Is hope a bad thing?

Question:i read somewhere that hope is like poison which welcomes disappointment..what do you think about it ?

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: i read somewhere that hope is like poison which welcomes disappointment..what do you think about it ?

Philosophy, the truth, reality - they are all subjective perspectives and different for each person. If you are pessissmistic you might write something like "hope is like poison which welcomes dissappointment" [OR is it a positive comment - see below]. Its a witty line but I try never to let wit overcome wisdom. If you interpret that line as being negative about hope- it has some truth to it in the sense that any one who hoped and lost can look back bitterly at things in that way (the author of that comment probably might have been stung).

But my truth, is that hope is a transient thing which relates to a future event, you would hope its an event that one doesn't know the inevitable outcome to or it turns into delusion. Hope is something positive people muster and encourage in others, its what cynics need in times of crisis.

I live by hope. On a rugby field I am unrelenting whether winning or losing. I have been 50 nil down and firing the boys to fight back. I suppose use of hope is the architecture of the possible, and belief in it. England would not be free (nor the world as we know it) without the hope of one man - Winston Churchill - against all odds he demanded hope from a nation. We all go to movies to be in the presence of hope and ultimately hope in that movie to see it actualise, to see it be vindicated.

Hope is a triumph of the human spirit and the character of the individual. Think jews who escaped nazi concentration camps. The nerd who gets the prom queen. Anything is possible, and so hope is eternal. Wild generalisations I know but so was the poison comment.

I understand what that comment is getting at - that hope in a already defeated situation numbs you like morphine so that when the end does come its not so painful - hence the metaphoric use of the word "welcomes".

No - as far as I am concerned hope is one of the greatest things in this world. Even by the way I interpret the line you quoted in the above paragraph, hope is a good thing.

Philosophy can sometimes get too carried away with intellectualisation of the non-existent. That is, creating paradyms of things that don't exist - like Warhol did. Things that exist are finite. Those that don't are infinite. Philosophy goes way off track when it over looks simple truths- such as that hope is good. We should just accept that intuitively. Perhaps they come to us via intuition, instinct, emotion etc and not logic. But we KNOW they are true. The fundamental strength AND flaw of philosophy is that it is confined to the logical. Hope is cannot be analysed with logic alone.

Its as simple as this to me - for all the reasons above - and simply because it is what it is - hope is good.

hope is never a bad thing. sometimes it hurts when what you hope for never comes true but you should never stop hopeing out of fear.

Realistic hopes yes. But pie in the sky hopes that are not attainable might be another issue all together. Generally Hope is a very important thing.

one should hope and pray for good things, but if dreams dont realize then u shouldnt become tooo disaapointed and lose all hope then.. u should continue to strive for what u want with hardwork effort and sincerity

Nope.But sometimes you should not keep high hope unless you are sure because you can hurt yourself(mentally) and cry on the bed.

I agree with mr. K - as long as hope is not pie in the sky hope then it is a wonderfull thing! We would be nothing without hope because without hope there would be no dreams and without dreams, we would be just going through the motions of life without living it

I disagree, without hope there is despair.

only thing for sure is if you never try, you will not get it done. So if hope makes you try the impossible, that's the only reason you will ever succeed against impossible odds. Should you try against impossible odds? Well that depends on the potential payoff vs the risk. Some things you have no choice tho.. you have to try. and that would surly be a dismal task without hope.

To say hope is a bad thing is to assume that the actual action of hoping causes bad things to happen.

However, it is not the act of hope that ruins peoples lives it is the reaction that people have to hope not working that is bad. It is the measures that people take in an attempt to magnify hope that can be seen as "futile".

But the actual act of hope, or wishful thinking, is not bad. Its just optimistic.

Hope is the indispensable ingredient in all liberal thought. To look at the misery of the world and ask yourself how people can rise about it - that takes hope.

Hope is like battery acid in the eyes of the sneering right wing - supporters of the dark and dangerous lies of this Bush Administration.

Nope

hope is all some people have in life.even if it could turn out to be pointless in the end,if it gets a person through a difficult time then it is useful and therefore a good thing.

No. Hope is the opposite of despair. You can achieve alot of things off the back of hope, while despair leads to inertia.

Without hope we have nothing.

someone once wrote "i can live with my own despair but not with someone elses hope"