Episode 135: Tom, Trevor, and Chad on Hope and the Enchiridion
In this episode, Tom, Trevor, and Chad rejoin forces to discuss St. Augustine's Enchiridion and his definition of hope. Trevor is currently writing his PhD thesis on hope in the field of philosophical theology, so we are certainly in for an apt and in-depth conversation on this important aspect of the Christian life and theology. We hope you enjoy the conversation!
Timestamps:
8:33- What is the Nature of Hope?
25:21- The Two Latin Meanings of Virtue
50:09- Euthanasia and Medically-Assisted Suicide
1:12:36- The Medical Benefits of Hope
1:29:40- What is the Object of our Hope?
Episode Transcript:
Charles Kim 0:01
Hello, and welcome to history of Christian theology. My name is Chad Kim. This week, I'll be talking with Tom Glasgow and Trevor Adams. And we'll be talking about the nature of hope. So we read a little bit from St. Augustine, in Karidian, on faith, hope and love. But we basically talk through Augustine, his definition of hope, and how that relates to what Trevor is studying for his dissertation, which is a kind of philosophical
way of understanding hope. So, you know, Trevor is more in the realm of philosophy of religion, modern philosophy of religion. And so he has a slightly different angle on thinking through some of these theological topics, like the virtue of hope. And so I hope that this conversation will be interesting, and it is something very close to Trevor's heart and mind all the time. So we wanted to release that for you all, it's just another conversation among us. So just wanted to say thank you to all the Patreon supporters. So in the last several weeks, we've had a few more come through, and that has been very beneficial to us. So we're able to, you know, keep these episodes up and going, and, and do all the stuff that we need to do for hosting our website, and for our keeping the podcast and those sorts of things. So all of those contributions have been, are very, I'm very appreciative of all of those. All of those of you who've supported our newest supporter is James Alexander. And James, is, you know, we just really appreciate him supporting us. I've also had another email from someone who was just detailing how listening to this podcast, has encouraged them in their faith and help them feel confident to talk even with their children about their theology and about their faith, and how that has been encouraging both to their family, and to them as an individual. And I didn't want to share the name of this specific person. But but I just really appreciate hearing stories like that hearing ways in which this podcast has been a blessing to Christians from around the world. So not not just in the United States, where I'm from, but but in England, and then Northern Ireland, and in Australia. We've had people come from all over the world. Listen to the podcast. So without much further ado, the next conversation will be with Tom Glasgow and Trevor Adams on the nature of hope. We will have other conversations with theologians and other conversations with Tom and Trevor in the future. But this is where we're, this is. So but I hope you appreciate this conversation with Tom and Trevor, please do rate and review us on iTunes. drop us a note if you like. We always appreciate it. Thank you. And here's the episode. So we are talking this morning about hope. And we're doing this in part because we have a budding expert, from a philosophical perspective on hope. Tom, were you gonna say something? Sorry?
Tom Velasco 3:12
No, no, no.
Charles Kim 3:15
And so I wanted to kind of give Trevor an opportunity to talk a little bit about something that he is studying for his dissertation. I wanted to connect it to the kind of the early church history which has been what we have focused on at the podcast in our conversations. So we I did so the one place that I mean, Agustin could talk about hope in a few different places. I know some places in the sermon where he talks about it, he says some interesting things about how the Holy Spirit is a down payment. And so we have reason to hope, because the Holy Spirit is our down payment for the resurrection. And he doesn't bring that up in this particular section. But, but there is some stuff like that, that kind of comes in. But also there's another famous work the in Karidian. And the ingredient is interesting because it is actually it is also one of those books that finds its way into lots of medieval theology. And so for of the of the Augustinian works that get sort of recycled, this is one of those that pops up a lot. It pops up in debates about predestination and the 10th century and the ninth century with God Shaka forebay. It pops up in discussions of purgatory. It pops up, you know, just all different places. And part it's so you know, just kind of like a little bit of a historical background of in Caribbean. So it comes from the Greek word that means like a small knife, or dagger, it's something that's meant to be or it but it also means a little book, and it's like it's supposed to be a quick summary of the faith. So it was intended by tend to be used as a kind of way to think through like, what are the basic things that Christians need to know. So he bases it on the three theological virtues of faith, hope and love. Although most of the book is concerned with the section on faith, and only very briefly on hope and love, but also the one thing that you always have to keep in mind as just a contextual issue is that so like Tom was just talking about how he was surprised and I'll let him say some more of this on how closely he tied hope to the Lord's Prayer. From a just sort of a contextual historical level. We have to keep in mind that Augustine is our audience most of the time, the to whom he was like teaching and speaking, were 90% unlettered that he couldn't read illiterate right. Now, the one thing that my book hopefully will be coming out soon on on Augustine sermons, but I go to great detail to try to talk about his audience. And the reason I do so is because they're, although they are unlettered, although they don't know how to read, they are actually they retain things pretty well. And one of the things that you definitely learn if you're becoming a Christian, and you can't read, you learn the Lord's Prayer, and you memorize it. And that is sort of like a basis for your faith. Because you, you know, because that's, you know, that when Agustin has new people who want to be baptized, he makes them learn the Lord's Prayer, he makes them learn the Nicene Creed, and the 10 commandments, and then those become the basis for Christian piety for for like, the next 1000 years, until the Reformation, because not all Christians, you know, throughout the ages, were able to learn how to read and write, and would have had a Bible at their hand. So these are what this so the Lord's Prayer, as well as the Nicene Creed, and the 10 commandments were kind of like bare minimum, these are what Christians need to know. And so that's kind of part of why he bases this little handbook for all Christians on the things that he expects, that all Christians should have it kind of in their back pocket to call upon in times of trial or, or even just times with, like thinking about what their faith means. So that's, that's kind of the background of this topic of Ingredion. And then, try know, Trevor has some questions on hope, but some stuff on hope. True. Tom, did you want to anybody, anybody want to respond to just sort of that general introduction? Before we turn to Trevor on hope?
Tom Velasco 7:35
No, I mean, you You called out the one thing I brought up before we started recording, which is that, and you know, for the sake of listening, I did not read the ingredient I didn't. I read just the section on hope, which is very short. And in which he doesn't say anything at all about hope, as far as I could discern, only talks about the Lord's Prayer. He said, I mean, it's like he intros by saying the second virtue, I want to talk about his hope, and to analyze hope, we got to look at the Lord's Prayer. And then he just looks at the Lord's prayer doesn't even mention how hope like, at least not explicitly relates. So it's like, he just taught start breaks down the Lord's Prayer into two sections, one section being dealing with worldly needs and one section being with heavenly ones. And, I mean, I yeah, I was kind of like, I'm a little lost. As far as that goes, so anyway, that was all.
Trevor Adams 8:33
Yeah, he he only gives one sort of analysis of hope. And it's not in the hope section. It's, it's earlier. I don't know how to call things out here. It's 276 is the it's on? Oh, so really early. Yeah. Really early charity cannot exist without hope nor hope, without charity as the as the italicized section heading. He gives you eight. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's where he gives a brief definition of hope, which I will judge thoroughly in a second. But I was gonna make a comment about your intro, Chad, that he mostly writes about faith, just like in contemporary analytic philosophy, especially philosophy of religion, way more people wrote about have written about faith than about hope. And I it's funny, because in my department, a friend of mine is writing his dissertation right now. He's a Catholic priest actually getting his PhD in philosophy here in Nebraska, and he's writing on faith. And there was a point at which we had a professor here he just he got a job at Harvard. lucky duck but we had a professor here for a second name Quinn white and he was his expertise was love. So we had for Faith, Hope and Love all in one department at one point, which we all like to talk about, but we still all do talk. But I talked to him a lot about his dissertation because faith and hoper are certainly related. And we run into the same literature often. But you'd bet there's still just so much more out there on faith and there is on hope, sadly.
