Peace, All. Here's a bit more from the hope book. Hope you dig it. -Tom
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Contrary to what Bloch sees as the idealizing (making-static/immobile) impulse in fascist ideologies, Bloch looks back at no Golden Age, but only at dissatisfaction and its struggling hopes and dreams, only at becoming and the dreams that helped bodies to make history become. “Our heritage is the Peasants’ Revolt!” Here we see: he looks back not to go back or to be “great again,” but, rather, in order to hope and dream as the peasants hoped and dreamt, even as we hope and dream anew.Bloch finds in the Exodus, in Jesus, in Joachim of Fiore, in the peasants, and ultimately in Marx, the same impulse: a world where all things are held in common, where each has according to her needs, and where all people are able to eat—and a world where “humanity and nature no longer see each other as strangers,” but as friends. The world will be new—and so will we. We will have become, even as we will still be becoming. Simply put, Bloch’s looking back is looking back in order to dream forward, toward the dream of the classless banquet, which is the resurrection of the body.
It is true: the impulse toward change always runs the risk of going awry. Bloch would be the first to say that the longings of the heart take terrible and even evil turns. Again, he was made a refugee by the heimweh of the Reich. However, not hoping, is an impossible task. Indeed, hope and hunger are what bring the body to life, make life worth living. Though, it seems, the question must be about life for all, not just for me. Said differently, hope must become collective. We must all be looped into one another. Self-preservation (which is willing to sacrifice the other) must become communal and hungry self-extension."
~Thomas R. Gaulke, An Unpromising Hope: Finding Hope Outside of Promise for an Agnostic Church and for Those of Us Who Find it Hard to Believe (Eugene: Pickwick, 2021)
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