also more actively engaged in bringing it about. A 2019 Pew Research Center report showed that the religiously engaged were more likely than their nonreligious peers to join community and charitable groups and be politically engaged.
Religion at its best, as Rabbi Angela Buchdahl once told me, serves as a constant reminder that life is not about any one of us. We’re all part of something bigger. The same is true for hope. Freeing hope from our egos frees us from despair. To hope is to do good without expectation that we can make it so. It is to resist the darkness daily, whatever may come.
(David DeSteno is a professor of psychology at Northeastern University and the host of the podcast “How God Works: The Science Behind Spirituality.”)
The New York Times