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Human Kind
cannot bear very much reality. T.S. Eliot
WHEN Pandora had upended her box of calamities over the earth, there fell out, so says the story, a last straggler: hope.
Hope pities us and lies. It pities our terrors and invites us to tell ourselves that the things we fear happen to other people. We are a special case. When it comes to us, says hope, calamity will turn aside, may yet turn to our advantage.
Hope pities our dowdiness. It promises that we will find the treasure, marry the prince, and inherit the kingdom. Hope says that it is our birthright to win the lottery') and write a classic. If we are American it will be a best seller. We will make the NBA, be the next Michael Jackson, become president.
And hope pities our disappointment with the world. It tells us to look forward to the time of the messiah to come, or backward to the paradise that must surely have been. The heart rebels at the truth that what is is it. Somewhere, says hope, in our past or in our future there has just got to be a golden age.
Friends to whom I argue my contention that hoping contains an inherent lie disagree violently. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) explains their reaction: it defines the lie as "a false statement made with intent to deceive; a criminal falsehood," and goes on to say, "In mod. use, the word is normally a violent expression of moral disapprobation, which in polite conversation tends to be avoided, the synonym falsehood or un-truth being often substituted as relatively euphemistic."
The OED lists only one other category, our old friend the white lie, and defines it as "a consciously untrue statement which is not considered criminal; a falsehood rendered venial or praiseworthy by its motive."
I wish to advance the pink or rose-colored lie and define it as an unconsciously untrue statement never considered blameworthy because it is not considered to be a falsehood.
I want to look at the pink lie in terms of the three aspects of the OED's definition of the lie and the white lie: function, intentionality, and moral reputation.
To take the last first. Hope has a universally favorable...