Hope as evidence — Not about feelings
1. Anything, even the most unequivocally good or beautiful, can be thought of in awful, disturbing, depressing terms
‘People that unironically believe smart people have lower wellbeing on average don’t realise the extent to which below-average people are victimized by their own stupidity.
‘If you’re stupid, you’re constantly being victimized by forces beyond your comprehension.
‘If you’re genuinely stupid, you don’t have the introspective capabilities required to dig yourself out of a hole. You don’t even realise you’re in the fucking hole.
‘You feel the negative consequences of your actions without comprehending their source.’
‘I am always suspicious of people who claim to be smart but are miserable. If they really were that smart, they would have figured out how to live a joyous life.’
(Seen on Twitter)
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An equally widespread intuition points in the opposite direction: that extraordinary intelligence often goes hand in hand with extraordinary suffering — that, if anything, the truly intelligent are less able, not more, to ‘climb out of the hole’.
The tormented genius…
It is curious how often people take such strong positions on these questions, since, at first glance, one might expect that the greater the intelligence, the greater the capacity both to refute distressing ideas and to conceive them.
Las gallinas que entran, por las que salen
(What you lose on the swings, you gain on the roundabouts.)
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The issue might be framed as follows:
WELLBEING (uplifting focus or vision) and INTELLIGENCE:
— Is wellbeing favoured by a clear, orderly, and true understanding of reality — or hindered by it?
— Or does wellbeing depend instead on some prior disposition: divine, instinctive, physiological, neurological…?
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Years ago, I read someone (yet again, on Twitter) referring to long EYELASHES by comparing them to a carnivorous plant. From which I inferred that
— anything, even the most unequivocally good or beautiful, can be thought of in awful, disturbing, depressing terms.
I do not know whether such cases reveal that what ultimately matters is faith, hope, and charity — or, if one prefers, some fundamental optimism rooted in temperament, mood, or another underlying disposition — or whether they merely illustrate mistaken ways of thinking, susceptible to correction by the proper use of reason.
2. The mystery of evil or the mystery of the good?
There is no opposition between reason and faith in religion — at least not in Catholicism.
It is possible that God exists, and it is possible that He does not. And it is always possible to interpret the same evidence from a religious perspective and from its opposite — as in the eyelashes evidence.
So, at first glance, it is problematic to determine which of the two positions is more rational. And certainly, faith — belief in God — is not at all anti-rational, contradictory, naive, ignorant and so forth, in the terms that numerous contemporaries present it, explicitly or implicitly.
Let’s take, for example, the perfection of women, or the perfection of cat whiskers, or that in the reproduction of cicadas in cycles of prime numbers.
One can consider such evidences as reasons to believe in an intelligent, infallible, trustworthy Creator behind them, and accept evil, error, and suffering as part of a mystery within a plan beyond our comprehension, designed by a Creator whose intelligence and goodness are likewise beyond our understanding, but who has given sufficient reasons to believe in and trust Him.
The position we have just described seems to me the most reasonable, but the opposite is not absurd either, and it seems to be perfectly possible that it be true: it consists of interpreting evil, error, and pain as the fundamental evidence (against the existence of God), and interpreting the perfections and wonders of the world as the real mystery. Many believe that such perfections and wonders can be reduced to chance, often combined with laws such as those described by the theory of evolution (which, by the way, is not considered a heresy by Catholicism: a Catholic is free either to accept or to reject — as I do — that theory).
The first position interprets evil as the mystery and the good as the evidence; the second interprets evil as the evidence and the good as the mystery.
3. Always favouring the interpretation that is most rational and most consistent with the known facts
I had an evaluation appointment at the dentist.
The first and most important piece of news is that I’m not going to lose my upper teeth tomorrow. (There might be problems in five years, but not tomorrow or even in a year.) Treatment could wait if it were economically and circumstantially necessary.
