Pertinent for obvious reasons.

Do we have it within us to believe in a future that is inhabitable, let alone better than today?  Dystopianism today seems all-too prevalent. Yet if we do not find a way to believe in an inhabitable future, that un-inhabitability will seep into our present.  I’m not asking about optimism; I’m asking about hope.  Where is hope today?

This reminded me of something from several years ago.  An old colleague and friend, the political theorist Melvin Rogers, offers a deep (but not uncharitable) critique of Ta-Nehisi Coates:

Coates is right: he doesn’t have a “responsibility to be hopeful or optimistic or make anyone feel better about the world.” We must, as he has often done, speak the truth. But we must not claim to know what we cannot possibly know. Humility creates space for hope.…

the United States is not only an empire. Its liberal democratic tendencies run deep and have often been used not merely for good, but to bring about the good as it relates to racial equality. As the empire dies, why should we abandon the idea that something new may yet be born? What we must ask ourselves now, is what in our past might we retrieve for our present, how might those resources be reimagined to articulate a political faith more humane and just than the reality we find ourselves living, and how might we allow portions of ourselves to die with grace so that we might flourish with dignity? Answering these questions begins with denying that the story of who we are is simple and settled.

"Humility creates space for hope." That's right. It doesn't compel hope. It doesn't create hope. It creates space where hope might be possible, conceivable. This is a reasonably old story; as Kant said, we must delimit reason to make room for faith. We still need that, I think.