I think optimism might be what we are missing. I was recently thinking about how most people think about society and its ills and it's usually something like, "well things are really shitty in place x for reason y but there's nothing we can do about it." This usually ranges from pessimism about problems in our own neighborhoods or even households to problems across the world. We never feel like we can make the change, and that may be true (in many cases it definitely is) but is that reason to give up hope? Maybe it is reason not to waste effort in acting, but why can't we still maintain our hope or optimism about the future? (Part of me wonders if we are taught or conditioned into this general pessimism in order to keep the status quo but that seems like a whole different can of worms that I don't want to open).

If, five minutes ago, you asked me if I was an optimist, I would've said "yes, a wildly unrealistic optimist." That said, if you then asked me whether I think the poverty situation (which affects about 45 million people) in the U.S. would be dealt with in any significant way in the next 50 years, I'd probably say "No, there will probably be a shit load of people living under the poverty line in 50 years and probably nothing will change." Keep in mind, I said I was an optimist. So why is it that I have such little hope for these problems to be solved? I don't know. I do know that there are tons and tons of organizations working towards fixing this specific problem. It is something that people work at every day, and yet, I have no hope. From my interactions with people over the short span of my life, I've noticed they generally feel pretty much the same, very few people have hope.

I wonder if any successful liberation or rights movements would've been successful without the hope of the people behind them (supporting, acting, and leading). I don't mean to say that we all need to act in some way because then we get into the whole collective action problem with people trying to free ride off of the effort of others and that conversation has been had enough. For this discussion, I'd like to focus on just the question of whether hope alone can be effective or useful in changing things.

I'm not going to write a novel or anything because a) I haven't thought too much about it and b) I'd rather see what you all think. However, In my opinion, we need more hope. Maybe if we all just believe that we can get things done, the people who need to act and the people who need to lead will be able to do their jobs. Of course, none of this has any social scientific evidence (that I know of) and it's mostly just a thought I wanted to share. There's no harm (as far as I know) in having hope and being optimistic, and maybe it will help in the long run.