Skip to main content

Hope and some faith too




Like Vaclav Havel, I am neither an optimist nor a pessimist.  Everything does not end well.  Nor does everything end badly either.  I have felt the constant surge of hope in my breast that things will improve.  Like, maybe we will have a good political leader who can unite the nation while preserving its endless variety.  Or that poverty will be eradicated and people will live with dignity. 

“Life without hope is an empty, boring, and useless life,” said Havel. We cannot strive for anything without a fair share of hope within us.  However, one of my favourite authors, Albert Camus, derided hope as “the last item in Pandora’s box.”  Pandora’s box brought all the evils to mankind, according to Greek mythology.  Zeus kept the last evil, hope, hidden in the box.  Hope is the greatest source of trouble, philosopher Nietzsche had argued and Camus borrowed the argument.  Hope makes people anticipate an ultimate reward like heaven.  Such hope diminishes the value of this life here on earth.

Life is a pain for quite many people.  Camus compared it to the laborious process of rolling a massive boulder uphill only to have it being pushed down by the antagonistic deity like in the case of Sisyphus.  I have found much consolation in Camus’s philosophy of the absurd.  Life is absurd.  Our contemporary world which spends more wealth and energy on breeding hatred and perpetrating violence on fellow human beings is the most absurd one that any ‘rational’ creature could have created.

Sisyphus, an ancient painting

Camus’s solution is revolt.  Like Sisyphus who challenged the gods, we must challenge the absurdities of life and live in constant revolt arising from our intellectual integrity.  But I think such a life can be very painful.  I wonder if Sisyphus could ever smile.  I can only imagine Sisyphus as growling at the god who made him push the boulder for eternity.  I admire his grit and determination.  But I would love him if he could smile as he walked down the hill with the challenge burning in his breast.

Hope can bring that smile.  Camus would call it an abdication of integrity.  When you know that you have no escape from the boulder, hope is out of place.  Hope is an illusion.  Hope is an evil.

That’s true for Sisyphus.  But in our actual life the boulder is only a metaphor.  There is always the possibility of the boulder reaching the summit successfully.  Otherwise mankind would not have conquered so many peaks of success.  That’s why I incline more towards Havel than Camus.  Hope and some accompanying faith in ourselves and in the potential of mankind for goodness are essential for retaining the smile on our lips.

Comments

  1. Pranju chakrapaniMay 9, 2017 at 9:05 AM

    This is where the confusion comes. The trouble comes when we have to chose a certain belief to lead this life.

    Of course suicide is never the solution when one realizes that life is meaningless. But to counter it what can one choose to live with? Hope or revolt?

    I believe hope is something only a truely optimistic person can opt to live with. For the rest revolt might come us a solution.

    Living in hope is pleasant but a delusion. Living with revolt is painful but pragmatic. Living in ingnorance is however a bliss.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMay 9, 2017 at 5:27 PM

      Isn't the entire life a big paradox? You've mentioned a few of the inevitable paradoxes: hope and delusion, revolt and pain. Ignorance is bliss but at least some people refuse to embrace ignorance. So we have to suffer. We can mitigate the suffering with a pinch of hope which, as I argued in the post, is ok since we do attain success once in a while.

      The more perfect a philosophical system, the less useful it is in actual life, I think. Camus made a neat system which satisfies the intellect but fails to tackle certain human aspirations.

      Delete
  2. UnknownMay 10, 2017 at 2:31 PM

    Faith and hope help to keep the dust of negativity off of our glasses of outlook and perception. Though one might remain aware of the reality around it is healthy to have a optimistic outlook to keep our own system free of the poison of the world. A person with an optimistic outlook remains healthy for society and nature at large.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMay 10, 2017 at 8:13 PM

      That's true. But optimism shouldn't be blind. Secondly, thinkers of the calibre of Camus and Havel look at optimism as well as pessimism more deeply than an ordinary person.

      Delete
  3. UnknownMay 11, 2017 at 7:44 PM

    Havel yes but camus needs to dive down further. I love the last line of your piece sir.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
44 comments
Read more

Remedios the Beauty and Innocence

  Remedios the Beauty is a character in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude . Like most members of her family, she too belongs to solitude. But unlike others, she is very innocent too. Physically she is the most beautiful woman ever seen in Macondo, the place where the story of her family unfolds. Is that beauty a reflection of her innocence? Well, Marquez doesn’t suggest that explicitly. But there is an implication to that effect. Innocence does make people look charming. What else is the charm of children? Remedios’s beauty is dangerous, however. She is warned by her great grandmother, who is losing her eyesight, not to appear before men. The girl’s beauty coupled with her innocence will have disastrous effects on men. But Remedios is unaware of “her irreparable fate as a disturbing woman.” She is too innocent to know such things though she is an adult physically. Every time she appears before outsiders she causes a panic of exasperation. To make...
4 comments
Read more

The Death of Truth and a lot more

Susmesh Chandroth in his kitchen “Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought,” Poet Shelley told us long ago. I was reading an interview with a prominent Malayalam writer, Susmesh Chandroth, this morning when Shelley returned to my memory. Chandroth says he left Kerala because the state had too much of affluence which is not conducive for the production of good art and literature. He chose to live in Kolkata where there is the agony of existence and hence also its ecstasies. He’s right about Kerala’s affluence. The state has eradicated poverty except in some small tribal pockets. Today almost every family in Kerala has at least one person working abroad and sending dollars home making the state’s economy far better than that of most of its counterparts. You will find palatial houses in Kerala with hardly anyone living in them. People who live in some distant foreign land get mansions constructed back home though they may never intend to come and live here. There are ...
10 comments
Read more

The Covenant of Water

Book Review Title: The Covenant of Water Author: Abraham Verghese Publisher: Grove Press UK, 2023 Pages: 724 “What defines a family isn’t blood but the secrets they share.” This massive book explores the intricacies of human relationships with a plot that spans almost a century. The story begins in 1900 with 12-year-old Mariamma being wedded to a 40-year-old widower in whose family runs a curse: death by drowning. The story ends in 1977 with another Mariamma, the granddaughter of Mariamma the First who becomes Big Ammachi [grandmother]. A lot of things happen in the 700+ pages of the novel which has everything that one may expect from a popular novel: suspense, mystery, love, passion, power, vulnerability, and also some social and religious issues. The only setback, if it can be called that at all, is that too many people die in this novel. But then, when death by drowning is a curse in the family, we have to be prepared for many a burial. The Kerala of the pre-Independ...
10 comments
Read more

Butterfly from Sambhal

“Weren’t you a worm till the other day?” The plant asks the butterfly. “That’s ancient history,” the butterfly answers. “Why don’t you look at the present reality which is much more beautiful?” “How can I forget that past?” The plant insists. “You ate almost all my leaves. Had not my constant gardener discovered your ravage in time and removed you from my frail limbs, I would have been dead long before you emerged from your contemplation with beautiful wings.” “I’m sorry, my dear Nandiarvattam ji. Did I have a choice? The only purpose of the existence of caterpillars is to eat leaves. Eat and eat. Until we get into the cocoon and wait for our wings to unfold. A new reality to unfold. It's a relentless hunger that creates butterflies.” “Your new reality is my painful old history. I still remember how I trembled foreseeing my death. Death by a worm!” “I wish I could heal you with my kisses.” “You’re doing that, thank you. But…” “I know. It hurts, the history thing. I’...
10 comments
Read more