January 16, 2002 �What is Hope?

Today we are going to talk about hope.� People have been asking throughout the last quarter, �Where is hope?�� It seems as though we have been reading quite a few �depressing� books last quarter, and now we must try to find the good and the �hope� in what we have been presented.�

What are different people�s ideas about what hope is, or where it lies?�

People- that they will be strong and powerful to make a change

Faith

Wishful Thinking

Switching our perspective from negative to positive.�

Implies that there is a need for improvement.�

A weed growing out of the crack in a sidewalk

Something very solid; it keeps you going

A crutch to help us believe that our needs or wants will be manifested

Recognizing positive aspects of the world and people and environment; seeing that there is an inherent goodness throughout life.

An end to fear

Propeller of dreams

Desire to overcome suffering

Belief that human kind and life are based on inner-cooperativeness.�

John:� An important aspect of hope that I found in Refuge and Periodic Table is that it is not wishful thinking; there is the possibility that it will happen.� How did the characters in these books continue to live productive lives in the face of great odds?� That is where hope seems to come from.� It is very possible to get overwhelmed by things such as environmental problems; when you see the statistics, it�s easy to not care, or to say that there is nothing I can do.� That is not hope.� Hope is the opposite.�

Rita: Throughout Refuge, the book started with the problem of cancer, but it grew to higher and greater problems, worldwide, family wide, etc.� Both authors seemed to describe both how they literally shifted themselves, they moved.� Both of these writers talk about writing as a means for finding hope.� There is a shift in their lives where they find the ability to write the stories, and in that the find hope.�

John:� Some things to look for in a book are signs of hope.� What do they do to actively try to make a change, to find hope?� Levi speaks about freedom, the ability to make a choice, and this is where he is finding hope.� He would much rather have an easy life, but that struggle he is going through is his freedom; it is a sign of hope.�

What is community?

Matt:� We in our society have an extraordinarily high feeling for the idea of individual.� We are indivisible, we are rights bearers.� These are very powerful ideas in the American mind.� When we get old, we are not quite so autonomous.� When you are a parent, there is a certain amount of loss of autonomy.� Most of the people in this class are at a fairly high level of freedom; they have broken away from the community that raised them, made choices that separated them.� But the reality is we are very obligated to each other.� It is out of our engagement with others that we shape our ideas and beliefs and understandings.� If that weren�t true you wouldn�t be here in school.� Although we prize our autonomy, much of who we are is formed by our interactions with others.� And it is not solely with particular people, but rather those people being bearers of ideas and thoughts from the world.� People who have told you how things in the world worked; helped you see that there was a potential pattern.� People who made you think about what actions in the world might mean.� There are people who help Levi make sense of the world.� Hope is a variable quality of communities.� It seems at times in American society that hope is a very thin quality.� �I will go to school so hopefully I can make money so I can hopefully drive a fast car.�� We also have a very deeper feeling of hope.� For example, a hope in democracy; that we are able to govern ourselves without a dictator.� There is a very positive understanding of hope in Martin Luther King�s writing.� At many different levels there are very different ideas of hope.�

When we think about community there are very distinct ideas.� It holds certain qualities, such as place and history of people.� Or people who have a strong sense of community together.� We have a notion of community as being a group of people who living collectively makes something matter.� Why are we calling these things communities?� It�s not always obvious.� Another way of thinking about community is thinking about it as a variable aspect, a quality of different kinds of social groups.� There are all kinds of social groups, from something like McDonalds to something like a commune.� To what extent do these social groups manifest social communities?� Think of something with a clear goal as an organization on one end, to a group of people living together without specific goals or ends.� This is the spectrum of people living together.�

Selznick: What ideas and ideals are manifested by the history of a community?� For example, our experience as a country.� We have ideas about freedom and justice that we hope to believe that they come out of our history, and we use those ideas as comparisons to current ideas and ideals.� As a group of people do this, the closer they move to a community.

We are socialized into identification as a part of a community.� The feel good feeling that we are all one is a problematic feeling.� For example the Germans united under Hitler felt strong in the fact of being a community.� If you over identify you can lose your touch to the rest of the world.

Mutuality:� based on the idea of interdependence/reciprocity.� If I do something for you, you will do something back for me.� To what extent are there different ways you can engage and identify yourself with?�

Autonomy:� the idea of people being able to foster their specific needs and wants.� You get choose how you are and how you act in those groups. Mass mobilization is not a sign of participation; of a healthy community.� Participation reflects and sustains community.��