Hope?

[cronus]

What is it? Can you live a happy life without it? When is it better to have less than more? Maybe hope alone that makes us different from other animals for it allows us to imagine tomorrow and calibrate a path into the far future? Until it goes away and the fear drenched ape with all the existential anxieties of living in the day come to the surface....is it hope that determines our survival as a civilization?

[JimC]

Hominids without hope usually died before reproducing...

[cronus]

Hominids without hope usually died before reproducing...

Try the weather here and you'll still see babies being born.

[Blind groper]

Don't need hope. Sex drive is enough.

[Jason]

What the fuck is hope? Really.

It seems like an ambiguous concept heavily dependent on context. I mean I can "hope" the gun wielding maniac doesn't kill me in that I'm fervently desiring an outcome I favour. I can "hope" your stage three cancer clears up for you in that I know there's fuck all I can do and I'm just saying impotent words to comfort you.

I think I have it.

Hope
noun.
1. The fervent and impotent desire for a desired outcome to occur. 2. That shit you cling to when you have nothing left.

Being that hope is impotent and hoping for something often leads to disappointment, hope ought to be Occam razored. Consider:

I hope A.
A happens.
I'm overjoyed my hope was rewarded.

But hope is impotent so A would have happened anyway and if A was so damn great I would be overjoyed anyway. But what about if shit doesn't happen?

I hope A.
A doesn't happen.
I'm deeply depressed and disappointed.

Hoping led to depression and disappointment where A is false and changed fuck all where A is true. Hope is not only superfluous, it is deleterious emotional detritus. 86 that shit.