Texto para à questão seguinte.

I get asked quite a lot if I'm optimistic or pessimistic. Optimism, pessimism, hope and despair are not useful ways of thinking about the present crisis. They are transient and not to be relied upon, however much they might help us to bear the awful weight of everyday, actual living.

Optimism and pessimism, in particular, are conditions of foresight, they are predictions about the future, not guides to living in the present moment. | don't care about the future, as | don't care about predictions. “Means, not ends”, as Aldous Huxley endlessly reminds us. We make the future, moment by moment, by our actions in the present, which is the place in which we have agency.

Hope, meanwhile, is a fickle thing — the last little bug at the bottom of Pandora's pot, drying its wet wings in the hot sun. Nice to look at, sure, but liable to flit off again when startled. Hope needs a place to perch. To have any meaning, any validity, any use or power, it must be founded upon agency, upon the deep-seated capacity to change. To change first oneself — already a process of negotiation with the world — and then to change everything else. BRIDLE, James. Hope needs a place to perch.

Disponível em https://booktwo.org. Publicado em: 18.07.2022. Texto adaptado.

A frase atribuída a Aldous Huxley (“Means, not ends”), no 3º parágrafo, embasa a opinião de James Bridle, segundo a qual