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CREATED:20140916T070800Z
DESCRIPTION:\nHOPIUM IS NO HELP\nwith Florence Windfall\n\n“Hope” in our culture, 
 Western civilization, is most often false hope in an ideal that’s 
 presumably set in the future for us to strive for.  I’m not talking about 
 everyday hope like when I hope you can come to dinner.  I’m talking about 
 abstract, supernatural hope, the belief that an ideal will be realized just 
 by hoping for it, that is, just by having faith in it! I’m talking about 
 hope in the future, that it will turn out for the best.  This hope is 
 supernatural because the future does not yet exist.  It is this hope that 
 I’m calling false.  It has come to be named “hopium” by those of us 
 who are following climate change.  “Hopium” is our term used to 
 criticize climate change deniers who insist that climate change is an 
 hysteria in the diseased or deranged mind of people who lack hope, or 
 people who refuse to hope.\n\nWhen climate change facts and forecasts are 
 presented, though they be the latest scientific findings, climate followers 
 presenting them are commonly accused of hopelessness, as though this 
 oversight would change scientific facts and forecasts, as though the latest 
 scientific findings were WRONG because those who hear about them are left 
 with no hope.  Climate change is catastrophic?  Why, the climate can’t 
 change catastrophically – we have technology, we have geoengineering, we 
 have alternative energy sources, we have ALL the Earth’s resources we can 
 mine and harvest and put to work, we have the human genius to think of 
 something, and we have enthusiasm and initiative to drive us – we have 
 HOPE!\n\nHope or the lack of hope has a stronger hold on our Western psyche 
 than science does.  In this talk I offer a lightening tour of our Western 
 history of hope:  blind hope, false hope, hopium.  And I will advocate 
 getting rid of it just like we should get rid of superstition.  And I will 
 show how we can fill the void that hopium once occupied with courage and 
 encouragement instead. It’s well to be alive to the present rather than 
 frozen in suppositions about the future.\n\n\nAbandon (Nearly) All Hope\nby 
 Simon Critchley\n\nBright-Sided:\nHow Positive Thinking Is Undermining 
 America\nby Barbara Ehrenreich\n\nBeyond Hope\nby Derrick Jensen\n\nHope As 
 An Obstacle\nby Thich Nhat Hanh\n\n\nHumanist Hall is wheelchair accessible 
 around the corner at  411  28th  Street\n\n$5 donations are 
 expected.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n 
 https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2014/09/16/18761684.php
SUMMARY:Hopium is No Help
LOCATION:Humanist Hall\n390  27th  Street\nuptown Oakland, between Telegraph and 
 Broadway\nhttp://www.HumanistHall.org
URL:https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2014/09/16/18761684.php
DTSTART:20141001T020000Z
DTEND:20141001T043000Z
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