Hopeless//Necessary
Feb. 26th, 2025 08:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
deja_indigoImagine you are scaling a sheer cliff face, with no rope or net to catch you if you fall. The cliff is shrouded in fog, and you can barely see far enough above you to figure out where to find your next hand hold. You cannot, under any circumstances, let go; at most, you can find a crevice in which you can wedge a knee or a leg to give your hands and arms a break. You have no idea how much further you'll have to climb to reach the top, so all you can do is focus on continuing your climb.
Now imagine the fog goes away. You look up, and it looks like you are approaching the top! The face curves outward in an overhang, and beyond it, you see only the sky--you just have to push through one more difficult stretch, and then your climb will be over! You dig deep into your reserves of energy and struggle up the overhang, pulling yourself gleefully over its lip...only to find that it is just a narrow ledge, with more cliff face stretching upward and disappearing into the clouds. Your heart sinks, and you feel exhaustion and despair well up within you, draining the strength from your limbs and the resolve from your heart.
This is why I talk about abandoning hope. Hope is a way of attaching yourself to an uncertain future outcome, bringing elation when you perceive yourself close to achieving it, and bringing despair if something sets you back (or if it proves to be further away from you than you thought). It's a fragile motivator, especially when you are facing a nearly-insurmountable struggle.
I have seen this play out among the vast majority of left-wing opposition movements over my decades of protest and activism. People adopt boycotts or engage in protests for a time, because they believe or expect these actions will create change. They see themselves as making a big drastic effort, and when the expected change fails to arrive in a few weeks, months, or years, most give up, and return to a life of complacency and complicity. Or, in the cases where their actions do create some minor change, they wrongly believe they have achieved victory, and also return to a life of complacency and complicity.
Hope creates the illusion that our struggle has its value because of its end, and that makes it easy to abandon our struggle when we feel either victory or defeat. Because of that, any progress we make is fleeting, and regularly leads to a drastic regression that not only erases our gains, but sets us back even further.
To make lasting progress, it is necessary to value the act of struggle itself, regardless of outcome. It requires us to look no further ahead than we need to find our next handhold, or the next crevice in which we can wedge a leg to give our arms a temporary break. We must climb for the sake of climbing, not to simply reach the top!
--
Let's take this out of the realm of metaphor. I don't engage in acts of resistance (like permanently giving up oligarch-owned software/apps/social media) because I believe it will defeat the tech-fascist oligarchs seeking to dismantle American democracy. I engage in them because it is worth it to me, personally, to reduce my complicity in what they are doing. It's not a "boycott"--not a temporary avoidance meant to send a message, followed by a return to the status quo. I do imagine that if enough people followed this example, it would have a significant effect on the tech oligarchs, but that's not why I do it, and that's not why you should do it, either. I don't actually even believe that enough people will be persuaded to take such action as this, but it is still worth doing anyway because the act of resistance itself has value and meaning.
Also? The greed, hate, and ignorance of our adversaries are relentless. They've been playing the long game since at least Nixon, and using every setback they've faced as an opportunity to regroup and refine their strategy...quietly putting pieces in place and now, finally, executing their endgame gambit. Our failure to match their relentlessness is the reason we find ourselves in this nightmare.
Abandon hope. Resist anyway.
Now imagine the fog goes away. You look up, and it looks like you are approaching the top! The face curves outward in an overhang, and beyond it, you see only the sky--you just have to push through one more difficult stretch, and then your climb will be over! You dig deep into your reserves of energy and struggle up the overhang, pulling yourself gleefully over its lip...only to find that it is just a narrow ledge, with more cliff face stretching upward and disappearing into the clouds. Your heart sinks, and you feel exhaustion and despair well up within you, draining the strength from your limbs and the resolve from your heart.
This is why I talk about abandoning hope. Hope is a way of attaching yourself to an uncertain future outcome, bringing elation when you perceive yourself close to achieving it, and bringing despair if something sets you back (or if it proves to be further away from you than you thought). It's a fragile motivator, especially when you are facing a nearly-insurmountable struggle.
I have seen this play out among the vast majority of left-wing opposition movements over my decades of protest and activism. People adopt boycotts or engage in protests for a time, because they believe or expect these actions will create change. They see themselves as making a big drastic effort, and when the expected change fails to arrive in a few weeks, months, or years, most give up, and return to a life of complacency and complicity. Or, in the cases where their actions do create some minor change, they wrongly believe they have achieved victory, and also return to a life of complacency and complicity.
Hope creates the illusion that our struggle has its value because of its end, and that makes it easy to abandon our struggle when we feel either victory or defeat. Because of that, any progress we make is fleeting, and regularly leads to a drastic regression that not only erases our gains, but sets us back even further.
To make lasting progress, it is necessary to value the act of struggle itself, regardless of outcome. It requires us to look no further ahead than we need to find our next handhold, or the next crevice in which we can wedge a leg to give our arms a temporary break. We must climb for the sake of climbing, not to simply reach the top!
--
Let's take this out of the realm of metaphor. I don't engage in acts of resistance (like permanently giving up oligarch-owned software/apps/social media) because I believe it will defeat the tech-fascist oligarchs seeking to dismantle American democracy. I engage in them because it is worth it to me, personally, to reduce my complicity in what they are doing. It's not a "boycott"--not a temporary avoidance meant to send a message, followed by a return to the status quo. I do imagine that if enough people followed this example, it would have a significant effect on the tech oligarchs, but that's not why I do it, and that's not why you should do it, either. I don't actually even believe that enough people will be persuaded to take such action as this, but it is still worth doing anyway because the act of resistance itself has value and meaning.
Also? The greed, hate, and ignorance of our adversaries are relentless. They've been playing the long game since at least Nixon, and using every setback they've faced as an opportunity to regroup and refine their strategy...quietly putting pieces in place and now, finally, executing their endgame gambit. Our failure to match their relentlessness is the reason we find ourselves in this nightmare.
Abandon hope. Resist anyway.