Giving false hope is a shallow and degenerate concept

The act of believing is a difficult task that pulls us both through life and under it. On one end, the lack of belief in hope gives way to a person's self-consumption of worth. The will to live may be lost. But on the other hand, gullibility leads to the naïve view of life that draws individuals into life's traps. Yet two extremes can only prove so much. As each person is inclined to preserving life, it is more important to find more manageable limits. To do so, one must look at the safe boundary that protects the human subject from nihilism while also seeing the limitations of total faith.
The loss of faith is a dangerous idea, without believing in the value of one's life or their ability to make something of it, suicide becomes such a plausible option. In a discussion from Polytechnic School about Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code, the idea of religion was brought up. While some people may accuse religion of giving a false hope of eternal life in order to sustain a business, their criticisms mean nothing when considering that religion, even in the Da Vinci Code, means something to a lot of people. No matter how they interpret it, it gives them consolation about life. The philosopher Descartes also brings up the concept of universal uncertainty. People can only be sure of one fact-that they exist because thinking proves it. To question even this fact is to go insane. But religion is like this platform. Because religion is something to believe in, not something to actively prove, it gives another layer of defense against nihilism. It is like the manhole cover that prevents people from otherwise falling into a hole. By these two definitions, the faith necessary to life merely entails a basic belief in some sort of hope that the reality each person lives is real. As Miguel de Unamuno explores in his book San Manuel Bueno, Mártir, there is more than one type of faith. The good faith is that that is grounded in reality or provides consolation, as in the mountain. But the lake, whose reflection is only on the surface, is a superficial type of faith that is dangerous. But that is the burden of San Manuel, he must bear the nihilistic truth just for his parishioners Faith means many things to many people, and being able to hold on to something has always been part of human psychology. One feels strong when they can grab on to something. Even the clenching of a fist is often strength enough.
Being able to tell the difference between an ice cream truck and a questionable van with "ice cream" painted on it is often the difference between life or death. Having faith in oneself, as Descartes explains, cannot extend beyond to other people. One cannot even always trust faith. In the Matrix Trilogy, people who are plugged in are happy, content with their fake lives. Knowing about the real world may even kill them. Although there seems nothing wrong with simple happiness, this is where nihilism meets hope. In that situation, excluding Zion, the human species is extinct because it cannot develop or grow. It can only play over a fake reel of life provided by the machines [Matrix]. In Michael Bay's The Island, naïveté is bred into a stock of human clones in an underground facility. The clones, while human must have faith in life to live, because prototypes bred without hope were unable to develop. On the other hand, the fully grown human clones desire the opportunity to go to the Island, which actually means getting their organs harvested for their "real" counterparts above ground. Because Lincoln questions the system, he is rewarded, not with a false hope that leads to death, but a real hope of starting a new life as a human. The cap on faith that protects us from gullibility is much harder to find than bottom limit, but can be imagined as another conceivable limit based on instincts that keep us alive. In both the Matrix and The Island, certain "gut feelings" are understood as not doubts, but safe skepticism. The matter of developing these "gut feelings" is simply part of exposure to both truth and lies. These doses of truths and lies can feed a person with the proper conception of faith.
Every bit of faith in anything, whether that be religion or even a bet, means an investment, like chips in poker. All too often, people find difficulty investing faith, afraid to lose it, but also afraid to keep it and watch it wither away each turn. Faith is a fundamental cornerstone of human willpower, the abstract thought that keeps our blood, and thus our bodies alive. Seeing where faith is most useful is simply a vital skill for both existence and survival.