No Time for Despair

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For decades we have witnessed the slow decline of Western democracies and creeping authoritarianism, yet those who do the warning are often dismissed for being too pessimistic and we prefer instead to believe in words of hope, optimism, and self-help. But words are meaningless if they are not grounded in reality and wise action. 

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When the language of those in power is mostly about who to blame and who to punish (for anything), we know we have let the demons in. When problems are to be solved with war, destruction, prohibition and dehumanisation, the demons are in charge. 

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We know from numerous surveys that a large majority of people want climate action and want an arms embargo to stop Israel’s wars. Yet, nothing. Absolute gaslighting. Yet we cling to the belief that our governments, institutions, (or worse, celebrities and tech billionaires) will save us. We push for a bit more reform. ‘We can fix this!’ or ‘if only more people voted!’ Are we suffering from some form of Stockholm Syndrome? 

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And with polarisation and disinformation, our critical thinking abilities diminish. Carl Sagan said that one of the saddest lessons of history was that even when people have been fooled, they refuse the evidence of this, they lose interest in the truth, and all this becomes too painful to acknowledge. But, he cautioned, if we can't think for ourselves, if we're unwilling to question authority, then we're just giving power away and once we have given it away, we almost never get it back. 

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So what do we do? We cannot let these engineers of chaos continue to divide us and pull us further into barbarism. Hiding feels appealing right now. So does introspection. While it might bring some solace, we must not shut the world out, lest we awake one day and realise all our neighbours were taken away without us noticing. So we must roll up our sleeves and get to work.

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In societies where profit rules, this is hard. We have been programmed to think and act rationally and individually. Charities told us we didn’t need to get involved, we could just donate some money here and there. But this led us to forget our responsibilities to each other, to our societies. When we are no longer part of communities and have only ourselves to rely on, we are more likely to lose our openness, our curiosity, and our compassion. 

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Bayo Akomolafe said that our system has created its own beasts and that we need new forms of care, “as politics becomes a vassal for something else, revealing other desirous vocations that disrupt the idea of the isolated discerning human subject,” he suggests, “may we find the openings to do more than we think possible now. Something more compelling than victory (and the moral assemblage that makes finish lines and trophies meaningful) shimmers in the near-distance. Something that urges us to lose our way, together.”

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If we have lost the habit of caring for those beyond our own clan, how do we begin anew? How do we connect to local grassroots movements and to the growing international solidarity movements fighting for liberation for all peoples and our planet? This is challenging in a time when so many people are fearful, have lost trust in others and where antagonism feels ever more present.

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It’s like we need a system reboot. Akomolafe says we need to be disrupted. “Until we’re pushed off our perch, we will continue to perpetuate and repeat the patterns that have led to suffering and oppression and decline of trust around the world.”

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For those of us in the North, we need a lesson in humility. We need to put our white fragility and indignation aside and recognise that we have so much to learn about organising and liberation from those we treated as inferior to us, whether democratically, morally, or even humanly. And we have to stop telling oppressed people how they should fight their oppression!

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What we need is a counter-imaginary, a movement politics: a politics of creation, a politics of care, a politics of humanism, of community. We need the librarians and the comedians, the scientists and the nurses, the farmers and the dock workers, the musicians and the whistleblowers, the obedient and the disobedient. We need manifestos, battle songs and festivals. And we need the artists, Toni Cade Bambara said, to make the revolution irresistible. 

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Words, Veronica Yates and illustration, Miriam Sugranyes.

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References

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The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, Carl Sagan.

‘Hannah Arendt and the Human Duty to Think,’ Shai Tubali, Philosophy Now. Read here.

Bayo Akomolafe, https://www.bayoakomolafe.net/. 

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Further Resources
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‘Personal Responsibility Under Dictatorship,’ Hannah Arendt.‍ ‍

‘The Baloney Detection Kit: Carl Sagan’s Rules for Bullshit-Busting and Critical Thinking.’ Maria Popova, the Marginalian. Read here.‍

The Revolution Will Not Be Funded, edited by INCITE, Women of Color Against Violence.

‍Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paolo Freire.

‘Reflections on Civil Disobedience,’ Hannah Arendt, September 4, 1970, The New Yorker, read here.

Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the next), Dean Spade.

Freedom is a Constant Struggle, Angela Davis.

Tools for Civil Disobedience, Beautiful Trouble, view here.

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