"Hope is not a plan"

Picture Courtey: ZA Tourist, Unsplash.com

Yesterday, our resident community group put up a form asking for details of people who had travelled abroad or were arriving to remain vigilant and prepared for the next few weeks in lieu of the virus outbreak. One of the residents did not agree with this approach of gathering information and objected to this initiative as “paranoia”. Many of us are also questioning the one-day curfew, wondering what will a day of social distancing achieve.

It is safe to assume that in today’s digital world and speed at which we receive information from social media and news channels, all of us are aware of the insidious nature of the enemy. Yet, people are putting themselves and others in harm’s way. The reasons range from hope to ignorance. I can deal with ignorance because through information one can turn an uninformed person into an informed person. Therefore, my worry is for the other lot who are simply living on hope.

It’s not uncommon to hear statements like, “I think this will help us stay safe”, or “ I hope this crisis passes over soon”. Wishful thinking and hope is good. It is an inextricable part of human nature and is generally perceived as a positive, almost essential motivating force. We all have the remarkable ability to face difficult circumstances and remain hopeful that things will turn around and get better. It is an admirable quality to stare death in the face and hope for a brighter future.

These hope-filled people come in two forms: those who have a plan with clear action steps and those who don’t. The latter can be called delusional. And it is this category of people that we need to be worried about the most, maybe as much as the current pandemic itself.

That is because, “Hope is not a plan”. Hope doesn’t turn the tide or magically reverse downward trends. German philosopher Nietzsche overstated the case: “Hope, in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.” We can better grasp his extraordinary pessimism by examining the downsides of hope according to a few experts like Jack Dunigan and Leon F Seltzer.

• It encourages sloppy thinking. Hope as a strategy rounds off the corners of life’s sharp edges. It edits the images we see so that only those proofs that prove our preconceived notions are seen and accepted. It is an inherent confirmation bias where we only pay attention to the data that supports our thinking, ignoring the evidence. For example, looking at the less than 500 numbers of cases reported in our country means we are doing well to fight the outbreak. We switch off when the specialist on the TV channel is sharing the low number of tests being carried out, thereby showing a false picture of the extent of the outbreak.

• It tends to ignore the past or at least minimize its lessons. This simply means denying negative outcomes that make you vulnerable to making mistakes. If you have traveled from a high-risk zone, for example, the probability of being a carrier is very high. Accepting this fate will optimize the chance of home quarantining.

• It inflates the positives, deflates the negatives, and therefore clouds the faculty to make intelligent choices/decisions and take intelligent action. For example, ticking all the boxes on low-risk individuals will give you a false sense of security that “it couldn’t happen to me.”

• It is like a prayer: wishing for something rather than more forcefully working towards it. It can be best understood as “moral cowardice” as suggested from Simon Critchley’s “Abandon (Nearly) All hope”, New York Times. This position often leads to passivity-as though if you only wish hard enough for a desired outcome such as an affirmative stance, like, "Let it just go away", alone that will maximize its possibility.

• It can encourage you to forfeit personal power and control. Passively hoping for a desired outcome can tantamount to relinquishing any responsibility for making it happen. Resignedly, you could be giving yourself the message that you can’t do anything about the situation when, quite possible, you actually could. For example, philosophizing about the inevitability of death and surrendering to an external force could encourage you to not take necessary precautions in safeguarding yourself and your community.

So if you proceed in your efforts without hope, independently striving to accomplish social distancing, you will be taking full responsibility for your future. And regardless of whether you succeed or fail in escaping the virus, you will be able to attest to or maybe even congratulate yourself for all the endeavor, zeal and persistence you put in your attempts. Putting your trust in hope can be extremely tempting right now but diligently applying yourself to what you can do to stay safe is a much more reliable way to overcome the spread of infection.

To conclude, its not bad to hope-if, that is, you hope wisely. Not socially distancing yourself or isolating yourself right now and hoping things will get better, is akin to jumping off a cliff in the hope that the wind will carry you to safer shores.

But, if you earnestly dedicate yourself to what you want to happen, not really trusting in hope but in your own tactical and prudent strategy, then hope may become redundant-and even be an impediment.