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Written by Hazem Zohny. In Marvelâs latest âSpider-Man: No Way Homeâ, Peter Parkerâs girlfriend MJ has a simple philosophy: âIf you expect disappointment, then you can never really be disappointed.â She repeats this at various interludes in the movie, except as the plot gears up to the inevitable showdown with the villains, Peter Parker says to her: âHere goes nothing. Whatâs that thing you always say? âExpect disappointment andâââ, but MJ, in a somewhat ham-fisted moment of character development, interrupts him: âNo, no, no. No. Weâre gonna kick some ass!â While this exchange was designed to trigger some inner-high five with the audience, I found MJâs shift from quasi-stoic hopelessness to giddy hopefulness disappointing â hereâs yet another story about how we need hope to defeat the baddies/The Empire/Sauron/Thanos/the aliens/the comet/cancer. Itâs disappointing because, even though psychologists tell us that having hope is linked with lower depression and anxiety, longer survival among cancer patients and better physical health and pain tolerance â despite all that, I am against âhopeâ. And there is a reason for my use of scare quotes. What is being measured in these studies isnât the same as Hollywood hope at all, nor does it even align with everyday usage of the word. So far as I can tell, there are at least three ways to characterise hope. I will call these boring hope, Hollywood hope, and âhopeâ. Boring hope: When I go to the dentist, I hope they know what theyâre doing. I have a feeling or expectation that some desire will be fulfilled (e.g. that they wonât strap me to the seat and extract all my teeth for fun). Crucially, this is a plausible expectation: because of the norms and regulations around dentistry, I have good reasons to support this everyday use of the term hope. Itâs a philosophically uninteresting use of the term, hence the epithet boring, and why I wonât bring it up again in this post. Hollywood hope: To have faith in something outside yourself and outside the current moment â goodness/a god/the human spirit/karma/future generations â to make things right. âHopeâ: This could also be called simply trying to be rational, as it refers to a future oriented perspective based on i) having goals, ii) having pathways in mind through which to achieve them, and iii) an understanding of whether you have the capacity to walk through those pathways. As it so happens, what psychologists are measuring in their studies is much closer to the simply trying to being rational variety of âhopeâ (much of them building on Snyderâs Hope Theory). Itâs a little irritating that they keep calling that hope without the scare quotes, because the far more pervasive notion captured by Hollywood hope is in many ways the opposite â in fact, itâs a terribly disempowering idea. Hollywood hope is a close cousin of faith which, along with charity, constitute the three theological virtues of Christianity, much of it boiling down to Paulâs writing on the virtue of hoping for salvation. It is also the kind of hope that infuses our modern stories with the same message on repeat: if we succumb to hopelessness, the abstract forces of good cannot prevail. This idea that our salvation from whatever metaphorical hellfire â be it climate catastrophe, political oppression, pandemics, and so on â requires hope is disempowering because it requires us to surrender to things outside ourselves to sort it out (like gods and governments and future generations). It is particularly insidious because in practice surrendering typically means allowing those with the most power to decide what happens, and those with the most power tend to favour the status quo. It is in that sense very close to blind faith; an opium that allows us to put unwarranted trust in the idea that things will be ok in the end. I favour hopelessness. Things are not actually going to be ok. For one thing, you will die, and before then, itâs highly likely that at least one if not quite a few terrible things will happen to you. The same applies to your loved ones, and to the planet more generally. In reality, people do not celebrate and live happily ever after once they destroy the Death Star/Sauron/Thanos â they go home full of grief for the loved ones they lost and then eventually they get sick and die. Which is to say, even when âgood prevailsâ, things are not ok. But, at the risk of this anti-hope rant turning into a self-help group hug, Iâll say thereâs also liberation to be found in hopelessness. Embracing it turns having faith that everything will be out ok into an incredibly boring activity, but it also makes despair boring, or rather, irrelevant. Once outside a hope-based mindset, thereâs not much to do but focus on the few things that you actually can do â which is in fact fairly close to the kind of âhopeâ psychologists study: simply trying to be rational and coming up with goals and plausible plans to achieve them. Thatâs what gets us those bodily and mental benefits of âhopeâ, and it is the opposite to the sedating effects of Hollywood hope, i.e. the general daze that means we can continue to tolerate the status quo because we believe in the end all will be well (though of course we never fully believe that, hence all the existential dread). To be fair, Iâm not sure MJâs shift in attitude constitutes an affirmation of Hollywood hope (itâs difficult to discuss this without too many spoilers). Nonetheless, I would re-phrase her philosophy to: âDisappointment is a by-product of not accepting that things arenât really going to be ok, so letâs focus on the good reasons we nonetheless have to occasionally kick some ass.â Itâs not particularly catchy, but one should not hope for such things in a blogpost against hope. What did Zendaya say about disappointment?Shivaar on Twitter: "When Zendaya said : "If you expect disappointment, then you can never really be disappointed." I felt that đȘ" / Twitter.
WHO SAID expect disappointment and you won't be disappointed?Among the online chatter, one quote that drew significant attention comes from Spiderman's girlfriend MJ when she says, âExpect disappointment and you'll never be disappointed.â
What does MJ say expect disappointment?In Marvel's latest 'Spider-Man: No Way Home', Peter Parker's girlfriend MJ has a simple philosophy: âIf you expect disappointment, then you can never really be disappointed.â
What does MJ say in no way home about disappointment?26. âIf you expect disappointment, then you can never really be disappointed.â â MJ.
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