This year, Hans-Joachim Roedelius had decided to dedicate the 16th edition of his festival More Ohr Less to the concept of hope (Hoffnung). The following are my reflections inspired by this theme, that Achim allowed me to share with the public at the opening of the festival. A longer version was available on location in pocket-size for festival-goers.
Baden (Austria
Cyclical
conceptions, like that of the myth of the eternal return, are the oldest. The
idea of a cycle is part of the immediate human experience: cycle of day and
night, cycle of seasons and harvests, cycle of life, birth, and death. However,
the notion of eternal return isn’t a kind of fatalism that discourages action.
For the same human experience also teaches that action causes a reaction. We
must sow to harvest, we must eat to survive. Therefore, the cycle is no
hindrance to action; it is the standard of action. What is consistent with the
cycle is right, what isn’t, is wrong. The cycle is the source of morality
itself. Certain things have to be done in a certain way in order to make sure
that after the night comes back the day, that after winter comes spring.
Conversely, any natural disaster will logically be perceived as the consequence
of a bad action. To guarantee the stability of the cycle, that’s the purpose of
taboos. To punish troublemakers, that’s the function of rites, which are always
rites of purification. We recognize here the figure of the scapegoat. The types
of hope we just reviewed are very much in line with this conception. But the
contemporary idea of hope, not only as a feeling, but as a whole orientation of
the world, requires to move away from rites and to overcome the myth of the
eternal return. It involves a demystification.
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| Hans-Joachim Roedelius |
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| Nadja Schmidt |
However,
when, in the 17th century, Galileo declares that the universe is a “book
written in mathematical language”, he makes the distinction between the
sublunary and the supralunary spheres obsolete. Stars are not that perfect and
earthly things are not that chaotic. Mathematical laws can universally explain
both. Under these conditions, claiming to find in heaven, or in nature, any
rule of ethics, becomes pointless. The good cosmos becomes the neutral universe
we’re used to. But then, what becomes of morality? Since good is no longer a given, it can only be built. “What will become moral is no
longer to find one’s place in the world as it is, but to embark on the infinite
task of transforming it – nature, society – in order to introduce in it the
good which it is a priori lacking” (Olivier Rey). “For the moderns, fighting nature
is fighting evil and spreading good” (Rémi Brague). At this point, we recognize
the seeds of a very familiar idea: the idea of progress. Not the usual notion
of improvement – the progress of a technique, the progress of a student – but
the brand new notion of an unlimited, necessary and irreversible movement
towards good.
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| Lunz am See |
In the idea of progress, the good is no longer a beginning, but a destination. The good is no longer a norm of behaviour, but a program: “the relief of man’s estate”, according to Francis Bacon’s famous saying. Marx doesn’t say anything else: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.” Hope then changes orientation. Although still linear, it’s no longer directed towards the other world, but embedded in this world; no longer put in salvation, but in the future. Strictly speaking, it’s not really hope anymore. Rather optimism, An optimism that depends on action. Blamed for its passivity, hope loses its status of virtue in favor of action. Better act than rely on hope. Contrary to hope, optimism is based on notions of calculation and predictability. Yet progressivism is more than mere optimism. It is a dogmatic optimism; the certainty that things will necessarily turn out well.
The
experience of totalitarianism and world wars in the 20th century made the
belief in progress untenable. Since then, the notion that technical progress
would lead mechanically to moral progress has been constantly disproved. Today
we know that progress enslaves as much as it emancipates. We owe Theodor Adorno
the most lapidary formulation of this ambiguity of progress, which leads “from
the slingshot to the atom bomb”.
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| Christopher Chaplin |
Even our
ecological concerns don’t escape the logic of progressive nihilism. Really?
Preserving nature in order to preserve its resources, isn’t it on the contrary
a conservative concern? Not really. Thinking of nature as a resource to
preserve is still thinking of it as a resource, that is to say, in the very
terms that have led to its exploitation. We are still progressive. That’s why
we don’t really want to protect nature, but to “save the planet”. That’s the
principle of sustainable development. Development must go on, but at a lower cost, in line with the logic of profit.
To do this, we rely on ever more new expedients, ever more new technologies. As
if the best way to lower human activity was more human activity.
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| MOL Brainstorming Orchester |
True hope
is part of a thinking of meaning, which consists in giving a meaning, instead
of a solution, to the problem of evil. For evil will never be abolished. It is
inherent in the tragedy of life, and therefore irremediable. This is true in
nature as in human affairs. For example, the dynamics of life itself, which
allows evolution, also allows cancer. And many of the technologies we love,
starting with the Internet, were first and foremost military innovations. The
moral effects of our actions, good or bad, can’t be predicted scientifically.
They reveal themselves. Hope has
nothing to do with the belief that things will turn out well provided we remove
such social cause, develop such technology, eradicate such enemy of humanity.
Hope is you. It is you, who will ensure that even in the most atrocious
conditions, life will always be worth living.
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| Hans-Joachim Roedelius, Tim Story |
