Hope. . . and its discontents

But what is truly sinister about the positivity cult is that it seems to reduce our tolerance of other people's suffering. [from "Pathologies of Hope"]

Having read (and loved) Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich's tale of her anonymous immersion in the world of minimum-wage America, I'd argue her 2007 Harper's essay "Pathologies of Hope" is seriously predicated on that earlier experience with the unglossy side of high capitalism. Going with the flow of consumer culture might make you feel better and look younger, but I guarantee it's having the opposite effect on your fellow human beings further down the supply chain.

I grew up in a faraway land called the 1990s. Until September 11th blew it out of the water, our generation's "where were you?" moment was April 8, 1994, the day Kurt Cobain was found dead of a self-inflicted shotgun wound. Along with Cobain, Vedder, Corgan, Reznor, and their imitators, we had Seinfeld, a love letter to self-conscious cynicism, as the other lynchpin of our culture. Computers were lame, back then, and no one wore happy poofy skirts, but it was cool to be tortured. This was fortunate for me, because, more than anyone I knew, my family life was a maelstrom and I was tortured anyway.

But that was then; that was before "the President wants you to buy this magazine."

As Ehrenreich relates in her essay, the cult of positivity destroys as many lives as it saves; telling the long-term unemployed or the seriously depressed that their mental attitude is at the root of their problems is "victim-blaming at its cruelest." The most basic fact of life is that existence is suffering. Nihilo-hedonism is one response, of course; the archpriest of that faith famously told an audience (after denying belief in astrology) :

I think it's a bunch of bullshit, myself. . . but I tell you this: I don't know what's gonna happen, but I'm gonna have my kicks before the whole shithouse goes up in flames.

[Jim Morrison, if you haven't guessed.]

And yet, hope somehow still sprung in my breast, back then, and it carried me out of there. Hope, real hope, is about idealism, the notion that what we do matters whether or not we're rewarded for it. It used to be called "dignity," as in "He died with dignity." Like anything else, it comes down to semantics (sigh).

Ehrenreich is right to decry petty hope, hope-for-hope's sake. Gandhi did not "hope" to bring down the British Empire. But as a little green man once said, "Try? There is no try. Do. . . or do not."

That's self help.