Hope is the thing with feathers
– Emily Dickinson
I have hope. The cynic may scoff, the pragmatist plan, and the sinister forever scheme, but the hopeful feels the light that burns inside each of us. What will we do with this light? What world will we create? I believe that hope is a deep awareness that we are writing this grand story together. “We half create the world,” said Wordsworth. So, let us build a world that is good and joyful and wonderful.
I have hope for this world. I’ve heard that the sun will burn out in 4.2 billion years, so that’s not good. But until then, so much is possible.
I have hope for human beings, too. We may outlast this planet, or we may get taken out by an asteroid tomorrow. Either way, I have hope for our survival until the armageddon that destroys us. “A thing isn’t beautiful because it lasts,” said Vision.
I have hope for society, as well. Long have we battled the human condition, but our better angels prevail. So many people around the globe have become better off in so many ways over the last few hundred years.
I have hope for democracy – a simple and good principle that power should reside among the people. The principle of democratic government, over the past five hundred years, has spread across the Western world resulting in increased human rights for more people, greater opportunity for more people, and access to wealth for more people than ever before in history. Though fraught with corruption, bureaucracy, classism, sexism, racism, and colonialism, democratic governments fundamentally exist to maintain the distribution of power among the governed.
I have hope for our nation – the United States of America. This imperfect nation was born as an experiment in democratic government, and it was made great by that very principle. Over the course of the past two hundred and fifty slow, painful years, the system has worked to spread power and wealth across the population. The democratic experiment, a success.
I have hope for the future. But, we must wake up and take the wheel. We must make our economic system visible and transparent. We must examine how our current system is generating the current outcome, rapid wealth consolidation. We must understand how wealth consolidation equals power consolidation. We must, once again, choose the best of our angels and profess anew our dedication to democracy as our primary guiding principle as a nation. The very purpose of a democratic government is to keep power among the governed. Thus, we must change our economic policies to create a system that results in a wide distribution of wealth across the people of the nation. This is how we save American Democracy.