My bone condition doesn’t allow for replicating the same treatment I had on my lower teeth; it would require bone regeneration, waiting many months without a single tooth on top, with an unstable and problematic temporary prosthesis, and with a high probability that it would all be for nothing. — — In a situation of financial ease, without having to work with the public, and being able to live on liquids only, I would certainly have tried that option, but that’s not the case, so the only remaining option is the intermediate treatment explained below.
To summarise, I would have the (good, natural) sensations of my lower teeth, but with a less perfect structure (objectively speaking). The cost would be half. — — Since my financial situation will be the same as it has been for the past three years, I already know that there wouldn’t be a problem taking out a loan in a year, with instalments equal to those of the previous loan, but for two years (instead of four). — Another option would be to take out the loan and start treatment earlier, with a lower monthly payment but for more years and with more interest or fees or whatever they want to call it.
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The confirmation that the upper dental arch could not have a fully satisfactory solution even with all the money in the world is unilaterally bad news, but after nearly half a century of bitterness at the evidence that everything had to do with money, it is preventing what should have meant the definitive emotional collapse.
— God’s sense of humour in all its full splendour? —
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Another way to understand the case — undoubtedly more rational and more consistent with the unknown facts — would be to interpret that the emotional collapse had already occurred a long time ago and that what is happening is the mere impossibility of suffering or sinking further, combined with the supernatural virtues that sustain the creature above all worldly reason and feelings.
In cases of genuine miracles and genuine demonic possession, the miracle and demonic possession hypotheses are, respectively, the only ones that explain all the observed facts. If one possesses a truly scientific and rational mind (instead of an unshakeable foundation of materialist axioms — like that of most contemporary scientists), one will have no choice but to embrace the non-materialist hypotheses.
As a man of a scientific and rational mind, I therefore embrace the hypotheses of miracles, demonic possession, and supernatural sustenance — which consists of the theological virtues?
4. The true meaning of despair
‘I’m alive and well; becoming a Christian is a choice that might suit an atheist who feels despair and at the end of their rope, but fortunately, I’m not in that position.’
(Posted by someone on Twitter. Replied by me with the words that follow)
If despair had the one-sided and necessary relationship with Christian belief in God that you suggest, the large number of suicides that have always existed would not exist.
You might counter that suicide is not necessarily due to despair and feeling ‘at the end of [one’s] rope’, and I would agree with you on that, but I remind you that it is not possible for belief in Christian God and the act of suicide to occur simultaneously in the same person.
Suffering can lead to God, it can lead to the opposite, and it can, depending on the case, lead to nothing. But despair is, by definition, the lack of hope — and not the path to it.
I am almost entirely certain that you won’t even bother to think about what I have just said. I am almost certain that what I am doing will be for nothing. I have hardly any faith in you, in myself, or in anyone. But if I didn’t also possess those fragile yet powerful —decisive— gifts that are Faith and Hope with capital letters, that is, if I were truly desperate, I wouldn’t have written this. I can feel ‘at the end of [my] rope’, but Faith, Hope, Charity are not mere FEELINGS. In no way could I have written all this while properly BEING at the end of my rope.
Despair is a really serious word. It has a magnitude that you yourself have acknowledged is foreign to you, so it is shocking that you don’t consider the true consequences and manifestations of despair equally foreign.
Despair, accompanied by sufficiently profound suffering, does not lead, as you claim, to ceasing to be an atheist, but to ceasing to be alive.
5. Some — mysterious — voluntary element in embracing hope
(ENGLISH VERSION BELOW THE ORIGINAL)
‘Me encantó cuando leí a alguien decir que debería existir el opuesto del suicidio: una palabra para reconocer el momento en el que una persona decide, de forma abrupta, comenzar a vivir.’ (Visto en Twitter)
Puede sonar vago y ñoño pero se llama esperanza y significa exactamente eso: el hecho de que uno acepte seguir viviendo.
En cierta medida no depende de la propia voluntad, y no implica que además se tengan «ganas», «ilusión» ni nada por el estilo — que puede darse, o no, junto a la esperanza.
