Hopeful Imagining

Contrary to what my husband may think, I really am an optimist – at least in the long term perspective. I think we can bring about good in this world. As one of my favorite lines from Lord of the Rings goes, "there is some good in this world and it's worth fighting for." As hard and hopeless as it might sometimes seem, I think it's worth working towards a positive vision.

That said I understand the reluctance of some to affirm efforts to present such a positive vision of the future. These efforts can come across as insincere – mocking instead of hopeful. We believe another world is possible, but don't know how to cope when glimpses of that world invade our. We might smile at the ideas, but are wary of utopian visions of the future.

For example when the Yes Men a few years ago marked the 20th anniversary of the Bhopal Diaster by creating an elaborate hoax where posing as a representative of Dow Chemicals on the BBC a Jude Finisterra announced that Dow was finally accepting full responsibility for the incident and offering a multibillion dollar compensation to the hundreds of thousands of people still suffering from the accident. This is what the world had been waiting for for two decades as opposed to the cover-up and denial of responsibility that actually occurred. The name Jude Finisterra – the saint of impossible causes and the ends of the earth. Fitting. The response though? Dow share prices dropped 4.2% in 23 minutes (fully recovered later in the day). The BBC issued an apology to Dow and the Yes Men were chastised for bringing false hope to the Indians. So the harbingers of hope, those who dare to image a better world, are chastised while those that should be taking responsibility are apologized to.

Another great examples of hopeful imagining is the Jim Carrey movie Fun with Dick and Jane. After losing his job in an Enron like company collapse, Carrey's character pulls a Yes Men like stunt by holding a press conference announcing that the company's CEO will personally reimburse the retirement funds of the jobless employees who lost it all. Surprised at his house with the news, surrounded by cameras and people thanking him, the CEO has to go along with the scheme. This is the way things should have been after Enron – the fair and positive world we desired but didn't get.

Same thing with the video to U2's The Saints are Coming. One sees images of Katrina ravaged New Orleans, but then fake headlines of "US Troops Redeployed from Iraq to New Orleans" flash across the screen. Images of bombers dropping aid packages and rescuing children from the floods along with the mesmerizing lyrics of "the saints are coming" do inspire hope. This is how it should have been (and if you read some of the 20,000+ comments on YouTube, what some people actually think did happen). But then the lyrics remind us that "I say no matter how I try I realize there is no reply" and the video ends with the sign "not as seen on TV." Is it a hopeful future or simply a reminder of how bad things are?

So what do you do with such hopeful imaginings? Do you laugh at their naivete? Roll your eyes and say "that will never happen"? Or appreciate the encouragement in envisioning a better world? I've personally come to enjoy these positive visions. I like the reminders of the way things could be. Having something concrete to grasp onto, albeit fictional, helps with the whole moving forward in the quest for justice thing.

So yes, I'm an optimist in my own quirky way.