Charles Kim 10:23
Well, let's Okay, so let's do, let's go to 276 to eight. So, Agustin says what is there that we can hope for without believing in it? And so he does actually mentioned same thing. He mentioned the Creed and the Lord's Prayer. But then he goes in, talk a little bit about hope. And he relates hope and believing. So, yeah, Trevor, which was the definition that you were thinking,
Trevor Adams 10:51
he says, But hope is only for good things, only for things that are in the future. And concern, the one who is said to have hope in them. So this is at least some insight on the nature of hope or what he thinks is distinctive about hope. Now saying it's only it sounds like these are, I'm going to be charitable to say that he's saying these are necessary conditions on hope not sufficient for hoping but it's very interesting, because about all of those are false, according to me, but I think, um, but I will say so, just to Yeah, even more set the context. This is considering though hope, as a virtue. So here's here's one charitable way to interpret this is that rather than being concerned with like, hope proper, like, what is the mental state hope that these humans seem to have? Which is like my project, he might be thinking, like, what is hope, as a virtue as character trait? And like, how should it be had, regardless of how people actually seem to hope? So yeah, in in my dissertation, I'm writing about the nature and rationality of hope. So it's in part, an epistemic and also sort of philosophy of mind is the field that this gets relegated to a type of dissertation where I'm trying to describe like, what's the nature of this mental state hoping? And then I'm trying to describe like, what are the conditions under which it's rational or irrational for someone to hope, or at least give some elucidation to that conversation. And typically, in the philosophical literature, we talk about what we call propositional hopes. So this, these will be denoted by the that clause that that follows that word hope. So if I hope that, you know, my relatives, driving on the snowy roads will be safe or something is this coming Christmas? It's, I have a particular outcome of which I'm uncertain about a lot, most everyone agrees that you need to be uncertain, in order to have hope is like at least a necessary condition on hope. And then furthermore, I desire it, I want it to come about. And this has actually, sort of this uncertainty bit is reflected in the Bible itself. It's referenced, in fact, here in the 277 section. In Romans now hope is hope. Now hope that is seen is not hope for who hopes for what a scene but if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patients, this idea being that you don't hope for things that like you directly, can perceive using the sea analogy here. But furthermore, you just don't hope for things you're certain of, if I was, if my family's there already safe, it's weird for me to hope that they get there safely. Weird or perhaps psychologically impossible, we might, we might argue. So the uncertainty and the desire are, are necessary conditions for hope that just about every hope theorist in contemporary analytic philosophy agrees or conditions on hope. But then, Augustine adds some extra stuff here, which is interesting, and maybe this is supposed to be character, characterize virtuous hope, rather than non virtuous hope? I don't know. At which point we're not necessarily talking about particular hopes hoping that this or hoping that that we might be talking about in general being a hope Will person and maybe what's the way in which one can virtuously be a hopeful person? And maybe it's to only hope for good things. Things concerning the future and also the concern, the one who is said to have opened them so they have to be self directed hopes, which is interesting, you something about yourself needs to be the the object of your, your individual hopes that make up your, your being hopeful. Yeah, I don't know.
Charles Kim 15:36
I'm gonna Yeah, I think he just sort of means like, It would be strange to say that I hope that she hopes that her relatives might be safe. I think it's sort of like usually they arise in the individual, rather than having some hope for someone else to have some hope that, that some things might come to pass.
Trevor Adams 15:57
That's fair. I was thinking that like, you know, take anyone you love. Arguably, you have lots of hopes for them that like don't concern you concern, the one that was pretty vague. Yeah. So it could concern you in the sense that you just love them. So it concerns you. But it makes it sound like it's self directed at least sort of how I took it. But but maybe those those hopes would also count for him. Like if Meredith is going to, you know, show some photos and art show? I should, I should hope that it goes well. Even though Yeah, it brings no bearing on my life directly. But it would arguably be not only weird for me to now hope it goes well but probably morally wrong in some sense. Or I'd be deficient in my love of her if I hope if I didn't hope it went well. Yeah, so their hopes like that I can also the future things a little weird, because I could, as long as I'm uncertain, I think you can, you can have a hope with regards to that outcome. And this would include them past outcomes. So like, say you hear about, you know, like a dangerous situation at your workplace. It's already happened, but you don't know what's occurred yet. You could certainly hope that everyone was safe. Despite the fact that it happened in the past, technically, and hope for good things. I mean, again, this might be characterizing only virtuous hope. I definitely think there's less virtuous versions of hope. I think you can have recalcitrant hopes or hopes that you you wish you didn't have you hoped for something but you kind of felt bad about it. I've watched a lot I watch a lot of UFC fighting. I think this has come up on the podcast before. And there's some fighters out there that I'll admit sometimes you just kind of hope they get hit in the face. And but then I always feel bad about that. I'm like, No, you can hope they lose Trevor, but you shouldn't hope that they get but there's that part of you first. Like yeah,
Tom Velasco 17:58
if you're going to hope that a UFC fighter loses are going to have to hope that they get punched in the face.
Trevor Adams 18:06
Okay? They can get there's so many ways to lose the UFC they can just get slightly
Tom Velasco 18:13
the chances of somebody losing in the UFC without getting hit in the face at least once
Trevor Adams 18:19
Yeah, very low let's let's say Okay, I gotta hope for something worse so that that they get like injured or something Yeah. Did they get injured though? It's only happened one time I did it was I'm not exposing myself. I'm not gonna listen to the podcast I'm not gonna incur the wrath of this of the fans of this fighter. If if if if at all exists but there was definitely fighters that I was like okay, this person's this person's real piece of work and you kind of can't and you can't help but going at least I couldn't going into that fight like hoping for something that I kind of like take back like I wish I didn't hope for it. Which is another thing I think is indicative of hope is that hope can come unbidden hoped and can be unconscious that can be sort of not endorsed by your your highest self in some sense. So but so this is really I find this at least an interesting passage. Yeah. Do you have some like original language insights of for me chat.
Charles Kim 19:31
Well, yeah, I mean, I did just look it up. I mean, it is yeah, so who you know hope is not anything except for of good things nor nor except for of the futures things. And so that concerning section it just says Audio pertenecen quiz spam get rapid he before so it's like it is just it pertains to the one who is bearing the hope.
Trevor Adams 19:57
That's pretty general me It's vague enough that it might allow for, for like me hoping that my wife does well or whatever.
Tom Velasco 20:09
Yeah. This idea of virtuous hope. Yeah. Just in general. Thinking back to the passage in First Corinthians about faith and love, what is that? 13? Is that? No, that's the love chapter. Yeah, so that's right, right. 13 First Corinthians 13. Faith, hope and love. It is interesting, because I think it's easy to, to see why love is a virtue, it's less easy to see why hope and faith intrinsically are virtues. Like I think love probably is intrinsically a virtue, I guess it would depend on how we define it. And obviously, people have definitions of love that I would think are not virtuous, that particular definition, but I think I think Christians historically have defined love, right, though, you know, in such a way to where it is defined as an intrinsically virtuous thing. Whereas hope and faith are not clearly that way, either one of them? Because, well, I mean, I could just bring up faith as an example, right? I mean, if I have faith in a some kind of a bad person, that's not intrinsically good on my part, right? If I know this guy who's a thief, and I really like him, and I have faith in Him. Not only is it probably bad faith, but it's it, it's it actually could be bad faith in the sense that shaky or uncertain, but it could actually be bad, like I could actually be wanting the the malignant characteristics of this character to somehow express themselves. So it seems to me that for hope and love to be or sorry, hope and faith to be virtues in the way that Paul seems to be implying, it does seem that there has to be some kind of necessary connection to the divine right? Like, it has to be hope there. In order for it to be virtuous, it must in some way, be hope in God, faith in God, that that's what makes it virtuous. So So therefore, hope itself is not actually a virtuous kind of thing intrinsically, but only hope, if it's placed in the proper object. And same thing with fate. Am I I mean, there's probably I'm sure more to it, but that's kind of what jumps in my mind.
Trevor Adams 22:38
I mean, yeah, I mean, rough, roughly speaking, I mean, you know, one wrinkle on that is, what does it mean to have hope in versus hoping that or hoping for, so the preposition changes a lot of things. And I would love to talk about this actually. Because I have less ideas about this. I have a lot of ideas about what it means for one to hope that p where peace is some proposition, but I have Yeah, less, less ideas about what it means for someone to say they have hope in something, actually in
Tom Velasco 23:18
such a way as towards distinguishable from faith.
Trevor Adams 23:22
100% Yeah,
Tom Velasco 23:24
it's really hard to see what the difference is between those two things.
