Does Action Lead To Hope, or Hope Lead To Action? Lessons from HIV and Beyond.

Posted on | October 14, 2025 | 7 Comments

Mike Magee

In this morning’s New York Times, David Leonhardt, editorial director of New York Times Opinion, interviews former Transportation Secretary, Pete Buttigieg on the subject of Rebuilding America.

Buttigieg and his husband, Chasten, and their two children recently moved from South Bend, Indiana to Chasten’s home town in Traverse, Michigan. Extended family presence played a role in the decision, and Pete’s mom moved there too. But the adjustment hasn’t been major. As Buttigieg said, “It’s definitely more rural than where I grew up, but also very Midwestern in ways that make me feel right at home.”

Politically, the new home is in a rural, 50-50 county, but not unlike where Pete grew up. As he explained it, “Where I grew up, people might have Trump yard signs. Here, they have Trump flags on flagpoles.” As for his new neighbors, he notes that its nothing like his online critics. He recalls a neighbor approaching him at the local Target to say “I don’t share your politics, but it’s nice running into you.”

These days, Pete spends a fair amount of time reflecting on how to accomplish a “shared national future.” Looking in the rear view mirror, as a gay man who came of age when HIV/AIDS was raging, he is now 43 and takes the long view. He was born 6 months after the first mention of HIV in a weekly CDC Morbidity & Mortality Report on June 5, 1981.

It shaped his view of America, and the possibilities our our common futures. As he shared, “There’s a trajectory here that shows enormous change can happen when you’re willing to play out that strategy over the long term. What is inspiring about the gay equality movement — not just to somebody who benefits from it, but that it didn’t just take something from being unpopular to being popular. It took ideas that were preposterous for one generation and made them consensus for the next generation. That’s the level of ambition we ought to have.”

Leonhardt’s final question is “How would you encourage people to find some sense of hope that actually, some of our very deep problems are solvable…”

And Pete’s reply, “I’ve heard it said that hope is the consequence of action more than its cause, and that’s something I try to think about a lot in this moment. Instead of waiting around for hope, we actually have an obligation — a responsibility — to build hope, and that hope is the result of what we do in this moment. That’s how I think about the present.”

His positioning the challenge as a strategic choice (action creating hope, or hope for corrective action) caught my eye. In 2002. I published “The Book of Choices”. The premise of this book is that our lives are simply an accumulation of the thousands of decisions, large and small, that we make every day. The Book of Choices consists of 77 short chapters, each on a fundamental life choice. The chapter consists of a meditation illuminating the nature of that choice, followed by carefully selected quotations from history’s greatest thinkers, teachers, and doers. The digital book is now available free of charge on HealthCommentary.org under the banner, Caring Culture.

Earlier today, in preparation for a Zoom lecture to Dr. David Myers class on Health Policy and Ethics at Johns Hopkins, I was looking though this content, triggered by an inquiry from one of Dr. Myers’ students who had accessed the Book of Choices online.

Two of the 77 categories are “Action vs. Inaction,” and “Hope vs. Despair.” Most of the commentators (past and present) are allied with Pete Buttigieg. Here they are for your reflection:

ACTION vs. INACTION

There are risks and costs to a program of action. But they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction.
John F. Kennedy

I am not built for academic writings. Action is my domain.
Gandhi

If a friend is in trouble, don’t annoy him by asking if there is anything you can do. Think up something appropriate and do it
Edgar Watson Howe

It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another, but above all, try something
Franklin D. Roosevelt

There comes a time when you’ve got to say, “Let’s get off our asses and go…” I have always found that if I move with 75 percent or more of the facts I usually never regret it. It’s the guys who wait to have everything perfect that drive you crazy.
Lee Iacocca

Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.
Will Rogers

He who is outside the door has already a good part of his journey behind him.
Dutch Proverb

If deeds are wanting, all words appear mere vanity and emptiness.
Greek Proverb

After all is said and done, more is said than done.
Anon.

