Thought on Hope

[soon2bepro]

"(...) an emotion designed specifically to overwhelm logic and reason (...). Hope; It is the quintessential human delusion; simultaneously the source of your greatest strenght and your greatest weakness" -the Architect, speaking to Neo (The Matrix: Reloaded, 2003)

I absolutely agree with this (all of it).

Discuss.

[Nut4Dawgs]

I don't consider hope to be an emotion. A state of mind maybe. I don't think it's "designed to overwhelm logic and reason." It definitely can be what a person wants to happen, in spite of everything that logic and reason points to as probability.

Sometimes I think it can just be a simple desire/wish. I hope that sucker didn't hit his ________. I hope I get that raise, etc., etc.

I can see it as a weakness if all you do is hope - if you don't take actions available to you to achieve what you desire.

[soon2bepro]

Maybe I should add, he's talking about acting on hope. (this is what happens in the movie).

(I think hope is an emotion, but it doesn't matter much)

[Brom]

All emotions overwhelm logic and reason, not just hope.

[soon2bepro]

Good point Brom /images/graemlins/smile.gif... I was thinking about that too, but, well, hope seems to do the best work at it, making us somehow expect that things that we see no reason to happen, will. This is usually because of another emotion that makes us want that thing to happen.

The point in the quote where it says hope is simultaneously the source of our greatest strenght and greatest weakness, is that we, through hope, will usually do things that will lead us to failure (and at a rational level we know they will), just because we hope they'll turn up differently. But in the same way, we can accomplish things that an entirely rational being with our same level of intelligence and knowledge couldn't, because we can go beyond the things that we are certain to happen and accomplish things purely by "luck", the luck of the unknown, obviously

In this sense, hope is the quintessential human delusion, and it's only purpose is to overwhelm reason /images/graemlins/smile.gif