Tag Archives: despair

What we do now

There will be no way to avoid a succession of horrors in the coming four years. It’s no use waiting for the Democratic Party to tell us what to do. It has become a creature of corporate interests, out of touch with the needs of the non-rich. We have to tell the Party what to do.

The non-profit sector is a mess of single-issue organizations competing for attention and money. We are not single-issue people. Whether you are on a board or just a member, pressure your group to join other groups in as many coalitions as it can manage. All our issues are connected under the banner of peace, justice, and a survivable environment. Progress on any of our goals helps us to achieve all of them. Solidarity is key. We must stand up for one another.

More than changing institutions, we need to change minds. Leave your comfort zone. Don’t stick to preaching to the converted. If you can get access, go on Fox or  the bro podcasts. Wait in line for a call-in radio talk show. Try to reach new audiences. Don’t talk down; persuade. Explain what you believe, and be ready to back it up.

We need big change. That means our actions must be non-violent. Violence is not change; it’s just part of the same cruel culture that is wrecking our world. If you are part of a protest, do whatever you can to keep things civil, no matter the provocation.

Expand your social set. Meet people who are not like you. Listen to them with respect. Everyone has something to teach. You don’t have to leave the country to find whole new worlds to explore. Besides, we need you here.

Most of all, keep yourself and your friends from wallowing in despair. If we think there’s no hope, we’ll stop trying, and then there really won’t be any hope. 

The uses of despair

I wouldn’t trust anyone who has not despaired. How is it possible to look at the world we have made and still believe humanity can, or should, survive? If you have never felt hopeless, as they say, you haven’t been paying enough attention.

That despair is where our true hope begins. Being human means learning and changing, every day. When we face what our civilization has done to our beautiful world, what terrible things people have done to other people, and how little our governments have done to stop all this harm, that knowledge changes us. We can give up and withdraw to our own lives and pleasures. Or we can turn sorrow into outrage, and fight.

The situation is dire. Consumer culture is based on the assumption that earth’s resources are infinite, and we can keep mining them forever to make more stuff. Now that we know this assumption is wrong, and that our greed has poisoned the earth, the air, and the water to a degree that threatens human survival, what can we do about it?

The key to our survival is non-violent revolution. Revolution is change. Violence is only more of the same damn thing. Real revolution is what we see in the Black Lives Matter movement in streets around the world: the peaceful insistence that human life means more than money or power. This belief can change everything.

In the USA, we face almost seven more months of Trump in the best of circumstances. He will do as much harm as he can in that time. COVID-19 will kill hundreds of thousands because of his carelessness, depriving us of the wisdom of our elders when we need it more than ever. He will continue to whip up hatred and fear. He will destroy the environment to make his rich friends richer. So we must continue to fight, until the election and then far beyond it.

Despair stops being useful when it makes us stop trying. Take a break. Listen to music. Walk by a river. Talk with a friend. Then get back to work, because, my friends, we have an awful lot of work to do. We have to reboot human civilization. We’ve based it on selfishness. Now we need to base it on caring. The turn begins in each of our troubled, doubting, loving hearts.