Hope moves mountains: An expert reveals why a better future only has a chance

In difficult times she doesn't have it easy. The hope is then our greatest source of motivation. The historian Philipp Blom explains what an enormous strength in her in his new book "Hope: about a clever relationship with the world". Because only withyou can start moving. Wore others. And for oneMake strong! In an interview, Blom says in an interview how this works and why we need hope more than ever.

Philipp Blom:In the best case, it can allow us and encourage us to continue under incredible and unspeakable circumstances. Not to give up and, despite everything, to construct something that is good and human. If you don't hope for stupid things, then you live with confidence, I think many better than without.

P.B.:That is a good question. For me, hope is not something you have or not. But actually an attitude that can be cultivated cleverly. And of course hope is also a kind of will to live. Hope is to stand up for something meaningful, which is important to you without knowing whether you will be successful or not. Generations of people have failed with their hopes and still advanced the world a little further and caused positive things. Living a hopeful life means deciding that it is right and important to make yourself strong for something good, even if you may not experience success yourself. It is much more about designing the way you go so that it is good and enriches us.

P.B.:Of course, you can of course also be hopeless. This is not a moral misconduct. But I think, especially in difficult situations, hope is very important and helpful. The threats are immense, from climate change to the increasing development of technologies that we can no longer master and understand. But behind our fears there is always the assumption that it either comes to the very big apocalypse or that we did it at some point. And frankly we know that this is not the case. You never made it. But the important thing is how we now live and deal with each other. How we invest together in a good future without knowing whether this will work. Then it is to other people in a new generation to build something different. So history is actually more of a swing than finally finding eternal peace. Therefore, one should not fall for this pattern of thought apocalypse versus paradise. Our world doesn't work that way. I think if you freed yourself from these thought patterns and question yourself a bit, you can see that hope can give you a constructive, strong energy to stand up for something meaningful. And so you ultimately convert your own reality positively.

P.B.:Yes, especially in wealthy and peaceful democracies like in Germany, we have forgotten to hope. We have forgotten to imagine that the future could be different and better. And that it is worth working for it. This is exactly what this is about. Because the tragedy of our societies at the moment is that hope always has something to do with the future. What many want at the moment is mainly to prevent the future. We want everything to stay the way it is. We all have intuition: it doesn't get any better, we won't get richer, it won't be more peaceful either. That means, please no change. Instead, we want to go back where it was supposedly better.

P.B.:Yes and of course especially on the right edge, which unfortunately is no longer a border. This attitude has now arrived in the middle of society. But I am a historian and one of the few things I have learned: there is no reverse gear in history. And if I were thinking that I looked a lot cool at the age of 25 and that I would put on and behave again like back then, I would at best make myself ridiculous. You can't go back, you can only go forward. And you can either grasp or suffer the changes that happen anyway.

P.B.:In consumer societies we are so incredibly used to that we have certain rights and that we are entitled to certain things. Unfortunately, this is not the case. First of all, rights are always only something that we give each other and therefore have to guarantee again and again. Otherwise they will be gone at some point. But the world does not owe us anything. Especially not a perfect life. But I suspect that many people go through life like this. Then the world is of course terribly unfair and you are gripping into the big trap and becoming a victim. Ultimately, this is an attitude that pushes you into total passivity. You are no longer responsible for anything, nothing more to blame, only have rights and claims. Democracy is really swimming.

P.B.:Naturally. The Nazis hoped for the victory of the men's breed. That is a terrible hope. If I have cancer and rely on the fact that my naturopaths with incense candles and herbal teas defeat the whole here in two weeks, that's a stupid hope.

P.B.:In desperate times, of course, it is easier to hope that the situation will not stay the way it is now. But that it could get better. And if you already have it pretty good, that's exactly what is difficult.

P.B.:Religious people are already included, so to speak. They have the great luxury of being able to say that everything is terrible in the now, but that after my death in the next life the sky will definitely come. If you don't believe in something like that, it gets a little more complicated.

P.B.:Yes, we are responsible for our own values ​​and principles and of course that makes the whole thing a bit more fragile. But that is part of the life of an enlightened person in a democracy. You have to answer your own opinion yourself and question it from time to time. Not to rest on his own opinions because they feel good. Quite the opposite. If something feels really good, it is a good moment to be a bit skeptical and hook up.

P.B.:Right, that's very important. Because the alternative would be a life with insurance policies, helmet and elbow protectionists, in which you try nothing, do not take any risks, do not risk failure. Do you think that is a better life? Definitely not. This is the only reason why we can create something that wasn't there before. Can learn and develop us further. The Austrian writer Robert Musil pointed out so beautifully that there is a sense of possibility in addition to the sense of reality. This means that instead of being concreted into the facts as they are, there is a scheme of possibilities that shows your whole life in a different light. Let us assume that they fall in love immortal, have fantastic sex, can talk wonderfully, like to travel together and so on. They think of a common future. And then one of them becomes skeptical and starts to google. How big are the chances of success of long -term relationships? Maybe six percent. If you had six percent chances to cross the street alive, you would never do it. Nevertheless, we always get hopeful of love. And I think we live for this six percent.

P.B.:For me it has something craftsmanship, active and collective. It is difficult to do alone. Like all good things in life. We are all part of something, and you contribute something and create what wasn't there before. No matter whether music, art or sport. So you have to create a positive community to change reality. And that is a beginning of hope for me. Good intentions alone are not enough, you also have to actively try to participate and contribute something.

P.B.:We live in a world of so many abstractions and are pushed much more into abstraction by online life. For me, the relationship between online life and analog life such as the relationship between pornography and sex. One looks like the other, but it is not. To really live, to experience yourself physically and to perceive yourself in analog space as a living person, you need other people. Encounters that do not arise from algorithms that tell me what I see and what the world around around me looks like. If someone stands in the analogue body that is really difficult, you can't just wipe it away, but have to deal with it. It is not about demonizing new technologies. But to ask yourself intelligently: What does it do with me and us? How does it change my relationship with the world to my own body, how I stand in the world and how I deal with other people? These are important questions that everyone has to answer for themselves. The technology is much further than the social processes and institutions. In order to deal with threats such as artificial intelligence or tweets from Elon Musk, you have to anchor yourself in the analog world and create analog meeting rooms in our democracies. It is important that people meet real people.

P.B.:I think we just have to stink against it! And don't let us push in any commercial bogus world. We cannot refuse to this new technologies, we cannot go back to the idyllic past where everything was better. But given the digital world that sucks us in, it becomes all the more important to feel ourselves as physical people and to deal with other physical people. That's why we have to create closeness. That you can do everything together, if only a bit and for a moment, that's hope for me.

P.B.:The many young activists and scientists that I meet. Great and inspiring people. We are not lacking money or technologies. We actually have everything to cope with immense challenges such as climate change. We lack a bit of political will, but there are such great people who develop new methods and technologies and create communities to drive something forward together. That gives me really great hope. We live in difficult times that become even more difficult. But we must not forget that most people have lived in tragic times - with wars, famines and senseless deaths. In the past, you cut yourself while cooking and may have died of blood poisoning. It was a life full of uncertainty, full of suffering and pain. And yet people have created great things. That's why I believe that we too can live a meaningful life.