In Defense of Hope
Published at Marginalia Review of Books on August 16, 2016.
Hope gives us the nudge, or kick in the pants, we need. Hope requires us to learn to the embrace uncertainty over certainty, to recognize that the future is unknowable, and to admit that we have the power to change the world if we choose to act. The future is not set in stone, but it is malleable, porous, and shifting. The future contains a multitude of possibilities, some of them wild and not quite realized yet and some beyond what we can imagine right now.