The greatest crisis of a society is not poverty.
Its biggest crisis is despair.
Because poverty can be overcome through struggle.
But despair makes the struggle meaningless.
This is why the real reason for the flight to the past is not just a historical fallacy;
is the loss of the future.
And the question at this point is:
How does a society rebuild the future it has lost?
HOPE IS NOT AN EMOTION, IT IS A PROCESS OF CONSTRUCTION
Hope is often misunderstood.
It is thought to be an expectation, an optimism, a feeling of “it will be okay”.
But hope is not a passive emotion.
It is an active production.
Hope:
- It does not arise spontaneously,
- It is not outsourced,
- And it doesn't come from indoctrination.
Hope comes only when these three things come together:
- A meaningful goal,
- The belief that this goal can be achieved,
- And the will to act in this way.
Without these three, there is no hope.
FIRST STEP THE COURAGE TO FACE REALITY
No future is built on lies.
So the first condition for building hope is this:
Facing reality.
- Seeing the past without romanticizing it,
- Not to deny today's shortcomings,
- And most importantly, to accept your share.
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This is a difficult step.
Because the truth is not comfortable.
But without truth there can be no change.
STEP TWO ENVISIONING THE FUTURE
It is not the past that determines the direction of a society;
is a vision of the future.
If a society:
- What kind of education does he want?
- What kind of justice system does he want?
- What standard of living does he want?
If it cannot answer these questions, that society has lost its direction.
Because one cannot go where one has not seen.
That is why hope begins with an imagination.
But this imagination must be a concrete sense of direction, not an abstract dream.
STEP THREE ACCEPTING RESPONSIBILITY
The most attractive aspect of escaping to the past was this:
Not imposing responsibility.
But the future is the opposite.
The future asks:
“What are you going to do?”
This question is disturbing.
Because you have to answer.
And at this point a link is established between the individual and society:
Society does not change.
The people who make up society change.
So hope is a collective thing, but its beginning is individual.
STEP FOUR RECOGNIZE AND OVERCOME FEAR
It was not only despair that was behind the flight to the past.
There was also fear.
- Fear of failure,
- Fear of change,
- Fear of the unknown.
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But this fact was forgotten:
Fear grows without action.
And only those who move see the edge of fear.
Hope is therefore not the absence of fear, but the power to act in spite of it.
STEP FIVE BUILDING A NEW LANGUAGE
The way a society thinks is hidden in the language it uses.
If a society is always saying:
- “I used to...”
- “Once upon a time...”
- “We already...”
there is no future there.
So building hope is also building a new language.
- “What can we do?”
- “How do we change?”
- “Is it possible to do better?”
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These questions are the beginning of a new mind.
THE MOST CRITICAL BREAK: GIVING UP “THIS IS HOW WE ARE”
We saw the most dangerous sentence in the previous installment of the series:
“This is how we are.”
The most critical step in building hope is to abandon this sentence.
Because this sentence:
- It makes change impossible,
- It removes responsibility,
- And it kills the future.
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It should be replaced by the following sentence:
“We don't have to be like this.”
This sentence is the moment when a society is reborn.
REDEFINING THE PAST
At this point the past is not completely rejected.
But the location changes.
Background:
-It's no place to take refuge,
- It becomes an experience to learn from.
It is no longer about going back to the past;
is to rise above the past.
This is not a rupture;
is a transcendence.
CONCLUSION HOPE IS A DECISION
At the end of this whole process, the reality is this:
Hope is not a feeling.
It is a decision.
- The decision to face reality,
- The decision to change,
- The decision to take risks,
- And the decision to build the future.
Unless that decision is made,
the past will always remain more attractive.
THE LAST WORD
A society does not grow with its past.
It grows as much as it can transcend its past.
And the biggest question is this:
Do we take refuge in the past?,
or do we build the future?
Because the two are not possible at the same time.