Hope


We need hope to exist, unless we have no desires then we need no hope, but by and large we also need desires.
If we have no hope then we begin to destroy ourselves, maybe through drugs, carelessness, stress, anxiety or neglect, eventually we will make ourselves ill and then we will die.

So when people find themselves in what may look like a hopeless situation, most of them still find and cling onto hope, though it's often vain hope, it is a necessity for life.
But hope can be extremely dangerous, it is the easiest thing in the world to be exploited and manipulated, it is the thing people most use to delude themselves with, and when a false hope is destroyed the reaction against it can be equally damaging.

Sometimes people need to find friends and mentors, maybe there's no-one really looking out for them or giving them good advice, it's easy for them to fall into bad company, they pin their hopes on being part of a group that they do not realise that they should not be a part of and through peer pressure become a danger to others and themselves.

During the holocaust hope cost many people their lives, many were far too slow to believe the stories filtering out from the camps and the ghettos and sites of mass murder, many believed that people were not capable of such things or that the allies would not allow it to happen, Some thought only German Jews were affected, some thought it was only Polish Jews, After every deportation the remaining people were told this was the last deportation, the more pessimistic were more likely to avoid the camps, but all the same those that clung on to some sort of hope that could actually be kept up when inside the camps were the ones who had the strength to survive longer.

When people lose hope in how they are governed eventually they seek a tyrant to impose order, this is in many ways rational, anarchy is not a good state to be in, but it is ugly and when people put too much hope in tyranny things become more ugly.

There is a pattern that has been repeated frequently across modern history, the old order collapses or is destroyed, very quickly a new order is created along much more modern lines, this new order fails miserably also very quickly, the people are left in bad conditions, foreign enemies smell blood and start moving in ominously.

It seems like the people have nowhere left to turn, then from somewhere comes a charismatic leader, he defies both the weakness, blindness and stupidity of the new order and the decadent failure of the old order, he is willing to stand up against foreign aggression and unite most of the country behind him, he is competent and eloquent and forceful, many people flock to him, many don't like him but have been let down by everyone else already, so where can they turn?
Only this new leader can inspire widespread hope so he quickly gathers momentum, so then they take power, and then things start getting better, the chaos and anarchy is brought under control, the foreign powers start backing off a bit, for the ordinary person life gets better, of course they are pleased.
But after a few years it turns out their glorious leader is actually a malignant psychopath and now it's too late to stop them from unleashing mass destruction, and as he is their only hope perhaps they don't even want to.

Revolutionary France did not follow exactly this pattern but there were definitely variations on this theme, giving us Robespierre and Napoleon, it is what happened with Mao and the communists in China, the Mensheviks didn't get much of a chance, but it is more or less what happened during the Russian revolution in 1917, you could say it applies to Libya though Gaddafi probably wasn't a psychopath initially,  it is definitely what happened in Germany after WWI, Rhodesia kind of skipped the middle stage and became Zimbabwe with Mugabe in charge, the list could go on.


Again you see the same pattern in Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union, the people were pleased, they were going to become a pro-western, prosperous liberal democracy, what they got was a catastrophe, so of course they elect a stronger more independent leader, maybe he has a habit of killing people who don't agree with him, but that sort of behaviour is nothing new and he reduces  corruption (but is still corrupt) and things get better, liberal democracy failed, communism failed, the Tsars failed all in under a century, apart from Putin what else is there?
The opposition would have a difficult task anyway, it is harder if they are in prison or dead.

In Ukraine the Euromaidan revolution lacked a strong leader, but it occurred because people had fixed their hopes on Europe, but perhaps not quite in the right way...
Maybe there was too much violence and too much fascism, in fact there was too much violence and too much fascism...
It seems they want to be western (though they are not) but not so much liberal and western.

Whatever their hopes are, it's clear many of them are ill-founded based on the results of the past, it's quite a desperate situation, so where should they turn when Russia has a long and continuing history of doing their best to destroy them?

For the Jews when they had been let down by everyone, it is not shocking that most would turn to Zionism, especially those that without it would be dead or homeless, for the Palestinians obviously this created a problem, where is the hope?

The problem everywhere is people need hope, but too many cannot find it so they chose empty hopes or no hopes at all, I am afraid soon this will lead to a cataclysm.

Without hope it is hopeless.

But there is hope that is not in vain, it is very old hope but somehow neglected, if people put their hope in acting with humanity towards everyone, in justice towards everyone with empathy towards everyone (even if you must kill them) this would not be a weakness it would be a strength, it is not the secret to immortality but it is the recipe for improving morale and self-esteem, gaining respect, creating order, gaining friends and discrediting and demoralising those that don't share those ideals and if you can empathise with an enemy you have a better knowledge of their weaknesses.

This ideal is something to stick to even if it may leave you all on your own, if people want to fight and are too scared to fight this fight then they are clearly cowards and should be told this. 

These ideals the West has not always applied, but when they have been applied they have served us very well, but now in the West and all over the world these ideas are falling out of fashion.

Obviously sometimes you have to harm or kill people to prevent them doing the same to others, sometimes it seems to be impossible not to hurt innocent people along the way, how can you tell the difference between being cruel to be kind and self-defence and just being cruel?
The first step is to ask yourself this question and then you must ask yourself this question again, and again and again and never stop asking yourself this question, you should never celebrate the deaths of ordinary people and you should never turn a blind eye to suffering around you even if you can do nothing.


For some reason simply telling people to be nice seems radical.

But there is hope.