On Hopium

is the glass half-full or all the way full?

Success in any venture will always go to the man who is willing to go one step further than his unsuccessful counterpart.

Tenacity of effort, fueled by hope, begets success.

Those above quotes, which I totally just made up, could have been uttered by any wealthy, white, male industrialist a century ago.

I have been thinking about the purpose of hope. Here are some questions at the center of this issue:

• Does our culture see hope as a necessity, and the pursuit of it an unquestioned virtue?

• Are there different forms of hope: naïve hope, enlightened hope, unwavering hope,vacillating hope, desperate hope, deceived hope, steadfast hope?

• Do we choose to be hopeful? Or does it rise naturally from our disposition–influenced by genetics, experience or a set of circumstances?

• What is hope? A pattern of thought, like a set of assumptions? Or more like a gut feeling?

Hope is not an action, but can motivate a feeling or an action. One person “holds out hope” as a way of buoying the spirit in the face of difficulties that they have no control or limited control over. Another person “keeps hope alive” as a kind of fire that will help them take the next step–a fuel for future agency.

Optimism leavens the soul.

That’s another one I just made up. Bread imagery pairs well with ideas about the function of hope and positive thinking. Plus you have the whole theological angle with the bread of life, rising, and transformation.

There is a ton of literature on the benefits of being hopeful about a particular outcome or optimistic in general. Hope and optimism provide counterpoint to stress and have a calming effect. They make one more resilient. They can help build and maintain trust in one another.

But when I fed the opening quote to ChatGPT to see if I could find a source for anything similar, it gave me, you know, five pages of its “top of mind” ideas delivered with a speed that is AI’s version of giddy delight. If AI were a dog its tail would be wagging all the time.

Its essay raised an important question: Should we choose to be hopeful because it makes us feel uplifted?

On the one hand, one person might hope for something for which there is sufficient evidence that warrants hope.

Another person might believe that hoping inwardly can actually help manifest the hoped for outcome.

I was introduced to the word “hopium” by an eternal optimist. He was talking about his nonprofit organization, then beset by financial misfortune, that was, as he put it, “running on hopium”--a genius turn of phrase. Is hope addictive? Does it give the hopeful a false sense of well-being?

Collins online dictionary defines hopium as a metaphorical substance “said to have been ingested by those who maintain an unrealistically optimistic outlook.” According to this definition, my hopium-addicted colleague was self-medicating, buoying his spirits until the proverbial ship would come in. Hope was not a choice for him; it was a habit and a survival tactic.

In 2023 I was surprised to find a French automotive company named Hopium. Promising a clean efficient automobile powered by a hydrogen fuel cell, Hopium presented in October 2020 its first prototype and started taking orders for the sedan, the Māchina Vision. It had its debut at the 2022 Paris Automotive Week, with market launch set for 2025.

The Machina Vision integrated fuel cell system delivers 500 hp, a top speed of 143 mph and a range of more than 620 miles while emitting nothing but water.

In July 2023 the French company was put into receivership, and subsequently dropped its sedan business, restructured its 9 million euro debt, and got approval for its recovery plan from the French government. It now focuses on fuel cells for heavy transport.

Success goes to the person willing to take the next step. I put my fortune into this venture; I risked everything; I had to shelve my flagship product; I went bankrupt; I kept going.

The new mission of Hopium is “Democratizing hydrogen technology through unparalleled compactness and superior efficiency.”

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There is too much Irish in me to embrace an unqualified hopeful outlook. (My mom’s line is MacMahon, a tribe from Limerick; my dad’s given names are Robert Emmett — a nod to the Irish revolutionary of the late eighteenth century.)

In his Irish Impressions (1919), G.K. Chesterton wrote that the Irish have a:

…peculiar habit of living as if the world were likely to break their hearts at any moment.

AI fetched me this apt interpretation of Chesterton’s view:

He was describing what he saw as a kind of tragic readiness in Irish culture — an emotional openness combined with defiance. The idea is that life is fragile, history is cruel, loss is possible at any moment — and yet one lives intensely anyway.

“What a terrible way to live!” exclaimed my late mother-in-law when I described to her how Chesterton’s quote resonated with me. It was an ongoing debate. (Nancy: Things always work out for the best. Me: They absolutely do not always.)

Then there is the famous half-quote “hope springs eternal…” usually voiced with a slight lift at the end. The full iambic line is from Alexander Pope’s 1734 An Essay on Man: “Hope springs eternal in the human breast,” which seems like an expression of the stubborn nature of wishing. But the full quatrain gives context:

Hope springs eternal in the human breast:
Man never is, but always to be blest:
The soul, uneasy and confin’d from home,
Rests and expatiates¹ in a life to come.

Pope is underlining the habitual nature of hope, the fulfillment of which we project into the future, ultimately to the blessing of life after death.

As a semi-Irish agnostic I have to ask:

How does belief in the fulfillment of hope after death effect the mindset, manner and methods of one’s life on earth?

That’s a whole other topic you can hope to read about later.

1. Expatiates. intransitive verb 1. To wander freely. 2. To range at large, or without restraint. 3. To speak or write at length. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition