From the comment section:
“This Tuli quote
Nobody who lived through the 50s thought the 60s could’ve existed. So there’s always hope.
is from me. He was an old friend and I interviewed him for a Fugs profile for MOJO magazine. When he died I wrote his obit for MOJO and ended with that quote.
Whether wholly accurate or not, it gives me a boost during bad times, which has been always as of late. I’ve lost count of the folks who’ve referenced it.”
Michael Simmons
Hope & despair are spin. They’re about our frame of mind & neither says much about reality. It’s absolutely true that our expectations may be optimistic or pessimistic. But it’s fundamental even among non-thinking beings—at any rate, as we humans understand them—to perceive & take as granted, their own fictitious picture of a reality that 20th century science teaches us is in fact either relative or ambiguous. In some cases they are quick to fright, in others quick to pounce. They always take their perception as truth. Their reactions are free of doubt, lest they perish. We suffer the curse of doubts. Self-deception—hope—is the natural state. Despairing & being appalled at hope are distinctly human frailties.
I knew a Michael Simmons at my old job. You’re not him but it makes me happy to know anywhere I go that name is a sign of cool people.