A delicious breakfast this morning--eggs, fried potatoes, black beans, a banana-coconut-ginger smoothie and black coffee. I enjoyed my breakfast. I enjoyed the company I was with--Hillary and Jessi. I enjoyed the warmth of the morning and the taste of the food. I am thankful for these things, these people, and the life I live. That being said, I have neither hope nor faith in the future and am fully aware that the lives of most people are abjectly miserable.
People wonder how hopeless people like me continue to act, to move forward in good faith aspiring to make the world more tolerable, safer, more pleasurable. The answer is simple: the process, the action, the experience of demanding change, of enjoying life is rewarding. A life without trying, despite the futility, is a worthless live. I enjoy my life--therefore I try. I am constantly coming back to Antonio Gramsci's notion of pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will. The journey, the attempt, this is well worth engaging in. Not that I presume we will lose--I simply acknowledge all we have lost: countless species, clean water, clean air, clean soil. Together we can redeem these things through action--not hope. Together, we can love each other, support each other, heal each other--through action--not hope. Together we can build a world we desire.
Lets not hope for it--lets do it!
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Okay, here's where our difference lies I think: I think that we need hope in order to reasonably expect people to take action. Hope isn't like blind faith that something good will happen. It is the belief that something better is possible. Without that belief, there is no reason to take action. If things are hopeless--totally without hope--then there is nothing to do but roll over and accept. I think that hopelessness is often a big part of the reason that people don't take action.
We need vision--on this I agree--the ability to see how things could be better. We need strategy to achieve that vision. If someone wants to use a rhetoric of hope to inspire change, as long as it has integrity, that is their prerogative. I know for me, when I hear people trying to convince me to feel hopeful, I feel a bit nauseous. When they show me a concrete plan that has merit, I feel inspired. From my vantage point, our world has too much rhetoric and too few plans. I want actionable plans that people can plug into to create something better-not simply wish for it, vision it, or hope for it. Fundamentally, I feel hopeless. that does not mean that I roll over and accept things. It simply means I vision what I want and then work towards it without a whole lot of rhetorical flare. This is bad propaganda--but what I need to feel like what I work on has integrity.
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