The Sanity of Hopelessness

(For readers who have never seen the movie and intend to, please stop here, because the closing paragraphs contain “spoilers.”)

The Shawshank Redemption tells the story of Andy Dufresne, a wrongfully convicted man, and his friendship with fellow inmate Ellis Boyd Redding (aka Red). In one particularly revealing scene, Andy tells Red that his ordeal has been lightened by the knowledge that there is “something inside that they can’t get to; that they can’t touch: Hope.”

To which Red replies, “Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane.”

Although the movie subsequently vindicates the redemptive power of hope, I could not help but wonder if Red’s viewpoint was more realistic than Andy’s. The legal system did not vindicate Andy and make him a free man; he had to escape from prison. Pangs of conscience did not stop the corrupt activities of the prison warden; it was the fear of arrest. And Red was not granted parole by hoping he’d be released; he simply told the parole board he didn’t “give a s**t” whether he was released or not.

So I began to wonder: Is there some sanity in hopelessness? After all, if one does not hope, one does not get discouraged. And if one has no faith in the goodness of those in power, then one cannot be shocked by their evil.

In recent years I had hoped for many things: I had hoped that the United States Constitution would not be destroyed by those sworn to uphold it; I had hoped that freedom of speech would be the domain of the individual and not the corporations; I had hoped that a Colorado judge would not single-handedly destroy academic freedom; I had hoped that the legal system would work harder to do justice than it does to rationalize injustice; I had hoped that men as evil as George W. Bush and Dick Cheney would not be allowed to steal the two highest offices in the land; I had hoped that no lives would ever again be lost in wars based upon nothing but lies; I had hoped that the people who hawked or profited from such wars would be forced to fight in them, so they could experience the sacrifices they so easily demanded of others; I had hoped that the United States government would punish its own war criminals and torturers, instead of dismissing their crimes as “bad judgment”; I had hoped that a majority of Americans would be ashamed to live in a nation whose unspoken motto is “Billions spent to kill, but not a penny spent to heal”; I had hoped that the health care industry was actually in business for my health; I had hoped that those who ran for public office did so because they wanted to serve the people; I had hoped that people who abused the power of their office would be punished for doing so; I had hoped that once, just once, good would triumph over evil, selflessness over selfishness, and generosity over greed.

This list could go on, but you get the idea. And now I understand that, to survive in America, one must accept that sanity resides in hopelessness.

Of course, one could go insane living in such “sanity.” So I cling to a few hopes that not even the corporate fascists and corrupt politicians can take away: I hope that evil only prospers in the world of mortality; I hope there is a heaven and a hell; and I hope that those who have profited from evil, who have abused the rights of their fellow human beings, who have killed their consciences for the sake of ego, power or profit are eventually made to pay for all the suffering they have caused.

I hope.

David R. Hoffman
Legal Editor of Pravda.Ru