#why hope

Quick Thought

Hope may be worthless. Example, you hope that your arm heals properly after breaking it. There's two ways this can turn out, either your arm heals properly or it does not. Regardless of hope, your arm will behave accordingly. So, practically, hope is worthless.

What about the use of hope as some sort of mental state one can be in? Maybe this state of mind can induce a positive moral boost. I think there is a different notion of hope, one with negative effects. If you hope that your arm heals properly and it does, then good. Your arm healed. You can argue that hope helped you get through, thus serving a useful purpose (functionality). Your level of happiness at the time your arm heals is not increased by being in a 'hopeful' mental state.

If you hope that your arm heals and your arm does not heal, then hope adds a greater negative effect. Hope is an ignorant propositional attitude which induces a false sense of future well being one takes when faced with a, more often then not, difficult problem.

Hoping that a situation will get better raises a persons moral so high that it seems to them as though circumstances were different. The solution to the problem appears to be superimposed onto the situation, but has no effect yet. In other words, the future of their potential well being they hoped for arrived (superimposed on the problem) so as to present the current situation to them in more favorable terms. It provides a sense of relief and vigor which only lasts until the hope diminishes.

I think that as long as the unresolved situation maintains, the effective change from "hoping" to whatever negative mental state one finds them self in once they realize there is nothing left to cling onto after hope fails, is so great, that one is in a worse state of affairs than before. After so eagerly hoping for a brighter future, they end up falling further than they thought they had climbed. So, the mental state of hope should not be used because it produces a much greater potential negative effect when compared to the potential positive effect.

I also see a connection between this view and my beliefs about Fatalism. Hope and Fatalism don't mix.

Sorry for the use of second person, I was eager to write my ideas out before I forgot them.