The World Hope Index

Abstract

state is in reality the cheerful and the hearty state to all the different orders of the society. The stationary is dull; the declining, melancholy.” It is only the progressive states that acquire its maximum potential. Thus, a country needs hope to create positive change, but it also needs change to create hope in the first place. Can hope be a cause or effect of positive change? After all, hope is always there within individuals, but it needs to be harnessed. In order to harness hope, it is necessary to understand and measure it. A clear distinction must be brought out between hope and happiness as the two are often correlated with one another. According to Mayers (2007), “Happiness is life experience marked by a preponderance of positive emotion. Feelings of happiness and thoughts of satisfaction with life are two prime components of subjective well-being.” From this we can understand that for happiness to occur at present, it is largely based on experiences and incidents that have taken place in the past. On the contrary, hope is the expectation of a positive future. Such positive future is a function of a country’s progress in technology, innovation, and literacy among other factors. Definitions of Hope Hope is defined by scholars in different ways but broadly, it can be described as something positive that we wish would happen in the future. Normally, hope is considered in a personal context. This paper treats hope in a social context and questions if appropriate policies can deliver hope as a social product. Schumacher (2003) has pointed out six different characteristics of hope. Hope is accompanied by a minimum certitude and assurance with respect to the possible possession of the thing hoped for. Schumacher (2003) also characterises hope as something that is difficult to obtain; it is something that is not necessarily realised, but most importantly something that “consists in the attitude of expectant waiting.” The phrase “expectant waiting” by itself implies that hope is something that can be attained in the future primarily on the basis of current circumstances. However, it is Charles Snyder’s contribution to this concept INTRODUCTION The main objective of the World Hope Index is to invoke the idea of hope as a social product at a time when the mainstream media is filled with the news of despair expressed in a growing incidence of terrorism, migration, and natural disasters. The discourse on hope over the past decades has primarily been at the individual and psychological level, as opposed to the state or societal level. This index would help this discourse to be shifted to the level of states and societies at large. The level of hope changes as a result of different behavioural changes within the society and thus turns out to be a product of a society at large. Hope being a social product has implications for a large number of people in a given community or even across different communities. Durkheim (1997) brought out the fact that hope can be a biological or social product. Different types of societies have different expectations of the future. For example, the people living in extreme climatic regions would hope for moderate weather. The people who live in a highly corrupt society would hope for corruption levels to decrease and transparency to increase. The people living in refugee camps would hope for prosperity and freedom. On one hand, the delivery of hope as a social product can be achieved through change; on the other, a country can bring about change if there is hope. Adam Smith (2000), in An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nation states, “the progressive The World Hope Index