From: "Brent Allsop" <allsop@fc.hp.com>
> The assumption here is obviously that the hope is in something
> that is not true. But if someone invests in the stock market, with
> the hope that it will go higher, this is quite justified and therefore
> something completely different. On average, people that invest in the
> stock market are not "disappointed". Given the last 15 years of my
> investments, I'm certainly not disappointed.
Right, and so there's no reason to "hope" for anything when you've invested
rationally. It's simply a reasonable expectation. Like tomorrow's sunrise, we
don't need to "hope" for it, we just have a reasonable expectation that it
will occur on schedule.
> Another, I'd call passive or inactive hope. This would be a
> kind of a lazy hope. For example, hoping that some god will
> eventually come down and give us immortality, rather than doing the
> effort ourselves to try to achieve immortality. As you said:
>
> > Hope is for children. Determination marks the adult.
>
> The child hopes the parent will do it for him. But the parent
> is determined to do what is required, in hopes that such efforts will
> bring what is hoped for.
Sure, except that you can discard the hope meme in favor of reasonable
expectation (again).
> I agree, having those kinds of hopes are a common human error
> which has no redeeming value. But, when a person makes the effort to
> be crynically preserved, when someone donates money to the American
> Cancer Society, in the hope that it will accomplish some good, that
> kind of hope, even though some of it occasionally doesn't always turn
> out to be what we'd "hoped" for, such is the driving force that has
> given us everything humanity has ever accomplished right?
>
> Are we in agreement?
I think so, yes.
I've already made too many mistakes on this list to presume that a mere
semantic correction (or adjustment) can make much difference. What you've
written here suffices to convince me that raw native intelligence can overcome
the foibles of using language. Yes, "hope springs eternal," and all that; and
you've read between the lines enough to surmise that the intent, rather than
the dictionary definition of a word is what matters. It occurs to me that we
are in perfect agreement, and that the only thing that really separates our
perspectives is the proprietary feelings we have about words themselves.
Humanity needn't expect (or hope for) precise communication, just the
recognition that we all perceive reality with slightly different emotions
about the experience. The important thing is to acknowledge that it's all the
same identical reality.
"May we all live in eternity's sunrise,
on the seashore of endless worlds."
--Blake/Tagore
--J. R.
Useless hypotheses:
consciousness, phlogiston, philosophy, vitalism, mind, free will, qualia,
analog computing, cultural relativism
Everything that can happen has already happened, not just once,
but an infinite number of times, and will continue to do so forever.
(Everything that can happen = more than anyone can imagine.)
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon May 28 2001 - 10:00:00 MDT