Alan S. Oser

I am frequently asked the question, how could you possibly have known that the world would end last week exactly when it did? I chuckle modestly.

It is true that others had predicted for centuries that the world would end eventually, but I was the one who predicted the time and date with accuracy a week in advance. No one paid attention to me, but now they know better. Rather than leaning back in smug satisfaction here in Heaven – or wherever this chilly place is – I am pondering the words, attitudes and activities of my fellow human beings in the days before the final disaster struck.

On the news one evening a commentator was bemoaning the $77 trillion debt that the nation would be passing on to its grandchildren. The President was warning the newly independent state of Totsville, with a population of 480, to stop developing an atomic bomb or suffer unspecified consequences. A baseball writer was indignantly opposing the expansion of the major leagues to 100 teams and opposing a shift of the Yankees’ Opening Day game to New York from China. He was writing in Chinese in the world’s only mass-circulation daily, based in Shanghai.

“But suppose they had realized that the end was at hand,” I ask myself, “what would they have done about it? They would probably have been consumed with terror, and would have rushed about clutching their children and moaning. Is that what you would prefer?”

No, it is not. Only ignorance of impending, immediate and certain disaster can generate the rational, intelligent behavior I favor. Such behavior is possible only when there is hope.

It does not follow that hope for the future will produce rational, intelligent behavior. Nor is it clear that rational behavior and intelligent behavior always go together. Revenge, for example, is often rational but rarely intelligent. Suppose it succeeds in doing in a culprit whose ancestor dispatched your ancestor. That may provide a sense of satisfaction but it will achieve no other positive end. On the other hand, it may inspire the culprit’s brother to do in your sister, thus starting or continuing a cycle of revenge killings. This would not please your grandfather, who had a saintly disposition.

I do not disparage punishment in principle, but I see disadvantages when it takes the form of revenge.

Nor do I disparage rushing about consumed with terror once the certainty of the world’s end has been established. But wild terror was not necessary last week for anyone, except perhaps myself, with my advance knowledge. For others there was reason for hope, and therefore for intelligent action. Even in the run-up to a disaster hope is preferable to terror.

Out of hope springs the possibility of a better future, and the effort needed to produce a better future. Effort and pessimism do not go well together.

I believe in a concept I call Effective Hope. A bit of mathematical savvy is required to make use of it. It involves the establishment of two scales of value. First the degree of desire must be ascertained on a scale of one to five, five being the most powerful level of desire. The second scale relates to the level of effort to be put into achieving a desired outcome. Again, five means maximum energy. Multiply the two to get the score

When Effective Hope stands at 25, the degree of desire is at its highest point and the effort to achieve that desire is at a maximum. Failure will not be borne lightly. On the other hand, why risk a five on the desire scale if you are in no position to exercise a five effectively on the effort scale? Or, to say it simply, why get exercised over situations you cannot alter or significantly influence, no matter how hard you try? This is not an excuse for failing to act on public issues. It is merely an excuse for not getting exercised.

Which explains why I do not get too excited about the results of Presidential elections, although I always vote, and have occasionally participated in campaigns.

As a young man I thought that the onward and upward path of my career required that I get a job on a newspaper in Rhodesia. I applied by letter. I never even received a reply, and I took it hard. (Southern Rhodesia went on to become Zimbabwe, and Northern Rhodesia became Zambia; that hasn’t turned out so well either.)

After I had moped about this to no purpose, I was interviewed for several jobs in America. Only one offer came out of that, and it was for a job I didn’t want. But I took it anyway and it turned out beautifully. Ever afterwards I have believed that the least desired objectives, if achieved, may in the end produce the most favorable results.

The opposite is also true. In the brilliant George Eliot novel Middlemarch, Dorothea Brooks is thrilled to marry the priggish scholar Causubon, who proves to be a big disappointment. Similarly, the physician Lydgate is disappointed with his bride, Rosemary Vincy. Both Dorothea and Lydgate thought they were getting what they most wanted. They both lost hope in the end that their marriages could succeed. Neither of them was a shrewd appraiser of character, or else wishful thinking had stripped them of their analytical ability.

I am an advocate of 15 on the Effective Hope scale. By this I mean that in life it is good to hold the degree of desire to three, while the effort expended on important goals should stand at five. Try hard, I say, but do not be too disappointed by failure. This works very well even in athletic competition or at the card table. People who are fives on the desire scale, and four's or five's on the effort scale as well, tend to be depressives or sore losers.

Elation, oddly enough, comes about only when the Effective Hope scale stands at a low number. If something very good suddenly happens to you that you never thought even to hope for, much less work for, you become elated. Consider the scientist who never dreamed he would win the Nobel Prize. Imagine his elation when the phone call comes from Sweden, once he overcomes his irritation over the disturbance to his sleep. “Me?” he says in disbelief. But that will be a happy day for him.

And it is with a sense of relief that I now report that I was all wrong about the end of the world. The world has not ended. It plods on, exhibiting horror and wonders, evil and goodness. I cling to a five on the desire scale of hope for its future.