Trevor Adams 23:28
Yeah. Cuz I think our our contemporary English language intuitions here, linguistic intuitions are that it's just trust. It's just like, Oh, you mean trust in? I mean, at least that's how I hear it both ways, is just some sort of version of trust, but maybe with a different aspects put on it. But it is difficult to see. But well, all I was gonna say, though, about what what Tom just said was? So yeah, you might think it's the hope in that affects then whether, for example, individual, hoping that that you have because of what you have hope in are virtuous or something like that, because I'll maintain a I'll call it intuitive but definitely not uncontroversial opinion that for general hopes, non propositional hopes. They're still sort of, in some sense constituted by dispositions to have individual hopes that blank hoped that blank throughout your everyday life or to put that in a less abstract and more concrete way, if I am to be considered hope full, it's probably because I hope for certain good, actual particular things in my life, in my day to day life. So insofar as maybe you have hope in God, how that meant manifests your like, your disposition to be hopeful, and what and what those And then objects of your hope are the it's it would be interesting to figure out like, what the connection is there. And like why why having hope and God, for example, gives you the right hopes or the right dispositions. And then yeah, and then then teasing out then exactly what it means to have hope and God. Okay, where are you gonna say chat?
Charles Kim 25:21
Well, so I was just thinking about something that's always puzzled me a little bit, which is the fact that via TOS the Latin word where we get the word virtue has two meanings. In English, you can either translate it as what we mean by virtue, which is contrary to vice, which is, you know, like a good thing, morally positive, or, you know, morally praiseworthy, not blameworthy these sorts of things. It also means power. So why does it mean power, and, you know, praiseworthy rather than blameworthy. And so, like, one of the things that I'm often reminded of when I'm thinking about, like, you know, understanding Augustine, and I think this plays into his whole sort of cosmological Outlook or something is that a virtue is a virtue, because it has the power to bring you to completion, to perfection, as you would say, as they would say. And so what, what it means to be perfect, contrary to what most people would say, we normally say when we say something is perfectly mean, without flaw or blemish. But perfect means to have come to an arrived at the stated goal, or the sort of right place. So hope is virtuous, because it has the power to carry you along to the state that is good to that his blessing. And so I think I mean, you know, so I think for Augustine, you wouldn't be able to disentangle his hope in God, and this hope that, you know, if it is actually a thing worth hoping for, that it would be that would bring about a good state of affairs. So like, ultimately, you know, your hope that your family arrives, well, why do you hope that? Well, you hoped that because with your family here, you know, you can participate in in the sort of love of family that ultimately brings you further along, and your progress towards the blessed life, the good life, and so and which is all constituted in God. So I think there's that thing that now that doesn't necessarily change why you would have faith versus hope. But I think it's one thing to keep in mind is that virtues you know, I'm I've been if anyone hasn't read Owen Barfield is poetic diction or saving the appearances that are wonderful books. But one of the things is is Oh, and Barfield says it is only the modern. Who thinks that that vert words like that have seemingly difficult, differing definitions that there's never any connection between them. So he uses the example of like in the New Testament, Spirit also means breath and wind. And he says that we should not consider those as three dis utterly distinct things. But there's a good reason why those are under one word. And the same would go here, in this case for virtue, there's good reason why it also means power. So
Trevor Adams 28:45
yeah, in fact, in fact, like, I will just add to that, I mean, I used the word disposition, like so many times, just when I was talking about hope, hoping in versus hoping that and, arguably, that just sort of is the new jargon, for power. At least Yeah. So yeah, that makes sense.
Tom Velasco 29:05
Well, and, you know, I like thinking of First Corinthians 13, faith, hope and love these three abiding in that way. Because when I do think of hope, as a virtue that is as a characteristic that someone may have. And I think, Trevor, you might have said hopefulness before, but it's, it's like this idea that if somebody loses hope, and this can be very specific, in some situation, or more generally, like in your life, then the the result is despair, and despair. The result is quitting at least, and maybe of course destruction, right? Like, if I'm, if I work at, well, if I have, I do have a job, anybody who has a job, if they lose hope that their job is meaningful or that their job is going to somehow accomplish what they what they had hoped it would accomplish, then they're going to be poor workers, I mean, it's going to be such that they're going to ruin kind of their, their situation or their circumstance, because I mean, they won't be able to carry on, they just are not gonna be able to do it in a way that is meaningful and good, they're going to be bad. And so anything like that, where if you have hope that hope does carry you through, like you were saying, Chad to this desired end, and if you lose that hope the result is going to be a downfall, right? It's going to be, it's going to be a falling apart in some way. And of course, you see this at a much broader level losing hope in life. And you hear even hear stories of of people fighting for survival. And anybody who's I mean, I suspect we've all seen people go through it, but there's a significant change that happens when somebody loses hope that they're going to survive through something right. Like, there is a quick downfall once it once it comes about. And so this idea of hoping as a virtue, I could see Paul essentially saying, look, the thing that's going to carry us through this life and enable us to be faithful and obedient to God and do all these things is going to be hope. And if we lose that hope we're in trouble. Similarly, if we lose faith in God, that he's good, or that he's going to work all things together for good, or that he's going to ultimately be victorious. If we lose faith in that, then we will quit. Right? So that does seem to make a lot of sense to me. I don't know that, you know, there's much precision in anything I just said, but at least I have a general sense of how those could be virtuous?
Trevor Adams 31:44
No, that's, I think that that tracks also like the contemporary talk about what some people call, it's been labeling basil, or a base a base level hope. Some people have called it foundational, I call it like fundamental or foundational hope. It goes by or just sometimes it's even just called non propositional hope. But this idea that you're just hopeful that or that you have hope for the future, this kind of general idea that like the future brings good things, which is actually reflected right, right here in the writings of the of Augustine. He says, so when we believe that good things await us in the future, this is nothing other than to hope for them. So this is just this is sort of, I think, again, what he's taking for this general hopefulness, to be just expecting good things. Yeah. And if you lose that, if you don't think like tomorrow can be, you know, better than today, in some sense, or, you know, things will get better eventually, if they're not, if they don't look like they're gonna get better in the, in the short term, then you Well, in our contemporary terminology, you're depressed. Right? I mean, so despair and despair and depression. I mean, not clinically, I'm not going that far. But I'm just saying, you're, you're arguably suffering from all the same symptoms of like, acute depression, once you you lose this. So yeah, so as a virtue that that sort of hope, just this like general like, today, or tomorrow is going to be better than today, that seems not only virtuous, but arguably needed for everyone. I would just say, all humans, even if I mean, even if it's completely placed in the wrong thing, so there's that in terminology, which we could come back to again. But it, it does seem needed. Otherwise, you're just going to, you're, you're not going to find a point in living at all, if you don't think things can get better. Or we'll be better than they are, or continue to be good. If they are right now good, or however you want to say it.
Tom Velasco 34:00
It's interesting. I never thought of it this way, but the idea of faith and hope as antidotes to depression. And the No, don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to make any, you know, wildly excessive statement by talking about the way people's brains work or anything like that. But just simply that people in a depressive state have, or and especially a prolonged one have probably lost or never had, perhaps faith and hope. And I think what you just said is really interesting, because it really flies in the face of stuff. I've always argued that it's you said faith, or you said hope in something even even if it's the wrong thing. Because having hope in something, even if it's incorrect can still you know, be a buoy. Right, it can lift you right, at least internally, right? Yeah. I mean, I think when I think of faith, or when I think of hope, in the wrong thing, what I generally think of is it's hoping Something that is going to fail, right? hoping something that's going to fail. I've, I come from a family of addicts, and I've been involved a lot in kind of addiction recovery groups, right. And people who've been involved in addiction recovery. And, you know, on on the church side of things, you know, and I, I've had, you know, friends who were very much against organizations like AAA, because and this is the big thing, because they would, they would say that AAA isn't definitive enough in terms of what it's calling people to put their hope in, right like, because AAA doesn't try to define what God is. And it does it for the purpose of trying to like avoid parochialism, in within the organization trying to say, look, we just need to have something bigger than ourselves to kind of rest in. And we don't want to get caught up in the fights between different religions and all of that kind of stuff. So we're just saying you need to have faith in a greater power. And one of the critiques that, and certainly I've leveled this critique, but that I've heard many times is that if you put your faith in the wrong power, then that thing will fail you, right? So hoping the wrong thing when that thing is incapable. If it's not real, or something like that, then it's not capable of actually saving, then ultimately, your hopes will be dashed. And so that's bad. And I still think that's true. I don't want to deny that. But at the same time, there is a subjective side of this hope. I think were just having your spirits buoyed my areas, at least somewhat intrinsically good in and of itself, right like that. There are some people who even if they're hoping in something that isn't in the long run, going to help, then there might be some buoyancy anyway. Right. Yeah. The question is, is, is that a good thing? Because maybe their hopes will ultimately be dashed? Because that thing isn't real. But anyway, it's just I'm sorry, I'm just kind of, yeah, not allowed them making any real assertions. It's just something that popped in my head when you're talking about that.
