Bella Baxter : If I know the world I can improve it.
Harry Astley : You can't. This is the real point. Don't accept the lie of religion, socialism, capitalism. We are a fucked species. Know it. Hope is smash-able, realism is not. Protect yourself with the truth.
Bella Baxter : I realize what you are now Harry. Just a broken little boy who cannot bear the pain of the world.
Harry Astley : I suppose so.
This is an exchange from Poor Things, a movie I finally got around to viewing. Bella’s response was a mic drop moment for me, and it would seem for Harry too. Pessimism projected as a form of reality check truth is a defense mechanism to avoid feeling and managing the great weight and range of this world. Optimism too can become a shield- an intolerance to suffering smeared in positivity, casting those who challenge this false layer of “protection” as the problem rather than acknowledge the deep and daunting sickness in the overbearing system. Both aim to avoid heartbreak, but this hurt is an essential one, a reminder of our humanity.
And then there is hope…
In the words of Cornel West- “Hope is about making a leap beyond the evidence that is given to you. Optimism usually looks at the evidence and sees whether it is possible to infer that things are going to get better. Optimism oftentimes has to do with being a spectator. Whereas Hope is in the mess, in the muck, in the mire, in the funk. And it helps create new evidence. And so it’s dynamic. Hope is something that is much deeper than Optimism. And it’s no accident that Hope and Despair go hand in hand. Hope is a wrestling with the Despair over and over again but never allowing Despair to have the last word, to dampen your fire, to sustain your hope in your quest for truth, goodness, beauty, and maybe the Holy…. Hope is not just a virtue, it is a verb. You have to be Hope to really have Hope.”