Well, I’m taking the title from Aeschylus’s Prometheus Bound. Blind hope is the main thing Prometheus gave man, more important than fire, the arts, and medicine. And so, out of excessive love for us (and excessive rebellion against the willful Zeus), he gave us a combination of enlightenment and ignorance. And that turns out to be the foundation of all human progress, every disruptive innovation. We really think we can free ourselves from necessity — including the necessity of death and our willful perversities and overwhelming passions. We really think it’ll be better this time. Well, we may well be more comfortable and free in some ways. But things don’t change fundamentally. Take that, Marxists and libertarian transhumanists!

Because Prometheus loved us too much (or, in his pride, hated Zeus too much), he gave a kind of obliviousness to the truth that is at the foundation of the Enlightenment and its confidence that technology can fundamentally transform who we are and what nature is.

Well, not only that, we’re all like Zeus when things are good, thinking that we can be autonomous, or live according to some self-made law that frees us from dependence on nature, including our social natures as friends and members of families (kin).

Enough of that! I’m here in Baltimore running (with Dan Mahoney) a conference for honors undergraduates on utopianism. And by the (bad) luck of the draw, I’m in charge of the session on Prometheus, Zeus, and the others. It’s the session that foresees all the others, including the blindness shared by Lenin, von Mises, and the Brave New World.

Speaking of blind hope, it’s interesting (if little more) to notice all the American Catholics spinning what our charismatic pope is saying in our country to suit their own political and theological views. If someone were to criticize Pope Francis (not me), it would be that he’s saying a bit too much that fuels blind hope and not enough about Christian hope, which begins with the truthful observation that we can’t save ourselves from either ourselves or what would be our natural destiny without help we can’t provide for ourselves. And so maybe not enough about the providential love of our personal Creator. Overall, however, nobody can say he’s failing to impress.

Speaking more of blind hope, the latest polls have Trump and Carson descending gently, but far from collapsing. And the Fiorina surge is less than some hoped. Third place is roughly a tie among Fiorina, Bush, and Rubio. And those who speak of the inevitable necessity of a Fiorina–Rubio or the reverse ticket might know less than they think they do.

The older folks at this conference are all impressed with Fiorina, thinking almost that she is the goddess who can save us. That might actually be true.

The young folks are for Carson, Cruz, and Rand Paul, if they are Republicans.

Nobody is for Trump.