Humanity at the end of the twentieth century is beginning to wonder if we haven't been unwittingly committing our energies to such a pointless enterprise for years. Woody Allen truthfully quipped, 'The future isn't what it used to be.' Optimism about the destiny of the human race has all but collapsed today. True, you still hear a few people mouthing the old utopian dreams about a future technological paradise on earth, but those who know most are not so stupid any longer. Such dreams lie buried under the carnage of two world wars and the Hiroshima cloud. Humanism has been discredited, and confidence in a future brought about by human science has died as a result.
Yet we human beings must have hope. We can't live without it. Children count the days till Christmas. Teenagers look forward to the next date with their boyfriend or girlfriend. Grown-ups revel in their holiday brochures. We have to have hope. Mere survival isn't enough for us. If we are going to endure the tedium and the fatigue of everyday life, we must have light on the horizon to steer by. A person without anything to look forward to is a person of utter despair.
Tony Hancock was a very fine comedian in the 1950s and 1960s. In his last TV monologue in 1964 he performed a piece which proved ironic.
What have you achieved? What have you achieved? You lost your chance, me old son. You contributed absolutely nothing to this life. A waste of time you being here at all. No place for you in Westminster Abbey. The best you can expect is a few daffodils in a jam jar and a black stone bearing the legend, 'He came, and he went.' And in between? Nothing. Nobody will even notice you're not here. After about a year somebody might say down the pub, 'Where's old Hancock? I haven't seen him around lately.'
