stamp 202512071710
Is hope our friend or our enemy?
Related
- I found the question posed in The Planet Crafter game’s Toxicity DLC. The story behind it is that we peek into the beginnings of Sentinel Corp’s Planet Crafter program. The first volunteers were hopeful pioneers, not bargaining convicts yet (if I understand the story well). However, a member of the program poses the question in their journal: is hope our friend or our enemy? The quest of single-handedly terraforming a planet is so huge with so slim chances of success that it’s basically suicide. So in volunteering for it with the hope of success, hope rather seems to be an enemy of the individual.
- I heard it somewhere (source? maybe the Behavior Panel? sounds like them) that in captivity, the prisoners who tied their hopes into deadlines like “by next Christmas, I’ll be together with my family” or “I’ll celebrate my 40th birthday at home” did worse than the ones who made peace with the reality of their situation that there is no hope on the horizon.
- Harari said in his book Sapiens that humans are not made for happiness, since happiness has no evolutionary value. A constantly and perfectly happy individual won’t go out seeking food or pleasures that lead to reproduction. They just are, until they aren’t anymore. So happiness can be just as detrimental as despair.