[MD] Boromir's Journey

[Matt Kundert]

Hi Steve,

Steve said:
Can't hope also get tied up with the idea of certainty as 
being certain that things will get better?  Or more modestly 
being certain that things really can get better?

Matt:
With the former question, I'm sure hope can, but I'm 
probably just gerrymandering the terms so that certainty 
always falls on the faith side and contingency falls on the 
hope.  So, hope-tied-up-with-certainty is, ipso facto, faith, 
but if only because that's how I had set things up to fall.  
Isolating certainty as a fulcrum was probably one thing, 
certainly in hindsight, I was trying to do.

Now, with the latter question, "being certain that things 
really can get better," that doesn't seem to be something 
we need necessarily be certain of, so much as a 
precondition for hope.  If improvement weren't an actual 
open possibility, there doesn't seem much utility in notion 
of being hopeful for betterness.  E.g., it seems a 
precondition for the MoQ, though not necessarily is it a 
precondition that things _will_ get better, given it is only 
in hindsight, as Pirsig says, that we can tell the different 
between DQ and degeneracy.

Steve said:
Getting good at recognizing the good and finding 
nourishment in what is good can strengthen us to change 
what is bad while focussing only on the bad leaves us 
with helpless and useless dispair. Can we then retain a 
notion of the importance of being okay to some extent 
with things as they are as actually helpful in our projects 
to make things better?

Matt:
I shy from "okay" as a somewhat elliptical shade of 
complicity, but you're reaching for that "calm" you talked 
about before.  I think the calm is the right kind of 
observable behavior to desire, but I'm not sure either 
what the best description of what to call it's origins, what 
the best description of what's going on inside is.  I don't 
think faith, but neither does hope seem to be sufficient.  
Perhaps necessary, but not sufficient by itself.

Matt
 		 	   		  
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