If you want a thing done, go – if not, send.
Benjamin Franklin

I’d rather be strongly wrong than weakly right.
Tallulah Bankhead

‘Mean to’ don’t pick no cotton.
Anon.

Deliberate often – decide once.
Latin proverb

It is the characteristic excellence of a strong man that he can bring momentous issues to the fore and make a decision about them. The weak are always forced to decide between alternatives they have not chosen themselves.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer

HOPE vs. DESPAIR

Hope springs eternal in the human breast;
Man never is, but always to be blest.
Alexander Pope

Even in the deepest sinking there is the hidden purpose of an ultimate rising. Thus it is for all men, from none is the source of light withheld unless he himself withdraws from it. Therefore the most important thing is not to despair.
Hasidic Saying

When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.
Charles A. Beard

Hope is like a road in the country; there was never a road, but when many people walk on it, the road comes into existence.
Lin Yutang

It has never been, and never will be, easy work! But the road that is built in hope is more pleasant to the traveler than the road built in despair, even though they lead to the same destination.
Marion Zimmer Bradley

Even the cry from the depths is an affirmation: why cry if there is no hint of hope of hearing?
Martin Marty

Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it
Helen Keller

In the face of uncertainty, there is nothing wrong with hope.
Bernie S. Siegel, M.D.

Still round the corner there may wait,
A new road, or a secret gate
J. R. R. Tolkein

Deep in their roots,
All flowers keep the light
Theodore Roethke

When fear is excessive it can make many a man despair.
Saint Thomas Aquinas

Comments

7 Responses to “Does Action Lead To Hope, or Hope Lead To Action? Lessons from HIV and Beyond.”

Mike Magee
October 14th, 2025 @ 1:09 pm

Pete Buttigieg is a voice worth listening to.
David A Boulton
October 14th, 2025 @ 2:36 pm

Both come from and lead to learning. Within our agency, what hope have we if not through our learning? Both hope and action are extensions of our learning that depend on our learning.
Mike Magee
October 14th, 2025 @ 3:25 pm

Thanks David, for your learning insights. Many of our nation’s negative health determinants are tied to our value system that rewards guns, violence, prejudice, certainty. In your view, are all human values – good and bad – learned, or are some inborn?
David A Boulton
October 14th, 2025 @ 4:27 pm

Thank you Mike. I think our understanding of learning is so shallow that we don’t have the resolution/granularity sufficient to say that ALL human values are learned. That said, I think that the vast most of them are. What values do you currently have that you think you would still have if you grew up in a different gender/body/family/language/society? Are those values or inherited biologically ordered emotions?

https://davidboulton.com/youd-be-me/

https://davidboulton.com/inherited-learning-biases/
Mike Magee
October 14th, 2025 @ 4:45 pm

Compassion, Understanding, Partnership
David A Boulton
October 14th, 2025 @ 5:35 pm

Thanks again Mike. I think “Compassion, Understanding, Partnership” are all clearly inside the scope of learning. Compassion is not an innate biological emotion. How we’ve learned through our own experiences shapes how compassion takes form. Understanding – we may be innately inclined to seek understanding (be learning oriented) but everything we each understand we understand through our learning. (https://davidboulton.com/the-learning-uncertainty-principle/) Partnership may have roots in the familial / tribal instinctual but its particulars for each of us, in marriages or collaborations flow from our learning and inform our learning.

Learning is central dynamic of human becoming. At the cellular level we call it adaptation. At the species level, evolution. Everything alive is becoming its future and learning describes that adaptive evolving process of becoming (more compassionate, more understanding, better partners).
Mike Magee
October 14th, 2025 @ 6:19 pm

Thanks, David. Certain all the above is true. Still, I think certain individuals (by the luck of their parentage) have a head start when it comes to being capable of goodness and fairness as Gro Bruntdland described “health” in 2000.