Trevor Adams 37:06
No, I think it's very interesting. And I agree, but you know, basically, with everything you said. Yeah, I was what I was trying to be even more clear. Not that I think I'm clarifying. For you, Tom, but more for the audience. Yeah, I think it's what I'm trying to say is that hope, even in the wrong thing is I think, sort of this basic trait for the, for the human condition if you're just to go on living at all. Yeah, so in that sense, it's like basic, even if it is in the wrong thing. But then we can talk about Yeah, what is more or less virtue Step, put your your hope, really. And so if your hope. Yeah. So if you put your hope in the fact that just you'll make like, Here's a general platitude. I've heard. I've heard people say like, I'll just make this world a better place than it was, you know, when I entered it, when I leave it, something like this, some real general idea like that? Well, you can't really guarantee that in any sense. Which, I suppose is why it's your hope. I mean, you're uncertain whether you'll accomplish this. But if, if then it's like paired with some weird one, like, everything happens for a reason you'll hear, you'll hear plenty of secular people say this even, which is really strange, too. I'm like, wow, who provides the reasons. But if everything's supposed to happen, for a reason, this is supposed to, like give them if that's what they put their hope is the fact that everything happens for a reason. So then they spend their time like looking for positive reasons why things have happened in their life to sort of like, you know, justify their own current life decisions. Again, that might that might not work out for you in the end, either. So there's certainly views of the world that probably aren't as good to put your hope in. And we're probably just by talking about right now. elucidating. What we then mean by this hope in phrase, which is seeming to be something like trust, like accepting something as true, like treating it as truth, and if you don't, even if you're not certain, such that it's like the basis for your actual particular hopes are the basis for thinking that tomorrow will be better, or in some sense that the future is bright. It kind of reminds me of Tolkien's works, by the way. Just to get give you something else to really chew on here, Tom, since I know you love talking, but it's like that the elves have like a view of their world beak because of the way they are such that they just they like understand the order of the world and like where things are going. And you'll notice that the characters that lose lose hope are often from the different races that like can't see that everything is ordered to the good. And so Christians are kinda like the elves right in the sense that, and this is, here's an argument for why you should put your hope in God or why this hope in particular is virtuous is because you know that actually, at the end of the day, like, the most fundamental reality is ordered toward goodness. And that's an amazing
Tom Velasco 40:17
thing. You just made my day saying that Christians are like the Elves of the world. Because you're right, that's actually an observation I've never thought of you are right, the elves, the elves are not disjointed, like everybody else. And it's because they understand that the world is ordered towards the good you're like, that's actually in the movies in the in the Peter Jackson trilogy, that's the worst thing that happens in the movies, is the elves come to fight at Helm's Deep. And, and it's the worst thing for a number of reasons. It just became worse in my mind even have because her first it was terrible, because it robs the beauty of the event itself, right. In the book, you have a retelling essentially, like the classic story of the 300. Right, you've got this very small portion of men who have no chance of winning, who are fighting with everything they have to the death if need be against a mask multitude, it's like this beautiful thing. But then, in the movie version, it's like the elves feel like they need to come in to to do this. But the elders of the books know that. They don't need to do that this is not their story. But they understand that it is oriented the way it is meant to be oriented. And at the end of the day, that is going to be good. This is really good. Trevor, oh, my gosh.
Trevor Adams 41:50
Excited you and glad. Well, and also
Tom Velasco 41:52
just just as an aside to I mean, it's like I really do have to kind of think i know i just made the comments earlier about having hope in the wrong things, I need to really kind of think through all the consequence, because I haven't I haven't really thought of this. But you know, there's a tendency, because I am a because I, as a Christian, have a confidence that the world is ordered towards a good end, I have that confidence because I have a sense of how that world is actually ordered meaning I know the narrative, right? I know where it ends. I know that according to the narrative, Jesus returns, and he restores all things, right. And he wipes away every tear and all of those things. And so consequently, when I hear that kind of hopes that you were describing a moment ago, that people will have right well leave the world a better place or or he's in a better place or all of these different kinds of things these platitudes people just say, my tendency is to be quite cynical whenever I hear them because I'm like, Nope, that actually all of this is false hope all of this is hopeful thinking that isn't rooted in the real narrative, right? And so I just am saying that to acknowledge these things going on in my mind, I need to think through the consequences of it all but that's, uh, yeah, just something that something that was
Charles Kim 43:12
let's hope, I mean, I know I can't get away from this, but I love this is why I love languages and etymology is hope without power. I mean, it is like only the only the only the modern can come up with that. Only the modern can separate the power from the virtue. That actually in a certain to a certain extent, right. This is why Oh, and Barfield is so great at why Oh, and Barfield was an integral part of CS Lewis's salvation. He credits Barfield with helping him think through how he had become such a modern and tried to disentangle all of these things and separate them all and make them all you know, and at Barfield helped him to have a more unified vision to see how, you know, Hope has power.
Tom Velasco 44:02
Hope without power, that is such a good description of our world. Hopefully, it'll all work out. I don't know why. And there's, I'm not tying it to anything. It's just it's going to work out right. Not recognizing the cost that comes in between, I mean, it really is the kingdom without the cross, right? Because because we just want it gifted to us or we anticipate that it will just be gifted to us and we don't anticipate the actual sacrifice of what comes you know, comes along with it.
Trevor Adams 44:37
Yeah, and so of course, in my my own like writings, so right now I'm in a section of dissertation where I'm not even touching these topics. I am going to be writing this this coming semester. I'm gonna be working on a paper on the value of hope in your life. So that's when I'll get to do all this fun stuff, but I am gearing up to like thinking about it. More. So this is why I have some thoughts about it and hence, and I'm also rereading The Lord of the Rings right now. So I've been thinking a lot about nice. But, um, but so
Charles Kim 45:12
Wait, wait, can I? Yes, yes, go chat chat. We've talked forever. Alright, so Okay, so we eventually will probably need to move on from the section although maybe not. Okay, one. Okay, one other thing. It's hard to not want to like tie a bow on the other on what we just did. Because that was I think that yeah, that was that was the power of a conversation. And I really enjoyed that. So I think it's interesting, though, just to unpack a little bit what he does here, right? So he has faith at the foundation of this. And so now trying to distinguish hope and faith is kind of an interesting thing. So he's, you know, he talks about being in good faith and in bad faith. And I actually think that a Gustin might argue that the, you know, that all of us have faith in one thing or another, right. So like, the lie that we tell ourselves is that the scientist hat doesn't have faith, the scientist has reason, or something like that. And so, you know, Augustine thinks that all of us have faith in something, but hope is only the purview of the Christian, because of the love in which it is rooted. So he wants to, he wants to say that hope is, is really something that's only characteristic of the Christian. So then his contract. What is interesting, though, is his contrary for hope here is fear. It's not despair, which is what you you know, you might expect that the contrary of hope is despair. But he says it's fear. So anybody who believes they are destined for, for him, that is God and His mind runs away from others in horror, is markedly more rightly said to fear than to hope.
Trevor Adams 46:54
Yeah, so I mean, following the Aristotelian square, it couldn't be the despair is the contradictory of hope. But the contrary is fear. And the reason why is just taking the analogy of like, essentially, you're just replacing it with a negation. Fear is very similar to hope, even in contemporary analytic philosophy, because it is, again, an uncertain outcome. But rather than one you desire occurs, you just desire that it doesn't occur. So I mean, that kind of is the flip. It's the negation of the the desire aspect of hope. Anyway, that was just to add to that.
