Why hope? Now more than ever before is hope useful, relevant, and necessary. We hope because we still believe that there is some good worth fighting for. We hope, because it is what a healthy human does. We hope because we still can.
This is not a one-way-fits-all proposition, which is characteristic of how spiritual traditions are so often presented. The Truth may be there before the eyes of all, and it may be the same for everybody; but our path towards or away from it is our own to figure out. That is where the crux of the matter lies.
The Ten Commandments, the Noble Eightfold Path, and other wisdom-based precepts for moral living, these are not rules or dogmas: they are sets of guidelines. How we live them is determined by the moral choices we make moment-to-moment, with or without guidance or support.
This is about the fundamental right we have to informed consent as sovereign individuals. This is about waking up to the fact that this right is being taken from us chunk-by-chunk according to a clear plan.
This is about the lessons of the past eighty years of history, and the big question: have we learned them?
Record of Hope 