Dr Akum Longchari giving the concluding remarks during The Morung Dialogue held under the theme, “In the shifting world, how do we define hope and progress for the Nagas” at 2k Hotel Kohima on October 25. (Morung Photo)
Morung Express News
Kohima | October 26
Even as the last 10-15 years have been fundamental shifts and signs of the emergence of global forces are now visible, Aküm Longchari, Publisher of The Morung Express, remarked that, "within this, we are trying to educate ourselves."
Delivering the closing remarks at The Morung Dialogue on October 25, he highlighted that, "we are struggling with these challenges because they are coming in such a fast rate, and also because we are not in control."
Stating that "control is not right. We don't have ownership of these things", he also added that, "and so we are conditioned as a historical and political process. So within that, hope, I think, is a new possibility. Not just for us, but for humanity."
"That hope is a universal need. Hope is a philosophical dimension of humanity. And it is a basic need. And yet, hope does not exist in the vacuum. And it cannot exist in the vacuum", he said.
Longchari maintained that, "it needs a certain sense of reality to help us understand ourselves, to understand others as well, and the values of others as well, and more essentially, the reality of the past and the present."
Expounding on this, he said that, "because hope only exists as we encounter these realities. And so, hope can be sustained when we create conditions that forces choices that can be self-defining, self-creating, and self-determining."
Hope, he added, is also about connecting while putting across that, "it's a link between the present and the future", which requires us to be able to connect the present to the future. "Hope starts perhaps from the future and comes back to the present, so that you know exactly what you need to do in the present", he said.
