David Brower – “By most people’s reckoning, as an atheist I should have no Hope what-so-ever”.
David said: “I hear a lot lately that we are wired for religion, that there is a religion gene. I don’t buy that. I would say that we are genetically wired to want to know why, but that could as easily be explained as a science gene.” David feels that priests and scientists are searching for the big answers. He doesn’t feel that humans have the answers genetically wired but that there is a Hope gene.
I suggested that the impact of the word Love is diminished by saying “I love that candy-bar”, just as the meaning of Hope is diminished by saying “I hope it doesn’t rain tomorrow”. To which he interjected, “unless you are a farmer who hopes it does rain tomorrow”. I asked why be hopeful, unless it affects your situation? He says “do you mean as opposed to keeping expectations low and not being disappointed?”
Then when asked who he thought embodied a spirit of Hope, he immediately answered his daughter Devin. He explained that through her struggle to recover from the ordeal of a brain aneurism at the young age of 15, she has been stripped of some of the indoctrination, or filters, that we as a society put on children as they mature, and that’s allowed her to access a liberated state of child-like Hope. David’s wife Trudy said that Devin’s unflagging positivity allows people to feel hope for her and her situation. I can attest to feeling the joyful energy that she projects when I am around her.
We discussed active versus passive Hope and when asked about the nature of shallow positivism in people he said, “Well, what if you hope you win the lottery, but don’t buy a Lottery ticket…….?”
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