Beware of Cruel Optimism and Hopium

People are often bifurcated as being either optimists or pessimists, but I have long tried to be neither. Rather I have tried to be a realist. Recently, though, in an article by Chris Smith, I came across a new term (to me), “cruel optimism,” and that strengthened my stance against optimism.**  

“The Rise of Cruel Optimism” is the title of the eighth chapter of Stolen Focus by Johann Hari, a British journalist. Hari (b. 1979) in turn introduces Lauren Berlant’s book, Cruel Optimism, published in 2011 by Duke University Press.

Berlant (1957~2021) was an American scholar who was a professor of English at the University of Chicago from 1984 until the year of her death. In a July 2021 essay in The Nation magazine, she was deemed “one of the most esteemed and influential literary and cultural critics in the United States.”

Cruel Optimism was Berlant’s most influential book, and Hari states that in it she explains that cruel optimism “is when you take a really big problem with deep causes in our culture like obesity or depression or addiction—and you offer people, in upbeat language, a simplistic solution.

“It sounds optimistic,” he continues, “because you were telling them the problem can be solved and soon—but it is in fact cruel because the solution you’re offering is so limited and so blind to the deeper causes that for most people it will fail” (p. 150).

Consider a couple of examples of cruel optimism. Hari’s first example is stress. Self-help books often suggest that meditation and mindfulness are helpful ways to reduce stress. While it is true that they may help reduce the symptoms of stress, they do nothing to eliminate the stressors.

Hari goes on to say that it is cruel optimism to think that meditation and/or mindfulness can “cure” stress, for the stressors “are often socioeconomic in nature: low wages, poor working conditions, poor or nonexistent health insurance” and the like.

Chris Smith gives another good example: greenwashing. As I explained in a blog post in February 2024, greenwashing is “the act or practice of making a product, policy, activity, etc. appear to be more environmentally friendly or less environmentally damaging than it really is.”

Smith asserts, “Greenwashing aims to make the consumer feel good about themselves, while doing little or nothing to address the present climate change.” It is cruel optimism because it leads people to buy what they don’t need by mistakenly thinking they are helping the environment even though they aren’t.

Cruel optimism is an example of “hopium.” This latter term means holding on to false hopes that prevents us from accepting reality. Hopium differs from hope in that the optimism it fuels is unwarranted or irrational. Like opium, it may make one feel better temporarily but causes harm later on.

Just before the 2024 presidential election, Russell Moore, the editor-in-chief of Christianity Today, wrote (here), “...there’s a kind of ‘hope’ that is meant to numb us, to distract us from thinking about what could be a bleak future.”

Moore goes on to say that there is a deficient type of hope similar to the deficient type of grace that Bonhoeffer called cheap grace. Thus, “Cheap hope” is “actually not hope. It’s a hopioid.”

In his book God Can’t, Thomas Jay Oord writes about the danger of religious people praying with great hope for their sickness to be cured. In reality, though, Oord avers, “Instead of bringing hope, prayers for healing lead some to despair.”** Their hope becomes a type of hopium and cruel optimism.

In closing, I share a comment local Thinking Friend Anton Jacobs posted in response to my April 30 blog article. Anton, who admits to being pessimistic often, wrote, “…my main hope is that my sense of hopelessness is mistaken.”

I thought that was a helpful stance that is neither cruel optimism nor an example of hopium.

So, yes, let’s beware of the negative attitudes of cruel optimism and hopium. But for those of you who at times (or often) tend to be a victim of pessimism, I hope that you can embrace the hope that your sense of hopelessness is mistaken.

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** Chris Smith, the founding editor of Englewood Review of Books (ERB) introduced the term “cruel optimism” (which he said was new to him as it was to me) in an April 3 email sent to subscribers to the ERB online book review website, which he launched in 2008.

** The full title of Oord’s book is God Can't: How to Believe in God and Love after Tragedy, Abuse, and Other Evils (2019). I introduced Oord and his book in January (see here).

Hopeful, But Not Optimistic

A good friend recently wrote, “My usual optimism is fading.” I responded, “I am sorry to hear that your optimism is waning—but that is not necessarily a bad thing, for it is better to be realistic than optimistic. And don’t give up hope; there is a difference between hope and optimism.”

So, what is that difference, and can a person actually be hopeful but not optimistic?

Defining Terms

Some definitions of optimism and hope sound as if they are synonyms. Here is the definition from Dictionary.com for optimism: “a disposition or tendency to look on the more favorable side of events or conditions and to expect the most favorable outcome.”

By contrast, hope means to work for and to wait for something with the confident expectation and anticipation that it will at some point, sooner or later, be fulfilled.

Optimism is an aspect of a person’s disposition or temperament. People with a sunny temperament are usually optimists, people with dark dispositions are mostly pessimists.

Hope, though, is a theological virtue. As Jim Wallis writes in his 2019 book Christ in Crisis, hope “is not simply a feeling, or a mood . . . . It is a choice, a decision, an action based on faith. . . . Hope is the engine of change. Hope is the energy of transformation” (p. 264).

Later in that book, Wallis reiterates what he has often said: “Hope means believing in spite of the evidence, then watching the evidence change” (p. 281).

And here are wise words from an Irish poet: 

So, yes, a person can be hopeful even if he/she is not optimistic. Thus, I like what Black theologian/philosopher Cornel West tweeted back in January 2013: “I cannot be optimistic but I am a prisoner of hope.”

Emphasizing Action

A key difference between optimism and hope, as defined/described above, is this: optimism doesn’t demand anything of us (everything is going to be all right!), but hope entails effort as we endeavor to actualize that for which we hope.

Like the Kingdom of God, hope also demands that we work for what we hope for, knowing that it might well be a long time before that hope will be realized.

The New Testament says that “now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love” (1 Cor. 13:13, NRSV). But faith and hope are a close third and second.

Further, the New Testament also declares that “faith without actions is dead” (James 2:26, Common English Bible). But isn’t it true to say that not just faith, but both love and hope without actions are also dead?

Love is not simply a feeling or an emotion. It is often said that "love is a verb,” and I believe that is true. Love is something that is best expressed not in words, but in action.

And so it is with hope.

Assessing the Future

So, linking this to my 10/25 post, what about the future of this country under the current President and Congress?

To be honest, I am not very optimistic about this year’s pending legislation or about the elections of 2022 or 2024. But I am hopeful for the future. If this year’s legislation doesn’t turn out well, I will do what little I can to help elect better members of Congress in 2022.

And if the elections of 2022 turn out to be a disappointment, again I will do what little I can to elect the best President and Congress possible in 2024.

If the latter is also a disappointment, then I will begin working for 2028 (although there may be little I can do, for that is the year I turn 90, if I make it that far).

Regardless of what happens, though, I will continue to be hopeful, believing that things will get better later, if not sooner. That is because I trust in the “God of hope.” Accordingly, these words from Romans 15:13 (NIV) is my prayer for all of you.