A Hopeful Skeptic

According to an ancient myth, hope arrived on earth as part of a curse. Prometheus stole fire from the gods, and Zeus avenged the theft with a “gift.” He commanded Hephaestus to mold the first woman, Pandora, and presented her to Prometheus’s brother. Pandora, in turn, was given a clay jar—which Zeus told her never to open. Curiosity got the better of her, she lifted the lid, and out flew all the world’s ills: sickness and famine for our bodies, spite and envy for our minds, war for our cities. Realizing her mistake, Pandora slammed the jar shut, leaving only hope trapped inside.

But what was it doing there in the first place, alongside our miseries? Some people believe hope was the jar’s only good, and trapping it further doomed us. Others think it fits in perfectly with the other curses. The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche called hope “the most evil of evils because it prolongs man’s torment.” You might agree. Hope has been typecast as delusional and even toxic—causing people to ignore their problems and the world’s.

Scientists think of hope differently. The psychologist Richard Lazarus wrote, “To hope is to believe that something positive, which does not presently apply to one’s life, could still materialize.” In other words, hope is a response to problems, not an evasion of them. If optimism tells us things will get better, hope tells us they could. Optimism is idealistic; hope is practical. It gives people a glimpse of a better world and pushes them to fight for it.

Any of us can practice hope. [My friend] Emile did. He saw the same world most of us do, but instead of retreating into cynicism, he chose to work for peace, build community, and live his principles. To me and many who knew him, Emile’s positivity seemed supernatural. Temperament, experience, will, or some alchemy of all three graced him with a mind and a heart many of us could learn from. Through dozens of tearful, grateful conversations, I gained a deeper understanding of who Emile was and how he got that way. Emile pursued peace the way doctors pursue healing. If illnesses are aberrations in the body’s function, Emile saw conflict and cruelty as diseases of social health. He and his colleagues diagnosed the triggers that inspire hatred, and then designed psychological treatments to reduce conflict and build compassion.

One powerful tool he used to fight cynicism was skepticism: a reluctance to believe claims without evidence. Cynicism and skepticism are often confused for each other, but they couldn’t be more different. Cynicism is a lack of faith in people; skepticism is a lack of faith in our assumptions. Cynics imagine humanity is awful; skeptics gather information about who they can trust. They hold on to beliefs lightly and learn quickly. Emile was a hopeful skeptic, combining his love of humanity with a precise, curious mind.

This mindset presents us with an alternative to cynicism. As a culture, we are so focused on greed, hatred, and dishonesty that humanity has become criminally underrated. In study after study, most people fail to realize how generous, trustworthy, and open-minded others really are. The average person underestimates the average person.

If you’re anything like the average person, this hides some good news: People are probably better than you think. By leaning into skepticism—paying close attention rather than jumping to conclusions—you might discover pleasant surprises everywhere. As research makes clear, hope is not a naive way of approaching the world. It is an accurate response to the best data available. This is a sort of hope even cynics can embrace, and a chance to escape the mental traps that have ensnared so many of us.

Cynicism often boils down to a lack of good evidence. Being less cynical, then, is simply a matter of noticing more precisely. I hope we can witness the good in others and work toward the world most of us want. The cynical voice inside each of us claims that we already know everything about people. But humanity is far more beautiful and complex than a cynic imagines, the future far more mysterious than they know. Cynicism is a dirty pair of glasses more of us put on each year. But we can take them off. We might be astonished by what we find.