Tom Velasco 47:35
That's good. I'm glad you brought up the Aristotelian square. That's I mean, that's exactly right. I mean, because we think because the way we define country's now is different, really, from the way at least Aristotle would have I don't know, I mean, to what degree Augustine is, is thinking that nor do I know how precise that specific word is there. Like if he's really trying to bring up that distinct logical thing. But you are right, like, because on in Aristotle's view, I don't know if there's gonna matter but contradictory is cannot cannot be simultaneously true, nor can they simultaneously be false. But contraries cannot be simultaneously true, but they can both be simultaneously false. That's kind of the distinction between the two, I don't know that that would matter in this particular instance, that is whether or not you could be hopeful and fearful. Or whether or not you could be it would be false, that you would be hopeful or fearful about something,
Trevor Adams 48:30
you probably can't you probably can't be hopeful and fearful of the exact same thing at the exact same time. So in that sense, there's there's some sort of psychological disparity. But can you be both hopeful and fearful about the future generally talking about hope in this more basic way that we've been talking about? Yeah, it seems, it seems. So that seems certainly possible. Because despite your, despite your best moments, when you're being positive, and you're sort of giving yourself a pep talk, like your family, let's say your family is late on that snowy drive, and you've called them and they're not answering, you're gonna give yourself this pep talk like, well, they just have the music on and they can't hear their phones, and they're probably fine. And those are your best moments, but your worst moments, you kind of like, oh, no, they're dead, they're dead. And so I at least understand what it means to be both hopeful and fearful. At the same time, I think I've experienced it weirdly. So in that sense, I do get it seems common to the human experience.
Tom Velasco 49:32
Yeah. And yet it does seem clear that they're contrary in certain ways to
Trevor Adams 49:35
exactly yeah, it's, it's about two different in that in that particular example, it's like about the two different outcomes. It's like, I'm fearful of the worst and I'm hopeful for the best in some sense, right? That they get home that they're really safe versus that they've they've gotten in a wreck or whatever. And then I've got all sorts of middling feelings in between of like, just slid off the road but they're okay. So ah, Well, I didn't, I don't, I have no hope for that. But at least my worst fears aren't realized, and so on and so forth.
Charles Kim 50:09
So I wanted to ask another question and bring up another kind of contemporary topic that I find deeply troubling. But I think it relates to this question about, like, what you were just talking about as Christians are the ones that hope. And, you know, we could go down the whole road on abortion, which is a well traverse topic, in American life, in the meaning in the United States. And, you know, we've had some changes and jobs and all of this. But one thing that has emerged that I've, I'm I'm actually kind of interested, that even more liberal leaning theologians find, in some ways, despicable, is that in Canada now, you know, it is basically, it's pretty easy to get medically assisted suicide. And you could get medically assisted suicide, for lots of reasons that have nothing to do with, you know, being very old and having no lifespan. And it's not just pulling the plugs, so to speak. And like the Terry Shiloh kind of case that I remember, like when I was in high school, or whatever it was when we used to talk about, you know, brain death and vegetative states and things like so like, you know, we used to think about sort of euthanasia on that level, but it seems like they're just euthanizing poor people. In Canada, like, you can go to the hospital and say, I despair of my life, I need medically assisted suicide, because I don't have a home, they will just help you to your death.
Tom Velasco 51:36
Now, so I've seen references to this on like Twitter, and what have you. My gut is always to assume it's being blown out of proportion and not true. But like, I've always like, this is sensationalist, you know, stuff that people are saying, but I mean, like, are there is there really? I mean, do you know what the laws are? In terms of what
Charles Kim 51:59
I mean? I've just read? Yeah, I've just read one article referenced by a, again, a guy, I would consider a more liberal leaning left leaning theologian who found this troubling from a but from a Marxist perspective, like, it's essentially like the the capitalists, the, you know, the, the one on top who's going after the proletariat, and doing a kind of material, you know, materialist in that way, analysis of the situation. And so, which I found interesting, but yeah, well, I don't know the particulars. Like how easy it actually is. I don't I have not read all the laws. But I mean, but it just, it just seems to me, like in a society that. And, you know, like I said, I think there's, I think there are a lot of important connections to even conversations about abortion, because they seem to have this, it's the same fundamental impulse, like you have no hope for life. So why let it begin? And so you have no hope for life, so why not terminate it? I mean, you know, to me, it's the same proposition just at a different stage. Yeah. So
Trevor Adams 53:11
in the sort of definitive, contemporary book right now on hope, which is called how we hope and moral psychology by the philosopher Adrienne Martin. And it's definitive in the sense that right now, sort of everyone is reacting to it, in the hope literature, if you're writing about hope, you're in some sense, regarding her work as a base point. So she does a really good job of kind of summarizing a lot of the her predecessors up until her, but she wrote this in, I think, in 2013, or 14. And then she quit, she sort of quickly dispatches their views and then gives her own And now everyone's sort of reacting to her view. But in this book, she actually has a section about what she calls secular faith, because she's coming at it from a non religious point of view. And she she defends this notion of secular faith. This could be its own topic, but when she's talking about it, she actually talks about suicide weirdly. And she has this argument that I can't recite off the top my head, I'd have to grab her book, which is somewhere over here. But she she recites this argument that like there's like, hopeful ways to give up your life. You might, which sounds weird, but it's like very particular circumstances like a person who believes that for example, better things are coming for them if they give up their life, because maybe they have like a different view of the they have a certain view of the afterlife, or because they think like by killing themselves, there, they'll bring about some good they'll make make the world better in some sense. Anyway, that's just all to add a wrinkle to the conversation. It's not to defend, to defend the view. But it is certainly disturbing for any government to sort of, in some sense endorse what it seems intuitively, like just hopefulness or hopeless hopelessness, sorry, just to endorse hopelessness like and just like put a stamp of approval on some people just being hopeless. That does seem in some sense, horrible if that's what's going on. Yeah, yeah. And something should to be avoided. Because as I said, as we just said before, whether or not people are putting their hopes in the right thing, it's at least good to have hope. I think I think it's a minimum, you need to have some hope in this life. Yeah. Yeah.
