Florida has had quite a storm season. Two major hurricanes in as many weeks. My heart goes out to those affected by Helene and Milton. My family and I were very fortunate in both events, everyone is safe, healthy, and relatively unaffected. That said, there is a spirit of hope that follows these events that I find incredibly inspiring and philosophically interesting. The calm and resolve after a storm is a truly awe inspiring phenomenon. These communities have been beaten down by an unseen force and yet they come together to turn a tragedy into a comeback story. I cannot help but ask a few questions: “To what extent is hope the power behind this phenomenon?,”  “What gives us the power to stand up when we’ve been knocked down?,” and “How and to what effect can we control the narrative about the events that happen to us?” 

Ultimately, these are questions that skirt the boundaries between free-will and identity, two distinctly philosophical areas with a rich written tradition. And, believe it or not I, your friendly, if not humble, neighborhood philosopher have some thoughts on these issues. Let’s start by setting up the scope of the conversation. 

I will not be discussing the ethical, particularly buddhist and stoic, implications of hope; but rather exploring hope as an epistemic and volitional attitude of statements about the self. That is hope as a proposition of belief in the possibility of positive change. We are not taking this concept to the logical extent of optimism. I do believe that optimism is a failing position and will talk with you at length about it if you have the time. 

Additionally, I am sidestepping the question of determination. I argue elsewhere that the claim that we are determined is inconsequential to our status as free-beings. However, I think there is an interesting problem set in what gives rise to this seeming contradiction of being completely necessarily contributed and yet having the capacity in a given moment to do otherwise, thus creating a sufficiency, which enfolds itself into the necessary state of reality. Instead, I will be looking at freedom from an assumption of compatibilism bordering on libertarianism. Where this problem yields the most fruit is when we explore the possibilities in any set of predetermined states that I find myself deciding from. 

Finally, we are assuming that the self is a dynamic experience that relies on the interplay of neural structures and personal experiences as filtered through an epistemic attitude. I am setting aside discussions of the soul and behaviorism. It is dynamic because sometimes memories guide our experience and beliefs about ourselves, sometimes our future sense and imagination, and the stories that others, including our past selves, tell about us. The self is an identical one that constantly changes. It is a paradox that collects our values and helps us face and/or amalgamate the world.

Well, I have written the introduction to a book to come to my thesis. Which is that hope is not the power of the comeback story and we are free to decide at any moment how we imagine our future. This is because all too often we accept false dichotomies or even sept-chotomies about our choices given the state of our worlds. Both fortunately and unfortunately, the power of the comeback story, our personal freedom in the face of a necessary world, and our abilities to change our personal narrator all lay within the same issue, namely critical creativity. 

We need to be able to take stock of the world we find ourselves deciding from, imagine as many possibilities as we can in that moment, while remaining flexible to change the narration if things don’t go as planned if we hope to harness the comeback story. If we learn to entertain positions completely without feeling compelled to adopt them, evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of a given solution, and justify to ourselves how and why we should change the way we view ourselves then and only then our future is unwritten. Injuries modify fitness goals rather than deleting them. Failures become the seeds of success. And even amoral tragedy can become the platform for flourishing.

This is clearly no easy process, and I have left quite a lot of things for you to consider, argue with, and lambast against. Philosophical training is one pathway towards this kind of self-mastery. No, I am not telling you to apply for undergraduate admissions and start your adult life over again. But, a session with a trained philosophical counselor can help you explore these philosophical problems and help get clarity on your personal value set. Today is the day you start your comeback story.

Book a session with Eu:PhORIC Services today,  Cecil would love to help you become the hero in your story.