Passive and Active Hope 169 

Nietzsche reminded us long ago that not all goals are worth pursuing. For instance, an ascetic ideal is a goal in which life “turns against itself” and “denies itself”, for such a life is merely a bridge for the religious hope of the ascetic priest.477 _{But people still pursue it to}

overcome their existential crisis that life has no meaning at all. To cope with this meaninglessness, no matter what that goal is, “he needs a goal – and he will sooner will nothingness than not will at all”.478 _{This kind of hope is not restricted to religion. We can}

observe it also in the promise of delayed gratification which is common in modern middle- class values. In this version, one tolerates the immediate suffering and social inequality for the goal of future social upward mobility. Suffering is inevitable in the journey, and joy lies far away at the top of the ladder or the end of the tunnel.

This joy-deferral or passive hope is often questioned for its political implications; it encourages passivity and limits our imagination of future possibilities. Braune479 _uses

consumerism as an example of this. She argues that consumerism packages objects one after

477 _{Nietzsche, F. (2012). The Genealogy of Morals. P. 83.} 478 _{Ibid. Pp. 67 – 68.}

479 _{Braune, J. (2014). Erich Fromm’s Revolutionary Hope: Prophetic Messianism as a Critical Theory of}

170

another, through which commodities function as future goals for people to desire. However, to her, the consumers are passive – what they are aiming for are merely someone else’s design. In her words, they merely want “to ‘drink in’ the world rather than transform it”,480

and this displaces “the experience of creativity and of being in relationship with others”.481

These objects distract our attention from the present social problems, and discourage us from improving our self and the social world. As a result, social inequality is tolerated and the status quo is legitimated.

Likewise, Hage proposes that capitalism “hegemonises the ideological content of hope so it becomes almost universally equated with dreams of better-paid jobs, better life- style, more commodities”.482 _{Ahmed also summarizes a list of good life goals, including “a}

stable relationship, a successful job, a beautiful house, a child”.483 _{Most often these goals are}

articulated with one type of dream – upward mobility. This upward-looking dream becomes the shared cultural imagination that people use to make sense of their ways of social mobility. Acquiring or accumulating certain things and reaching this or that milestone is linked to the sense of movement on the social ladder. By observing these benchmarks, people can make sense of the direction of their movement – upward, downward or horizontal.

Nietzsche, Spinoza and Fromm proposed another form of hope – hope as active and life-affirming. In this tradition, hope is not merely a noun for the belief in achieving socially assigned goals and acquiring the subsequent benchmarks of the good life. Rather, hope assumes a social subject that embodies effort, devotion and investment. It should also be understood as a verb that represents the active action of creativity and courage to connect the

480 _{Ibid. P. 118.}

481 _Ibid.

482 _{Hage, G. (2003). Against Paranoid Nationalism: Searching for Hope in a Shrinking Society. Pp. 13 – 14.} 483 _{Ahmed, S. (2010). The Promise of Happiness. Duke University Press.}

171

social with one’s life.484 _{Drawing from Spinoza, contrary to passive hope of acquiring}

external objects, Fromm suggests that hope should be understood as a person’s will “to develop his reason and his objectivity of a sense of himself that is based on the experience of his productive energy”.485 _{A sane society is one that furthers people’s capacity to love, to}

work and create, Fromm advocated. And if hope is not a static prediction of the future as delayed gratification or ascetic ideal implies, then it involves a temporality that views the present moment as “a state of pregnancy”486 _{from which “possibilities for the future are}

inscribed into the conditions of the present”.487 _{This sense of time is open-ended, like Bloch’s}

insistence, “hope must be unconditionally disappointable”.488 _{The radical open-endedness}

urges people to bring the present and the future together, because what we do and invest in today helps materialize our future.

Hage points to the joy that one receives from achieving betterment in this active hope. “Joy comes from a simple change to the better in the state of the body. That is, it is an

experience of reaching a higher stage in the capacities to act, associate and deploy oneself in or with one’s environment”.489 _{Sennett’s idea of craftsmanship}490 _{can help us further}

elaborate this perspective. In his conception, a craftsman (like a cellist) gains self-realization through devoting time, effort and affect into an external, objectified work in a disinterested attitude – doing something good for its own sake. For instance, a cellist imagines his/her future work in the process of practicing and making. He/she also carefully examines and

484 _{Braune, J. (2014). Pp. 132 – 134.}

485 _{Fromm, E. (1994). “Some Beliefs of Man, in Man, for Man.”} 486 _{Fromm, E. (2011). The Revolution of Hope.}

487 _{Grossberg, L. (2005) Caught in the crossfire: kids, politics, and America's future. P. 309.} 488 _{Bloch, E. (1998). “Can Hope be Disappointed?” P. 341.}

489 _{Hage, G. (2002). P. 152.}

490 _{Sennett, R. (1998). The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New}

172

evaluates the finished product, and reflects on the quality of one’s skills. Thus, craftwork becomes the object that accumulates time, effort and affect. It is the crystallized labor and the objectified self that closely connects the past, present and future in a hermeneutic circle.491

Through devoting to and investing in the craftwork, one enjoys betterment by embodying the improved skills. He/she gains dignity and establishes character from the objective evaluation of the quality of work that represents him/herself. People can then expect future improvement in their ability and capacity within such a society.