Tom Velasco 55:56
I mean, I, it's interesting, I hadn't thought I mean, I mean, it's obvious when you guys say it, but I don't think I have reflected on either abortion or physician assisted suicide, or things of that nature. In light of the virtue of hope, I mean, obviously, these, these center on the idea of hope, right, and it seems to me, in general, and this is something again, that I, this is unanalyzed. Like, I'm just speaking up, I really, I mean, I guess this is probably, you know, part of the problem when you do a podcast that's just conversational, rather than scripted, is that you're going to the things that are going to come up that you just didn't think about didn't prepare for. But as I sit here and think about it, you know, because we have a lot of assumptions, or I should say, especially, you know, I think kind of in pop Christianity, or cultural Christianity, or evangelists, maybe maybe conservative evangelical Christianity, pop Christianity, you know, that side of the equation, I think a lot of times, you know, we have these assumptions about what is right and wrong, based on just simple rules that we have been taught things like, it is wrong to commit suicide, or life is always meant to be protected, right? We have these principles, these propositional principles that we hold to, but we haven't really fleshed out why, why these things are true, or any of those kinds of things. And so it's, you know, the result is, is that we might have a very strong take on abortion, that it's wrong or on physician assisted suicide that is wrong, without really thinking through, you know, ultimately, the motivations for such things. And, clearly, it has something to do with this bit of hope, right? This, this idea of hope. And, and, and I think if you want to start kind of thinking through, well, when would be a situation in which maybe something like this would be allowed, then it's going to be directly connected with the idea of hope, right. So I mean, if I were to just for instance, bringing up abortion, if I were to try to find an issue where most people, even people who are very much against abortion could stop at least and pause and think, Well, maybe, in this case, the example is going to be something like this. It's a situation where there's, again, I don't know the biological language here, but some kind of a really gnarly situation where the mother and the child's lives are in, in great likelihood of, of, you know, serious things going wrong, where both of them could die, right, both the the the baby in the womb, and the mother will likely die if they carry through with this pregnancy. And I don't think and maybe people don't realize this, I doubt that there's a scenario where it would ever be 100% likelihood, right? Because that just doesn't exist, but where you have a really high likelihood that the mother is going to die, if she carries this baby to term and the baby is going to die. I think a lot of people, even people who are adamantly against abortion would pause and say, Okay, now I see a scenario where maybe some kind of an intervention would need to take place. And that is going to be directly tied to the degree of hope that that is there, right? Like the hope is really, really, really, really low. The hope of survival, the hope of making it the hope of, of thriving is really low. Right? And so that's when people start to go okay, well, maybe this is a situation where this is necessary. Conversely, when somebody sits there and says something like, oh, well, the mother is young and very poor and will likely you know, be stuck with a child that is going to have a lot of disadvantages. Everybody else stops acting those Wait a minute, you want to put an end to this pregnancy because there is a possibility, or maybe even a slight probability that disadvantages will exist? Well, that seems wrong, right? Or, you know, what I'm saying it's almost like the degree to which it becomes acceptable to people is directly corollary or correlated to the amount of hope that exists in the situation, right? And the closer that you get to zero hope, the closer or the more, the idea becomes acceptable to people, right? Most people when it comes to, you know, I mean, physician assisted suicide, you know, notwithstanding, I'll use a different example, I have a student who is going a former student who's going to die in the next week or two, a couple of weeks. He's, he's been battling leukemia for seven years. And two weeks ago, the doctor said, there isn't any more, there are no more paths forward, right? This is, this is this is going to get you and all that we can do is we could prolong your life, by a couple of weeks, literally, he said, by, you know, three or four weeks, by continuing to subject your body to, you know, really destructive things. And so I, you know, I went I went visited the student, and then, you know, talk to him a bunch over the last couple of weeks. And one of the things he told me, he said, as long as they told me, I had a chance, I was willing to fight as much as need be, but now that they've told me, there is no chance, I'm not going to bother to fight anymore, right? Like, he's like, I'm not going to keep trying to take these treatments, which are terrible, and I hate if they're not going to do anything for me. You're right. And then I, you know, I asked him, you know, how he feels, you know, just how he's doing with everything. And he said, I decided a long time ago that I'm not going to allow my mind to be destroyed by something I don't have control over. Right. So I think about those kinds of things. And, and everybody who knows him is kind of, we recognize now that hope is basically at zero. And it's, it's changed everything about the way we all interact with him, right? It changes the way we pray for him. And all of that kind of stuff. We don't, we don't really pray for healing, we do a little bit, but it's almost like apologetically like Lord, I'm so like, if possible, we know you can do anything. But in all likelihood, we acknowledge that there's no chance you're going to so we just instead pray for, you know, for comfort and that kind of stuff. It's, it's, it seems to me that the degree to which we, and maybe at least as Christians, but maybe this is really visceral to humanity, in general, the degree to which we think people should be fighting is directly proportional to the degree to which hope exists, right? And once hope ceases to exist, or the closer it gets to ceasing to exist, the far more understanding we are of the desire to no longer fight in that, in that sense to live, right. I think that's probably one of the things that that does get to me when I hear stories like what you just described, Chad, with physician assisted suicide. I mean, there are times when I'm very sympathetic to people who are in situations where they we know there's going to be prolonged suffering, and there is no hope for for, you know, for survival. And there's a part of me, which is like, okay, let's not unnecessarily prolong right at least as as much as we can. But then when you hear some things, you're like, Dude, come on. I mean, life is going to be hard. And we should hold on. Because you should hold up for a while, I mean, at least as much as you can, you know, so I don't know. Anyway, again, just
Trevor Adams 1:03:51
Yeah. And I think it's, it's not merely because it's like, your life's just valuable. So you should just hold on to it just because it's intrinsically valuable. But it's also like, a legitimate love for the person. Like, it's in so much as you can love total strangers. Which what you're called to do. To the degree that you do it? Well, at minimum, it should be Yeah, for their best interests, which corresponds exactly what you're saying when, when it's not in their best interest. That's when you Yeah, sort of corresponds to when it's when you feel like it's okay to endorse this attitude of not fighting anymore, I should say, but, but yeah, no, I it. It's interesting, because we earlier brought up like the difference between like, or well, we didn't bring up the difference, but we were talking about depression and it's in its relation to despair. And we're but we both sort of made some some comments about clinical depression. Well, not now talking about that exactly. But here's some things to say It is interesting to note that like people who seem to have like an actual, some sort of thing going wrong in the brain that causes their depression versus just having acute depression due to like, the circumstances of your life, that a lot of those people that when they do receive treatment, hope comes back. So I do think like the default of the Healthy Mind. You know, taking into consideration all things considered given whatever the chances are, the outcome of the thing you hope for, is really, to be hopeful in general. I know someone who personally told me this, that they're like, I, I was suffering from chronic depression. For years, as soon as I started to take antidepressants. They're there, their literal belief in God came back to them. They'd like they'd gone, they'd shied away from religious life, even during that period. But as soon as life just started to seem hopeful, again, just purely like this sort of brain level, in terms of their every day to day life, that opened them up to like, I think I believe in God again, and and so I definitely think there's, there's a connection here. Sorry, that was loosely related to what you just said. But But I, but I think there is some sort of, there is definitely a relation between Yeah, how likely things are and then how we treat the scenario. But also, I think, just and how healthy someone's mind is, and how hopeful they'll they'll end up being.
Charles Kim 1:06:38
Yeah, so I wanted to, um, we've been going for an hour here. We haven't talked about the other section on hope. But actually, one thing, Tom, and the story that you were telling, I thought it was interesting, right? We were talking about zero hope in this life. And the if there's any usefulness to his discussion, on hope in when he connects it to the Lord's Prayer, he says that there are seven petitions in the Lord's Prayer, three, four eternal Gifts, gifts, and the remaining four for temporal ones, which are necessary for acquiring the eternal gifts. are so but these gifts are certainly and he goes on. He says, they begin here and as we progress, they grow in us. But once they are perfect, again, this is my What am I, this is one of the biggest pet peeves and translations from Latin to English, read complete. Once they are complete, which is something we must hope for the next life, they will be possessed forever. And so I want to say that part of what Augustine is trying to alert us to here is I do think that we could talk about hope being zero in terms of the temporal goods. And at that point, so in that point, what your student is, is confronting as a Christian is okay, I want to come to possession of them forever. So it you know, so there's a there, you know, I think Agustin would even acknowledge there can be a kind of zero hope for temporal goods. But but for Augustine, you know, part of the part of the interesting thing about his whole outlook here, you know, is death is, you know, death is not like, a total break. Yeah, it's, it's, it's a continuation of a process where one ultimately goes to perfection, to completion. So
Trevor Adams 1:08:37
yeah, the hope, the hope that this cancer will go into remission via some medical treatment. That's, that's the hope that's given up. It's a very particular propositional hope, right, as we talked about before, but that doesn't take away this sort of maybe general hope, though. I mean, you know, we would be, you know, not realistic if we did admit that. It's hard to imagine things past death, obviously. And so in some sense I am I'm certainly I would, I would still even be sympathetic, I guess, or empathetic was someone who's like, I'm having a hard time even seeing hope now that I'm actually this close. Which, by the way, Tom, very sorry to hear about this. Yeah. And certainly will will keep this person in my prayers. But that is His name is Paul, by the way, if you Paul. Okay.
