Thursday, April 22, 2010

Hope, Obama, and Health

Over at Crooked Timber, John Quiggan has a post on President Obama. While acknowledging that he’s “instinctively a pragmatist and centrist” who was unlikely to work for “radical policy action in the short run,” he asserted:
Still, it seemed at least possible that an Obama presidency would begin a renewal of a progressive project of transformation, setting out the goal of a better world. One respect in which this hope has been fulfilled, for me, is in Obama’s articulation of the goal of a world without nuclear weapons, and in the small but positive steps he’s taken in this direction. . . . after decades in which the left has been on the defensive, it’s time for a politics of hope. We need hope to mobilise a positive alternative to the fear, anger and tribalism on offer from the right. . . . What the politics of hope means, to me, is the need to start setting out goals that are far more ambitious than the incremental changes debated in day-to-day electoral politics.
This reminded me of a passage from Health of Nations (Basic 1987, p. 184), by Leonard Sagan:
The history of rapid health gains in the United States is not unique; the rate at which death rates have fallen is even more rapid in more recently modernizing countries. The usual explanations for this dramatic improvement—better medical care, nutrition, or clean water—provide only partial answers. More important in explaining the decline in death worldwide is the rise of hope ... [through] the introduction of the transistor radio and television, bringing into the huts and shanties of the world the message that progress is possible, that each individual is unique and of value, and that science and technology can provide the opportunity for fulfillment of these hopes. [emphasis mine, BB]
Hope: intangible, not sufficient, but necessary. Without it we wither and die. With it, we can change and grow.

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