The Sentinel-Intelligence

The Sentinel-Intelligence

Share this post

The Sentinel-Intelligence
The Sentinel-Intelligence
You Can't Trick Someone into Hope. It Doesn't Work Like That.
Copy link
Facebook
Email
Notes
More

You Can't Trick Someone into Hope. It Doesn't Work Like That.

Philosophers know the difference between real hope and fool's hope.

Jessica's avatar
Jessica
Oct 01, 2023
∙ Paid

Share this post

The Sentinel-Intelligence
The Sentinel-Intelligence
You Can't Trick Someone into Hope. It Doesn't Work Like That.
Copy link
Facebook
Email
Notes
More
Share
Lion Design

If you haven't heard of Sir Martin Frobisher, you should look him up sometime. He was basically a pirate. This pirate thought he discovered gold in Canada. His discovery got the queen so excited, she paid him a fortune to mine and ship more than a thousand tons of ore back to England. Apparently, they didn't bother to examine it. They were that sure of themselves. Turns out, the pirate had wasted the queen's money on pyrite, fool's gold.

A pirate fooled by pyrite, imagine that.

When I was a kid, we went panning for gold. We learned about the first Gold Rush in the 1820s. We learned the difference between real gold and fool's gold. It's prettier than real gold, but you can pound it into dust. If you want to test your gold, you have to beat it with a hammer.

That's how you know you've got the real thing.

Hope works the same way.

According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ancient philosophers defined hope “mostly as an attitude to reality that [was] based on insufficient…

This post is for paid subscribers

Already a paid subscriber? Sign in
© 2025 Jessica Wildfire
Privacy ∙ Terms ∙ Collection notice
Start writingGet the app
Substack is the home for great culture

Share

Copy link
Facebook
Email
Notes
More