Tom Velasco 1:09:35
Yeah. Chad, he might have been there when you were there. He got. He first was diagnosed with leukemia in seventh grade. And, sadly, he was one doctor visit away from being given his final clean bill of health. And it returned and then he's been then read that returned his. No, it's not. No, yeah, it's Paul Drewery is his name. So he was given a, he was one month away from his given being given a complete bill of clean bill of health. When it returned, and he fought it for about three years afterwards, he had first had no hope. And then sadly, you know, with, there's some new treatments coming down the pipe that are really hopeful. And it he ended up getting a lot of hope. Right, because it started off, he was given a 10% chance of making it. And then with this new Catia can't remember it's car T cell therapy that they've been doing lately. His odds reverse from 10% to 80%. To survive. And so a lot of he's been through so many things, where he overcame them, and you just thought, oh, man, this kid's gonna make it. And then it just, you know, he came back again. And when they came back again, they did one day, they gave him a second. Oh, what's it called? Oh, gosh, bone marrow transplant. And that it just didn't take care of it. He actually has a genetic marker that just makes it almost impossible for him to make it through it. So he's, he's about 20 years old. But
Trevor Adams 1:11:18
yeah. Brutal. Yeah. Yeah. No. And that's, and that's insanely hard to just, I mean, as much as we do these, like, intellectual exercise is like, yeah, when you're actually applying this, and you're talking about it to people who are in situations like this. It's, it's, it's actually very difficult to communicate communicate these things in any sort of? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
Tom Velasco 1:11:49
I so it's so interesting. I wasn't actually planning on bringing it up. But man, it just was right there. Right. Like, it's yeah, it became a topic that that, you know, really
Trevor Adams 1:11:59
came well. And, you know, this, it's, it's, it's definitely pertinent because actually, Adrienne Merton, and she wrote that book I mentioned earlier, she did so after spending time following a researcher around in a hospital, and particularly in a cancer ward, part of the house on oncology is that yeah, yeah. So she, you know, she followed around some oncologists. And that was what, you know, initiated her own interest in hope, just from a purely secular perspective was she realized that people who had hope, and this is a weird phenomenon. There's studies done on this is that the people who are hopeful, just they distinct, they just have something to live for in general, are more likely to live, it's very, it's very strange, because there's no seemingly like, sort of mechanistic cellular level, like reason why this would be, but these people certainly seem to, like, take better to the identical treatments of peep of our sorry, to two people who receive an identical treatment, they'll seemingly do better than the other person, if the other person just seems to lack hope. And they have it. And they even they even noticed this with like, degrees of hope. Because some people, if you think hope comes in degrees is another thing in the hope literature. You know, some people have some hope, like, well, I have enough hope to, like, try this experimental treatment, but not enough to where I'm gonna stick too much of my, like, emotional, and just my mental life dedicated to thinking about like, what it will be like, and, you know, all these sorts of thoughts you let yourself have on you when you really, really, really become hopeful. So, which, by the way, just to plug my own view, is what I think is indicative of hope. My own view is that hope is a form of emotional investment. So anyway, but so yeah, so you it is a strange,
Charles Kim 1:14:03
deep tease there 110 minutes in
Trevor Adams 1:14:13
know, everyone was waiting to know my view of who it was, you got to listen to an hour of the conversation to get.
Trevor Adams 1:14:23
Or you could just message me on Facebook, and I won't stop talking about it to you. But But yeah, but anyway, so the medical stuff. Yeah, certainly, certainly relevant and make sense because that, like, you know, the cancer ward of a hospital is really where hope becomes very relevant. And so, and those are the oh, sorry, that I was just gonna say, and those are the sorts of hopes that are arguably the most important and the ones we we value the most is in those dire situations. I actually we weirdly, because of the part of the literature I ended up in, I weirdly talk a lot about like real dumb, like everyday prosaic hopes more often, like hoping that there's chocolate cake at the, at the, you know, department party. You know, stuff like that, because I weirdly, I'm, it's just, it's just due to the things I'm arguing about, because I'm arguing about like hope when you're when you're already pretty confident, rather than not so confident in the outcome. But anyway, what were you gonna say?
Charles Kim 1:15:36
Um, well, I was just going to try to bring it full circle, talking about how are you bringing
Tom Velasco 1:15:41
it full circle, then I want to chime in really quickly on what Trevor was just saying about this kind of medical evidence of the power of hope. Have you guys seen the movie? The farewell?
Trevor Adams 1:15:55
You wait, I think so. Is that that about that Chinese?
Tom Velasco 1:15:58
Yeah. So that's a fascinating thing. And I'm going to spoil the movie for anybody listening. So guys, just an FYI. Spoiler alert spoiler back in 2012. I was listening to an episode of This American Life, the podcast. And they were interviewing this woman, Lulu Wang, who told this story about her grandmother. And so the story in short, is this. Her grandma, she's her family are immigrants from China. She grew up in America, so So although ethnically Chinese, she's culturally American, right. But her grand grandmother still lives in China. And her grandmother lives with her sister. So that is her grandmother's sister. And she went in for her yearly checkup. And the doctor found that she had terminal cancer, and she had three months to live. So the doctor comes out. And apparently, and I like, again, I don't know much about the laws and culture over there regarding these things. But this is the way that Lulu Wang describes it. Apparently over there, they don't necessarily tell the patient when they have a terminal illness. Instead, they tell their family members. So she went and told so the doctor went and told the sister that she was terminal. And apparently it's a cultural thing over there that you don't tell a person who's dying, that they're dying. Because the belief is that will actually make them die like that, that you're actually going to be contributing. And it's rooted in this idea of hope, right? If they have no hope that they're going to live, then they will give up. This is this podcast is in 2013. She goes on to tell this long story about how the family therefore finds out all about it. And they need to go and say goodbye to her. But they need to do it without telling her goodbye because they don't want to let her know she's dying. So they do a mock wedding. They actually have one of the cousin's getting married in China, even though he's not really getting married, just so they have an excuse for getting the whole family together. To say goodbye to the grandmother, the grandmother thinks she's going to a wedding. Everybody else thinks they're going to say goodbye. And it's it's an astonishing thing I listened. They actually have a audio recording. And they're translating it, of course, but of the Lulu Wang's father giving a toast the wedding, but instead of talking about the bride and groom, he just talks about the mom and he's crying the whole time. And everybody goes through and like kisses and hugs her and all these things. Now, here's the thing. At the end of this podcast, they go in what happened your grandmother, now this is in 2013. And she said she's still alive. And it was like four or five years before that. She was still alive. She hadn't died yet. And they were like, Well, what did the doctor say? And they say, she says, Well, every year she goes back in for her checkup. And every year, they tell her sister that she has three months to live. Now. I didn't hear anything else about that. Until 2019 When a movie comes out about it. It's called the farewell. So the farewell is a is this movie. And I watched a little there was a little update on This American Life. And they end with goat with asking her about her grandma. She goes grandma's still alive. By the way, she might still be alive. I don't even know. They asked her if she's going to if grandma has if they've ever told her that she was terminal. And what she said was that, no they hadn't. But she's going to find out because they're going to air the movie in China. And she plans to watch it. And I've never heard what happened ever since. Oh no, I find I did look up relatively recently, like within the last few months whether she was still alive, and it was hard for him because most of the stuff I found was like press stuff from when the movie came out but I think she's still a Live, I could be wrong, but it looks like Grandma is still alive. Unbelievable. So by the race, family, her whole family is always like, see, we were right.
Trevor Adams 1:20:12
We were like, don't tell Yeah, yeah, I remember that. Like,
Tom Velasco 1:20:16
I think about that. I'm like, Yeah, I always want to be a realist. I don't like I've watched I come from a charismatic church. So I've watched people sit here and tell terminal people all the time, God is gonna heal you, God is gonna heal you. And when it doesn't happen, it's just crushing. And I try to be a realist and tell people the truth. But when I hear stories like that, I'm like, Man, I don't know, what do I do?
Trevor Adams 1:20:39
I mean, the effect of the mind on sort of your physiologic your, the rest of your body's health is not understood and, and is is crazy. It's crazy that this, I didn't realize that she had. I remember this, I'd watched this movie in theater. I had completely forgotten that plot point, though, that it had been like she was still alive. But that is that I just remembered that now. It's at the end credits. Yeah, they show
Tom Velasco 1:21:06
on set and meeting. Oh,
Trevor Adams 1:21:09
yeah. No. And she she kept doing her Tai Chi in the park. You know? Yeah. And she just she kept doing everything same drinking with her friends on Fridays river. And it was just like, I definitely think there's something to it. Obviously, it is weird, though. Because that was I remember that plot point in the movie that it was that was kind of the debate is like whether or not it's better to know or not. And I mean, really, the, the true answer might be as to like, how it affects your hope, I mean, would be sort of the sort of the answer. But what were you gonna say, Chad?
Charles Kim 1:21:44
I was gonna say, I mean, I have so many responses. One just real quick to the movie, though. It's interesting. It's interesting how, since it was an entire, like, it's a whole cultural perspective on it, though. So like, you know, just think about the expectation that a grandma that a person, like, I can't even imagine going to a doctor's office and not having a Doctor, tell me what was going on. It's so you have to have like a whole apparatus for this. This is well beyond what we could ever hope to achieve in the United States. Like I would have to raise Charlie believing that when you go to the doctor, you don't get to know. And then it might help out if he does get cancer when he's 60. And him never believing that he never should know what his diagnosis is from the doctor, right? I mean, like you think about that, it took a generation for that to even become a possibility.
