Hope — The Overlooked Pivotal Ingredient for

Everyone is sitting around scratching their heads about all of these violent incidents. They want to know why crime rates skyrocket in some areas and not others. They want to know why depression is more rampant in our modern world — one where the average standard of living vastly exceeds anything ever seen in human history. Why does one political candidate win over another? What’s wrong with our justice system? How do you incentivize employees? How can we get our youth to take seriously the tracks that are best for them and best for our country?

I don’t really like debates. Politics. Negativity. So I sit back and roll my eyes and turn to do something more immediate when I hear these discussions.

But I actually think there might be something we could do about it. The only way is if a conceptual, cultural, intellectual movement was started.

You see… There’s one thing at the center of all of this.

Hope.

The United States has long been called the land of opportunity. But what is opportunity when you’re an 1800s immigrant in a far away country stepping onto a ship? You don’t HAVE that opportunity…

No, you have hope. Tens of millions have crossed the world to come to the United States for nothing more than hope.

Presidents have been elected for nothing more than hope.

Violent tragedies spark up over and over for lack of one thing: hope.

I’m a bit tired of watching pundits and academics ponder over what causes crime rates and violent tendencies and unrest over inequality. I’ll write this if for no other reason than to perhaps reduce the number of debates, ha. It’s all about hope. People devoid of hope aren’t likely to do anything positive. Do you really expect that you can create a society where a couple million people feel they have little to no hope and nothing bad will happen?

The debate shouldn’t be over why these things occur. But rather why those people had no hope left — and what we can do to make sure as many people in our society maintain hope throughout their lives as possible.

You see, hope is one of the most powerful drugs in existence. I call it a drug because it has both positive and negative effects, and because it acts on the brain in much the same way as drugs do.

Hope can keep people going for decades on a path that hasn’t yet paid off. Look at professional athletes. And all the people who tried to become professional athletes off of that same hope, only to fail. Hope can keep people going through the darkest of times. Hope drives people to attend universities, pursue difficult degrees, start companies, practice sports endlessly, create music, take acting classes… Just about everything you can think of. Hope even gets people through cancer and other physical diseases

It’s very possible that hope is one of the biggest separations between humans and the animal world (or at least most animals… I’ve never seen a study on whether any animal species feel hope).

Hope has a dark side. People can also become addicted to the hope itself, and subsequently never achieve the actual thing they have hope in. Sometimes the feeling of hope can actually lead to self sabotage. “One day my ship will come in” can get people through just enough that they never actually find the motivation to act. I know I’ve been there in several of my biggest dreams — undoubtedly everyone reading this has been.

Hope can also be used to string people along. How do you get someone to be a drone in middle management at a large corporation? You give them just enough hope- promotions, bonuses, a nicer car, etc etc. Hope is a real tool to keep the masses whirring away doing the tasks our country and our companies need in order to run. I guess whether that’s good or bad depends on how it’s done. If hope is used to keep people going endlessly, knowing that the hope they’ve been sold is hollow or will never be realized, it’s hard to argue that’s good for them. Perhaps it helps the greater good, but it’s not good for that person. And hope can send people down bad roads, like gambling or suburbs full of teens all convinced that they want to be a rapper one day… When statistically it’s likely that not one of them actually will be.

The darker thing is what happens when people feel deprived of hope mostly or entirely. This can happen because of social pressures. Think of high schoolers, minorities in certain circumstances, those we consider “socially awkward,” “unattractive,” “different,” or “outcasts” — all of these groups can be put in positions where they feel little or no hope due to social pressures.

Financial forces, bad luck, life events, and even our ‘justice’ system all also put individuals into positions where they feel little or no hope. There are so many theories and questions as to why many former inmates re-offend. I don’t see the confusion… When you’re labeled a “former inmate” for the rest of your life, how much hope are you going to have? The same goes for financial woes and many other things. Branding people with scarlet letters deprives them of hope. And you expect them to turn around and behave positively why?

