Optimistic Democracy: The Politics of Hope

If societies cannot function without cultures of optimism, as I have suggested in the last chapter, then we might expect to find such cultures promoted at the most general level within the political systems under which we live; and, indeed, we do not have to look very far to see that virtually all forms of secular politics, authoritarian or democratic, are conducted with repeated reference to the prospects of a better future. These futures, of course, can express strongly conflicting values and visions, illustrating in the clearest possible terms the relative nature of optimism that I discussed in the previous chapter (socialist utopias, for example, being the stuff of neo-liberal nightmares, and vice-versa). Yet, however much the ‘content’ of these desired futures might differ, it is invariably wrapped up in the same ‘form’ of optimistic expectation. As the American philosopher, Richard Rorty, has observed:

Modern, literate, secular societies depend on the existence of reasonably concrete, optimistic and plausible political scenarios … To retain social hope, members of such a society need to be able to tell themselves a story about how things might get better, and see no insuperable obstacle to this story’s coming true.

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