There are some attitudes in humans that appear worth emulating and uplifting not because they are particularly good in themselves but because their opposite attitude is far worse. Such seems to be the case with the attitude or feeling of hope. Hope has this habit of so often recommending itself in opposition to cynicism. That cynicism has little to commend for itself, at least in the polite circles of progressives, goes without saying.The ease with which hope can embarrass and even shame the cynic is remarkable.What the feeling of hope is in itself, does not then matter much, as we so easily fall for its charms. Indeed, hope, feted by all, very easily escapes scrutiny.Given how common and popular it is, hope inhabits a surprisingly impervious inner world. Hence, more than a little effort seems necessary to penetrate it. Hope generates more than a fair share of its own pleasures and joys, and indeed its own afflictions, attachment and over-identifications.In light of the victory of Zohran Mamdani as the Mayor of New York City, we can say, hope is in the air. Earlier, we saw this in 2008 when Barack Obama was elected president.Progressives, liberals and those on the left are urging each other to be hopeful and not cynical. There is a powerful insistence on adopting the stance of hope.This might be a good time to try and understand the feeling of hope.Power of hopeHope is about keeping the spirits high even when the conditions are adverse. Hope is, in that sense, like the proverbial panacea, a balm for the soul in impossible circumstances.Hope is always well protected, properly fortified. It is incorrigible – not exactly arrogant but always ready to recommend itself. Hope never dies. That is why we often talk about hoping against hope. That is the power of hope, but dare I say, also its profound flaw.That hope might turn illusory is no argument against it. For illusions too have power, as Slavoj Zizek pointed out at the time of Obama’s win in 2008. We must be able to distinguish the failure of hope from hope itself. Hope must be understood at its best: when it puts its best foot forward, promises are delivered and it carries the day.Hope galvanises energies, but somehow does not bring them to a focus, an intensity, identifying pressure points, fissures. Hope works in a generic way. “We shall overcome, some day”. The “shall” is important. The how and what is not really asked: “how” shall we overcome and “what” it means to overcome – raising such questions might get construed as divisive and a party-spoiler.Hope as bastardised faithHope tries to make you feel that you are doing things for the first time. It carries a kind of freshness and innocence which itself becomes a problem. Building on past experiences is not preferred. We seem not to have the option of starting off from “we shall overcome” as a given and begin straight from a more nuanced, “higher” plane involving the questions of “how” and “what”.Hope then tends not to allow you to learn from the bitter or not-so-bitter experiences of the past. It is high on sentiment but low on inner density and complexity. Thus, the Obama experience with hope does not enrich the hope aroused by Mamdani. It is always piecemeal, as though amnesia is quietly pushed as a virtue.One way to look at hope is as what has become of faith. Hope is bastardised faith.Faith is not about being hopeful but about fully giving yourself away. Hope puts a cover around you, insulates you from the world and reinforces the kind of optimism that has no determinations, no effects. Once you have hope, you can retire and resign in optimism. Here is optimism as a purely subjective attitude, without objective determinations.With faith – at least in the Kierkegaardian sense – an active engagement with the world opens up. With hope, the world is engaged within its own shadow, limiting the possibilities. An inward festering in a misplaced happiness begins or is further reinforced. Hope can perhaps be kept alongside what Nietzsche would call the ascetic ideal — one involving a life of low-level equilibrium, or, in this case, a self-serving happiness.Faith involves sacrifice, putting yourself on the line. And that changes everything. Hope does not involve sacrifice. It is an abstract stance, of preserving oneself even as one seems to prescribe change. Hope involves a resignation which is unlike the radical resignation of faith.Walter Benjamin saw precisely such an insulation and isolation, produced by a particular kind of left-wing radicalism, which seemed inspired by the hope for radical change. Such radicals are, for him, a “spiritual elite” who absent-mindedly caresses hollow forms. “It takes as much pride in the traces of former spiritual goods, as the bourgeois does in his material goods”. And then, “this left-wing radicalism is precisely the attitude to which there is no longer in general any corresponding political action”. Benjamin identified it as “left-wing melancholy”, a notion I had earlier tried to develop with regard to the Indian left.Hope inspires such a left-wing radicalism caught up in an inward melancholic wallowing.Hope vs cynicismSuch a hope aligns so well with populist Left politics. Hope is the spontaneous attitude of populism. Armed with the magical power of hope, populism now trashes not just the mainstream cynic living a life of compromise, but also the considered stance of those who are aware of the real stakes of social transformation.Populism generates hopes for the people by announcing universal rights for all. It refuses to break down the people and peer into its internal differentiation. Thus, it must be very shrill and loud in focusing on the elite or the billionaires as standing in opposition to the people. The tendency of liberal democracy to function by creating an antagonism between the people considered as a bloc and the elite is reinscribed and reinforced by populism. Hope provides the sentimental mush. In shaming the cynic for being cynical, hope in fact throws the baby with the bath water. We know of a kind of cynic produced by the dominant system. Irresponsible, without stakes anywhere, a nonchalant attitude are words to define such a cynic. Such a cynic is part of capitalism’s zeitgeist, about whom Peter Sloterdjik has written a brilliant book called A Critique of Cynical Reason.There is, however, also another figure, quite the opposite of the cynic, but who is also clubbed into the same category. Such a so-called cynic is in fact an insider to things, one who is heavily invested in the inner dynamics of the system, all the while identifying its weak and strong points. Someone who is well aware of where things actually stand, grounded and who cannot be bluffed and do not want to bluff themselves and in front of whom hope looks fluffy and pretentious, if not misleading and delusional.It is such a grounded insider whom hope wants to portray as the cynic. Indeed, hope confronts such a cynic, not in a light-hearted way but as an ardent enemy. Hope shuns such a grounded cynic who lives too close to the unfolding scenario and who can breach its flippant buoyancy and levitating tendency. Normally, the politics of populism and hope are associated with the populist Left or the moderate Left. Mamdani’s democratic socialism is an example. However, the hard Left too increasingly shares the same tendencies, particularly given the so-called rise of authoritarianism and the predilection towards forming a “united front” against fascism. The hard Left is hard in being just more shrill and adventurist than the populist left and the liberals, not in marking a real break from them. Divergent optics do not always mean any fundamental difference. That is why the attitude of hope needs a deep dive probe, given its enormous, overwhelming and hegemonic presence.The saying ‘the devil is in the details’ is anathema for hope. Hope repeats the saying with such an intonation and accent, completely changing the meaning. It says, “the devil is really in the details, hence let us avoid the details altogether”. Let us avoid a deep dive into the existing state of affairs (in order to reveal, say the differentiation within the notion of the people) and press for generic and cosmetic changes. Let the devil remain where it is and we can just wish it goes away! Such is the operation of hope.A deep cynicism about change is what hope has come to stand for. Against this, we must practice the cynicism about hope, which is a truly optimist stance. The power of cynicism might be what hope really needs.