No sería completamente cierto decir que no depende de la propia voluntad, pero sería la forma más rápida y clara de decirlo, acaso como tentativa o enfoque urgente de la cuestión sin dar pie a las habituales confusiones con otros elementos, sobre todo de tipo sentimentaloide o psicológico.
— Por un lado, suena horrible que un atributo semejante pueda existir y obligue a vivir a alguien que (para decirlo, de nuevo, rápida y claramente) no quiere vivir (en el sentido superficial de la expresión). Y sería un horror absoluto que, finalmente, no hubiese nada que diera sentido a tal horror.
— Por otro lado, es difícil explicar cómo puede existir en una persona un atributo semejante si no ha sido puesto ahí precisamente por la Razón (Logos) que le da el único sentido que, a todas luces, parece poder tener.
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‘I loved reading someone say that there ought to be an opposite of suicide: a word to describe the moment when a person abruptly decides to begin living.’ (Posted by someone on Twitter)
It may sound vague or sentimental, but it is called hope, and it means precisely the acceptance of continuing to live.
To some extent, it does not depend on one’s own will; nor does it imply having any desire, enthusiasm, or anything of the sort — those may or may not accompany hope.
It would not be entirely true to say that it does not depend on one’s own will, but that is perhaps the quickest and clearest way of putting it: a first approximation to the question, intended to avoid the usual confusions with other elements, especially sentimental or psychological ones.
— On the one hand, it is horrifying that such a faculty could exist and compel someone to go on living who (to put it, once again, quickly and clearly) does not want to live — in the superficial sense of the expression. And it would be an absolute horror if, in the end, there were nothing that gave meaning to such horror.
— On the other hand, it is difficult to explain how such a faculty could exist within a person unless it had been placed there by the very Reason (Logos) that gives it the only meaning it can, by all appearances, possess.
6. A suffering on the scale of God Himself
(Some thoughts on the Noelia Castillo euthanasia case)
I keep reading comments about the complexity of the case and the difficulty of taking sides. To me, complexity is the very last word that applies here. It is not complicated, for there is only one consideration that matters.
To consent to suffering — to one’s own, or to that of another — requires a reason at least commensurate with the suffering itself. And it is plain that life, considered in itself, furnishes no such reason. One either believes, or one does not. There is nothing beyond that.
It is true, of course, that one must at some time have endured suffering on the scale of God Himself to understand what I mean, and to recognise the truth of what I have said for the self-evident thing that it is. In that sense alone may we concede that the matter acquires a certain complexity.
7. If the level of suffering were not high enough
(3 July 2026)
The other day, while waiting for the bus, I looked at the balcony on the opposite corner. It is a dark brown brick balcony that juts out from the building’s facade, like the ones below, though this is the only one whose roof isn’t also the floor of the balcony above. Seeing it, I thought that if I could be up there reading or writing without having to worry about anything (and therefore not having to work, in the strict sense of the word: the Spanish word for which, trabajo, comes etymologically from a torture instrument: the TRIPALIUM), simply having my home and my needs met, I’d not even consider suicide, even if everything else — past and present, and my memory and awareness of it — remained the same.
The meaning of one’s own life is a question that will often haunt any minimally intelligent mind, but it will only do so dramatically if the degree of suffering is considerable enough, and it’s a fact that the torment decreases — without one’s own life needing to reveal its meaning — as soon as a series of conditions are met.
Someone might then ask me why I don’t manage to achieve a similar situation, and I’d answer that it wouldn’t be worth it anymore. The situation itself, as if conjured by a magic wand, would be enough to enjoy life and banish the longing to die, but that situation won’t arrive by magic, but rather after a process as undesirable as the current situation: a process that would transform the desired scenario — which would not be optimal, but only sufficient to significantly reduce the sorrow and rule out suicide — into something insufficient to justify what one would have to endure before reaching it.
Today, that balcony was completely obscured by one of those ominous bottle-green awnings from the Spain of (the fortunate, as my father declared) Laureano López Rodó.
(On my names.)