Daring to keep dreaming in a disillusioned world
Or, why hope, as delusional as it may seem, ought be fought for till the last
1. Introduction
I have not been an optimist for much time. I'm no titan of optimist thought. Nor am I a Pinker groupie. But I am a humanist. I believe we humans have within our hands the power to build a new world. As Chaplin put it, using Hitler's diction to spread a message of humanitarianism instead of hatred, "The kingdom of God lies within man, not one man, not some men, but all men." Though these days my faith in the Christian god is shaky, at best, and I do not see the inside of a church as often as perhaps I ought, growing up on stories of what the Kingdom of God would look like, and being given the comission to go out and build a better world in accordance with those stories filled me with a certain sort of hope. The sort of hope that comes from understanding that men are generally good, and that we humans, though we may war, and exploit eachother, are on the whole a species worthy of being saved.
In our modern day, there is a tendency among those in developed nations towards a sort of misanthropy, a sort of hatred of their fellow man which I cannot understand. I have only lived this long off the back of the generosity and kindness of my fellow man. I've been told by those I believe to know better that this cynicism is a sort of privilege. After all, we, the relatively well-off, who live in liberal-democratic states, who have grown immensely in wealth, even if we, the common folk, do not seem to see as much of it as we should, can sit around and moan about the world's problems, as we are under no particular obligation to solve them. Even the great crises of our generation shall not reach us, not until we are in our dotage, and our generation seems not to care much for old age, anyhow. We will be the last to suffer. Yet we care deeply for the plight of others. It is this combination of distance and the seeming slowness of liberal-democratic institutions to react to crises which engenders this misanthropy. When one feels that they have been failed by the men who were supposed to lead them, to be their better angels, those raised from our midsts to serve us, it is easy to assume that if even these special, pure few succumb to the ills of our world that all men are so craven.
It ought to be obvious that said assumption is idiotic. We live in an era where social organizing happens at a faster rate than ever. People are mobilized to support causes faster than ever. Protests are no longer a fringe activity among today's youth. If one chooses to simply look out the window, one will find great work being done. There is, however, a general attempt by society's power centers to conceal this. Hopelessness, as it turns out, does gangbusters. Lazy journalism has moved on from fear to hopelessness as the emotion of choice, specifically because hopelessness is a paralytic. It is immensely difficult to look away from that which we think we cannot change. Doomsayers have exploited this for generations. The appeal to fear is a powerful one, and I will devote the rest of my time here to making some core arguments against it.
2. Against Fear and Pessimism
2a. Fear as non-productive
I would like you to imagine something, dear reader. The year is 1961 and the place is Goldsboro, North Carolina. You're out for a stroll when you see it happen. A B-52 nuclear bomber, on approach for landing has just disintegrated midair, landing a live hydrogen bomb in the tree in front of you. How would you react? You're staring down armageddon in a bottle, and for all you know, it's about to get out. You have absolutely zero control as to whether or not it does. You won't clear the blast radius, not even if you run. The best thing to do is keep walking. If the bomb goes off, you'll be dead before you realize it. So you keep on doing what you can. I will freely admit that it is foolish to assume I would react in accordance with my beliefs in this situation. More than likely, I'd have a case of the screaming meemies. This is, however, illustrative of how fear is rarely a productive influence. I'd like you to imagine another scenario. It's April 1915, you're a French Zouave, and you've just smelled a horrible, chlorine scent. All around you, your fellow soldiers are dying. You have two options, either lay down and die, or bite the bullet, piss in your sock, and try to make it out alive. Sitting there, and wallowing in fear is choosing neither, which is ultimately choosing the former. To be consumed by fear is to stop moving forward. We cannot allow this at a time that demands rapid progress.
2b. Fear as unncessary suffering
Fear causes suffering, both mental, and physical. The knot it forms in your stomach can become an ulcer. Fear is an entirely unnecessary stressor. It is not so simple as to choose to not be afraid. Of course not. But not doing anything to combat it increases your overall stress for little to no gain. Fear legitimately shortens lives. Stress is linked to heart disease. It's not merely a mind-killer but quite literally shortening your life. And it's not pleasant on an emotional level either. Reader, I suffer from anxiety myself, and I'm pretty damn afraid a lot of the time because of that. Sometimes it's all I can do when it's late at night to not have an attack of the screaming meemies, and just keep breathing. As I write this, that's occurring. Most of what I fear is out of my control. War, fascism, climate change rendering me and mine living in hospitable environments, the meaning of life, my complicated existence as both a white American and a descendant of Germans from Russia, bearing the sins of my forefathers. It's all too much. But what is there to do, in the face of that which we cannot control? The ashes of those who were burned at Pompeii can tell us, I think. We found people embracing. We found women masturbating. We found people carrying on. All there is to do is this. What we have now is too important to paralyze ourselves with fear and to shorten our very lives by fearing that future which may come for us.
3. So, what's to be done about it?
I think the answer has to be pretty clear. Keep on living. Keep fighting for the better world Chaplin envisioned, or your own vision if yours is concrete enough. Keep loving eachother. We've got to love eachother because our fellow humans are all we have in this fucked up world. Fight against division, until all men are one. Reject hierarchies. Love. Love. Love. Hold those too afraid to keep moving, hold space for them in our ranks, and help them get back up. It's my firm belief that every man can be a comrade if he is just shown the better world. Be the better world. Please.