Quote for Reflection (Sunday, February 9, 2025)

Because hope has such a revolutionary function, it is more likely that failure to hope-hopelessness- happens among the affluent, the prosperous, the successful, the employable, the competent, for whom the present system works so well. We are the ones who are likely to be seduced into taking the present political, economic, intellectual system too seriously and equating it with reality. Indeed, it is prudent to take it that way, because that is where the jobs and benefits are. The more one benefits from the rewards of the system, the more one is enraptured with the system, until it feels like the only game in town and the whole game. Our “well-offness” leads us finally to absolutize, so that we may say that “the system is the solution.” The system wants us to believe that, for such belief silences criticism. It makes us consenting, docile, obedient adults. The system wants to contain all our hopes and fears, wants us to settle for the available system of rewards.

Hope Restored, by Walter Brueggemann