Tom Velasco 1:22:36
By the way, yeah, you have more to say, but can I just throw in? Do you know, they told her she was suffering from they told you from vague shadows. They just made up these bizarre vague shadows. He's like, okay, I guess vague shadows.
Charles Kim 1:22:52
That reminds me there's like someone was I look, I was it, there's, there's some there's some like up up from a logical condition. That's called cockup theology or something. And it just in Greek just means bad eyes. And it just cracks me up. Sometimes. Like, if you break down a lot of our like, you know, let like Latin or Greek words for medical conditions, like so much of it is just sort of banal, but it sounds scientific or difficult or whatever, because we don't know Greek or Latin. But in this case, I'm like, Yes. They're just telling you, your eyes are good. There's nothing mysterious about it. But if I say in English, Oh, dude, you got some really bad eyes. You're like, what do you do with that? You've
Trevor Adams 1:23:46
got a case of bad eyes.
Charles Kim 1:23:50
But yeah, I just I just think of the power of Yeah, the power of the mind the power of the, I mean, I would say the soul in all of these things, like, you know, we have, we have so much power sight scientifically, or we have so much knowledge scientifically. And to one of the things I was gonna go back to we talked, we talked about a AAA and believing in a higher power earlier, right? And so we were talking about, like, how that has to do with hope and how hope can carry you through. And I don't know if I want to get into personal details, but I'll say someone very close to me, was going through a and my family spent a great deal of time trying to understand the disease of alcoholism. And so we listen to lectures and we listen to doctors and we listen to all these things. And the doctors they can pinpoint all the different things that go on in your brain about why you get addicted and how the disease of alcoholism works and all this stuff. And then you come to the end and they say okay, so what do we do? What is the medicine? What What can you inject her with? What kind of drugs can you give her and they're like, no, they have to do a and I was like, Well, how does a How does a work when we're not really sure. But that's the only way that we know to cure alcoholism. Like, you can give different things, you could do different things. But and this was 10 years ago, maybe the science has changed in 10 years. But 10 years ago, it was, it was like, and it was like, we have this full understanding of the disease of alcoholism. And we call it a disease and you don't, you know, it's not a moral failing. And it's like, you know, all these sorts of things. And then they're like, and it's like, well, what if a doesn't work? i Sorry. I mean, like, we could do things to kind of mitigate it, we can do other things. But it was just like, you know, but that's it. And it was like, you just need to connect it to this in my understanding of the farewells story that you're just saying, right, there is just something about getting someone spirit and mind on board with a project, that, that, you know, you can't reduce ourselves to our material. You know, if we, if we are just physical, if we are just the mechanics of our DNA, or what have you, our biology, it just is not going to be able to explain or cure in the most, you know, in the most. And these places that are just so seriously. I mean, so difficult, like moving beyond just the cake examples. Yeah, but it seems like you're gonna say they may have different I want actually, it's longer, that's 15 years ago,
Trevor Adams 1:26:26
well, I was gonna I was gonna say, like, I still think like the, the, the kernel of truth that you're going after is still still holds to this day in the sense that like, all, like successful addiction therapies still rely on obviously some sort of like psychological help for the patient. Ie it's it has to do with your mental life at the end of the day, and the choices you make and the daily decisions to like, rethink your life through. But it's true there are non How do I put this? A and treatments like it are abstinence only, however, that is slowly coming into question, in fact that this was like I listened to this a few years ago now on Joe Rogan, they had an addiction expert on who? Purposely or Yeah, because they think it's like the best way has a non abstinence only addiction recovery method. i Yeah, you can't drink a little. But you just learned not to drink too much. That that is like antithetical to AAA. And so this is like, actually is a big debate in the community. There's also this big debate about like, marijuana is placed. In this sense, a lot of people will quit everything, but they'll still use marijuana or something. And so it's sort of like, does that count as abstinence only and then so anyway, there's
Tom Velasco 1:27:54
Trevor, I'd be curious to hear that interview with that guy. If you think of it. Could you send me his name? If you
Trevor Adams 1:27:59
Yeah, I'll try to find a Joe Rogan's recorded so many episodes that
Tom Velasco 1:28:04
it's hard to million. I wouldn't worry about it now. Just if you figure it out. Or if you remember it, just let me know.
Trevor Adams 1:28:10
For sure. I will. But But still, yeah, clearly, you have to rethink your life no matter what. And you have to rethink about you have to think about like why you're why you're drinking in the first place. And, and you have to own your mistakes, you know, rather than cop out and blame others for your alcoholism and stuff like this, you know, these are the sorts of things A I, I have a bit I've experienced this as well, I had someone very close to my life, you know, go through a so. Yeah, so it's, it's true that there's, there's a lesson to be learned there that whether you're I think whether you're a materialist or not. You can't deny the power of like, whatever it is, whatever's going on in the mental seems to be very powerful, and arguably mysterious.
Tom Velasco 1:29:02
And then a Yeah, kind of unexplainable. Yeah, yeah. And then explain it. Yeah.
Charles Kim 1:29:05
Well, Trevor, we have there's no, there's no protection. There's no safe space for materialists in this.
Trevor Adams 1:29:14
Wait, hold on. But what if someone is like Peter
Charles Kim 1:29:19
to deal with Peter van Inwagen? No. Yeah. I mean, I got out of here.
Trevor Adams 1:29:28
I have to come at it this way cuz the philosopher and me like, it's no, I know what you just said. This is not a materialist safe space. Got it. Now. Um, I was just gonna say briefly, by the way, and I mean, very briefly on the actual section on hope we've sort of already talked about it. But yeah, the the sort of insights about like what hope is aren't necessarily contained in the hope set. Shouldn't they were sort of contained in that earlier section on faith, weirdly. But it is interesting about like, what he discusses as the object of our hope, or sorry, not hope in but oh, sorry about Yeah, yeah, hope for. So, you know, we can hope that we get to, we have eternal life, like, this is something to hope for. This implies that you're not certain. So, I don't know, calls to question potentially any soteriology that, you know, claims that you can be certain that you're saved? I don't know. That's, that's just an interesting theological point. There. You Yeah, this hope that basically, everything will be perfected in the next life. But it's true that the, he mostly focuses on like, those temporal things here as being like, where hope is, because because those things aren't guaranteed. So, you know, give us this day, our daily bread, that sort of thing. And that, that is that is really interesting to me, because I've always wondered where, like, what exactly I'm allowed to hope for as a Christian and still be pious, because what interests me is this hope that, for example, that your prayers are even being heard, you know, I've had many people confess to me that like, look, I believe in God and but I'm, some people are in this like fluctuating state where there's like, some days I pray confidently, and some days I'm like, I hope there's someone actually listening to me. And that hope isn't really talked about a lot in in these texts, at least in these older times, because it's just sort of taken for granted that and that's on the side of faith, and you already have it. And so now you get to have hope. But I think, hoping that there just even is a god or just the sort of hope that you're allowed for your future, when you do have hope that there's a being like God, some being that ordered toward goodness is love itself, ultimately wants to bring off you know, right all things and fix all things. That this idea that there is such a being that actually loves you and cares for you. Might be like, actually the stepping stone to the faith initially, or at least it's it might be one of the stages in you might say the process of becoming faithful. And that that side of hope is is less talked about been of great theological interest to me, though, I don't know when I'll ever get the chance to investigate. But it's something I've thought about because it struck me particularly when I read CS Lewis's book, The Silver Chair part of the chronicle of Narnia series, and that that greats, there's a great speech and they're given by a character that is basically like, you know, what, even if I'm wrong, I would rather live as if all this is true than not because like, what what hope is there otherwise, and like, puddle, glum? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, puddle gloves, speeches. Yeah, I'm definitely gonna write about that someday. I just have to, it's, to me, it's just one of the greatest things ever. But, but I I've thought about that, like, how hope also just sort of provides a ground for like being religious. And thus, like engaging in the process of faith, which then can cope cultivate this, like further hope that I think Augustine is actually trying to elucidate here. And so there might be like a two fold actually role for hope as a virtue that I think maybe one with and one of those two roles is being sort of, I think, ignored, generally. But it is probably important for the person before they have faith as well. Yeah, stop
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