For whatever reason, a lot of my friends talk to me if they’re feeling depressed. I don’t know how I became that person to them, but it’s fine by me. One thing I’ve learned through studying psychology and talking to a number of friends in hard times is that people essentially need hope on several timelines. When someone is depressed due to some life circumstances, they usually get out of it when they find things to be hopeful in again. Not just that, but they generally seem to feel better when they have something to be hopeful about this week, then something later this month, then something next month, and then something else later in the year. If someone has hope on each of these time scales, it seems they can suddenly start feeling quite good. If they’re upset over a breakup, they’re generally morning the loss of the things they were hopeful about that involved their significant other. They also seem to get out of it when they find new things to be hopeful about on those time scales. Sometimes this is far from immediate. It also seems that it can be engineered to some extent. If someone’s feeling pretty down and you get them to buy a ticket to see their favorite band later this week, and you plan a trip with them later this month, and you promise them a surprise next month… Pretty soon they’ll feel a hell of a lot better.

You can debate all kinds of economic circumstances, social circumstances, education levels, psychiatric factors, and a hundred other things… But all of those just add up to one thing. Hope. And hope on different time scales.

I suppose I could probably go on about this for a while. There’s a lot of ins and outs and psychology involved… But the fact is, this is very, very human. I don’t need to go on and on- because we can all associate. I don’t think anyone really needs this concept explained to them, they just need to have it brought to their awareness.

One of the biggest keys here is that hope and opportunity are not the same thing. We think they are, but they aren’t.

Just as an immigrant stepping onto an 1800s steamer did not yet have the opportunity of America in that moment, but they had the hope, there are many instances where hope and opportunity are not identical. Hope, really, is the perception of the promise of positive change. Where opportunity is the potential for positive change. Hope involves that sooner or later, that positive change will happen. And hope is a perception. Opportunity is reality, and opportunity makes no promises.

I think the only true way to improve our society is to take on a dramatically increased awareness of the hope of those in our society. If we make more decisions based on how we can maximize the hope of the people in our society, then you can improve all kinds of things people debate endlessly. If you focus on making sure that every child in our schools has something to truly be hopeful about in their near and far futures, there will be fewer violent incidents and lower crime levels. If you ensure that our children put their hope in positive opportunities that are more widespread (think entrepreneurship vs. basketball players), you can increase both the number of happy adults, and the effectiveness of our economy; you can even get kids to try harder in school. It’s not so much that American kids hate math and kids in foreign countries don’t… It’s that American kids don’t see how being good at math gives them any hope, while kids in foreign countries do. If you tell a second grader “Get good at math and computer science and you could be like Mark Zuckerberg and have billions of dollars and do whatever you want,” and I’m willing to be that kid will look at math differently than they do with the answer most teachers give — “you need to know this for the tests. And to do stuff like balancing your check book.” Okay. Cool teach. I’m going to go work on my YouTube channel and not do my math homework… Because I’ve been sold there’s hope there.

If we culturally, politically and as a society focus on the maximization of hope for the people in our society, there’s a chance we might actually achieve substantial change within our lifetime. If we don’t, we’re likely going in circles on different issues with no end in sight.

It’s a perspective shift. But it’s a real perspective shift that our politicians could take on. Our entrepreneurs could design companies around it. Our teachers could keep it at the forefront of their minds.

We’re so focused on ‘equality.’ No one can even tell you what that really means. A lot of times ‘equality’ is thrown around as a reason for one group to demand more than what other groups get. By definition it seems logical that ‘equality’ means ‘equality of opportunity.’ But it’s often stretched in different directions than that. But even if people were all treated with ‘equality,’ whatever that obscured word truly means, many of them might feel devoid of hope. I argue that it’s better to think of hope. Many times when people talk about equality for groups, they’re really getting at wanting that group to have more hope. Why not just go straight for the thing? If hope is the underlying motivation and the underlying benefit desired out of ‘equality,’ why not skip straight to making sure all people and all groups have hope? Not only that, but it doesn’t really have to be equal hope, does it? You can do everything possible to maximize everyone’s hope. It’s not a zero sum game. Equality implies that one side has to come up and the other side might have to come down. But hope can just be maximized for all. People get happier when their hope increases. They might feel nothing if their theoretical equality increases.

So let’s see… Maybe we can start a movement one person at a time. It seems impossible, but there are many cultural norms today which once started small and seemed impossible. What do you say?