Word Nerd
jpalma@theguidon.com
Pessimism is not my default orientation. I’m a rather happy person with ideals and aspirations synonymous to Justin Bieber. And just like these other dudes, it’s pointless to believe in anything that might frustrate the thought of getting what you want. The self-destructive suicidals would be thrilled and just might file a renewal for their subscriptions to Murphy’s Law Magazine or Sh*t Happens Weekly.
Most people think pessimism means “hoping for the worst.” Just listen to the phrase’s inherent error. As of this writing, I haven’t gone deep enough into PH103 to grapple with a phenomenology of hope or anything. However, I like to think I still have my own understanding of what hoping generally means. You just might ask yourself why would someone “hope” for the “worst”? Granted, it could very well be a play on words that seeks to bend any self-respecting linguistic stickler to his breaking point. Guilty.
A closer estimate as to what the phrase means is probably “expecting the worst.” Suddenly a wider world of meanings and double-meanings flood into your consciousness and instantly compare hoping and expecting. Let me explain via pop culture. Luckily, I have seen just the right amount of movies and TV to elicit (hopefully) a he-sort-of-knows-what-he’s-blabbing-about response from you.
Star Wars Episode IV is also known as A New Hope, a fitting title considering the glorious melodrama that unfolded therein. Young Skywalker was to be trained in the ways of the Jedi and help the Rebels overcome the Empire. He was the Messiah who would bring balance to the Force. I’m not G-Luc but, in the film, I could see the difference between what it means to hope that Luke is the savior and to expect that he is.
Expectation implies a foreknowledge of the outcome one anticipates. For example, it’s midnight on a Friday night out. You expect a call from the parents. Though you hope not. You drop a potato chip on the floor and decide to risk the five-second rule by eating it anyway and expect to get sick. Though you hope not. Even as both instances are circumstantial, expectation thrives on what you know from past experiences where they have happened the way you expect them to.
Hope, meanwhile, hinges on what I understand to be the “will of the gods” or Fate. When “you hope not,” it’s as if you throw caution to the wind and let the cards fall where they may. Perhaps, it’s a sort of gambling. When Luke strapped himself into his X-Wing, I don’t think anyone was thinking, “Yeah, the kid will blow up the Death Star since he can bull’s-eye womp rats with his T-16 back home.” Realistically, they wouldn’t expect anything; but given that they had an armada of starfighters, they put some hope in their pilots—including Luke.
On the surface, it’s probably just all oversimplified. Allusions to the Classic Galactic Operatic were used, for crying out loud! Still, I like to think we know a lot more about pessimism than we did before we walked into the room. I expect you to have picked up a thing or three. Or at least I hope you understand the difference between the verbs I used.
