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It is also important to consider the relation between Hope and Utopia. Ernst Bloch in "Principle of Hope" (1986) traces the human search for a wide range of utopias. Bloch locates utopian projects not only in the social and political realms of the well-known utopian theorists (Marx, Hegel, Lenin) but also in a multiplicity of technical, architectural, geographical utopias, and in multiple works of art (opera, literature, music, dance, film). For Bloch hope permeates everyday life and it is present in countless aspects of popular culture phenomenon such as jokes, fairy tales, fashion or images of death. In his view Hope remains in the present as an open setting of latency and tendencies.
Martin Seligman in his book Learned Optimism (1990) strongly criticizes the role of churches in the promotion of the idea that the individual has little chance or hope of affecting his or her life. He acknowledges that the social and cultural conditions, such as serfdom and the caste system weighed heavily against the freedom of individuals to change the social circumstances of their lives. Almost as if to avoid the criticism, in his book What You Can Change and What You Can't, he is careful to outline the extent that people can hold out hope for personal action to change some of the things that affect their lives.
More recently, psychologist Anthony Scioli (2006) has developed an integrative theory of hope that consists of four elements: attachment, mastery, survival, and spirituality. This approach incorporates contributions from psychology, anthropology, philosophy and theology as well as classical and contemporary literature and the arts.[3]
From socio-cognitive viewpoint, hope is closely related to cognitive decision-making and can be considered its critical factor, such as risk dependent danger . In real situations, human agent's decision depends on the comparison of his/her danger perception and the hope indicator, which can be assessed as a value proportional to the probability of an event and its expected outcome/payoff/benefits [4]
There also is some evidence to suggest that in adverse situations, hope may be worse than hopelessness for overall well-being. For example, people sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole adjust better to their situation than prisoners who retain the possibility of parole. Similarly, patients who underwent a permanent colostomy showed higher life satisfaction 6 months after the operation than those who underwent a potentially reversible colostomy.[5]
[edit] See also
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[edit] References
- , http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/hope hope. (n.d.). The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Retrieved March 18, 2008, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/hope
- , hope - Definitions from Dictionary.com
- , Scioli, A. (2006). Hope and Spirituality in the Age of Anxiety. In R. Estes (Ed.),Advancing Quality of Life in a Turbulent World. New York: Springer.
- , Adam Maria Gadomski, Risk Based Reasoning in Decision-Making for Emergency-Management. Proc. of SRA-Europe Annual Conference "Risk Analysis: Opening The Process", Paris, France,1998. see also: (ppt)
- , Krakovsky, Marina. "Hope Can Be Worse Than Hopelessness", The New York Times, 2007-12-09. Retrieved on 2007-12-31.
(Source: Wikipedia) |