The Spirit of Hope - Byung-Chul Han

A spectre is haunting us: fear. We are constantly confronted with apocalyptic scenarios: pandemics, world war, the climate catastrophe. Images of the end of the world and the end of human civilization are conjured up with ever greater urgency. Anxiously, we face a bleak future.� Preoccupied with crisis management, life becomes a matter of survival.� But it is precisely at such moments of fear and despair that hope arises like a phoenix from the ashes.� Only hope can give us back a life that is more than mere survival. Fear isolates people and closes them off from one another; hope, by contrast, unites people and forms communities.� It opens up a meaningful horizon that re-invigorates and inspires life.� It nurtures fantasy and enables us to think about what is yet to come.� It makes action possible because it infuses our world with purpose and meaning.� Hope is the spring that liberates us from our collective despair and gives us a future. In this short essay on hope, Byung-Chul Han gives us the perfect antidote to the climate of fear that pervades our world.