Hope reminds us that the way things are…is precarious and in jeopardy. Hope reminds us not to absolutize the present, not to take it too seriously, not to treat it too honorably, because it will not last.

Because hope has such a revolutionary function, it is more likely that failure to hope—hopelessness—happens among the affluent, the prosperous, the successful, the employable, the competent, for whom the present system works so well.

We are the ones who are likely to be seduced into taking the present political, economic, intellectual system too seriously and to equating it with reality.