Hey, it's okay to feel angry and sad about the state of things
They just don't have to be the ONLY things you feel.
One of the things I bump up against a lot by posting hopeful content on the internet is anger and scorn at the idea that I’m saying, “hey, maybe things will turn out okay.”
One comment on a recent post of mine suggesting that we could transition to something new said, “The world will be destroyed by 2031. 95% of the population will be dead.”
I was impressed by this commenter’s confidence, and was tempted to ask about how he arrived at his calculations (not to mention question him on the methods of stalwart 5% who would manage to continuing existing in a world that didn’t do the same). It is worth noting: I think he is wrong. I think things could get very bad, but people in every civilization ever have been predicting the end times, and inductive reasoning would suggest that believing the people who claim to know the actual dates is a mistake.
But I am sympathetic to this sort of thinking. We live in an age of toxic positivity, where we are expected to put our trust for the future into the hands of a hapless and greedy class of elites whom anyone with half a working mind would have stopped trusting long ago.
You are where you are
One of the curses of writing on the internet is that you give these short little glimpses into yourself, and people have to fill in all the gaps, and they do this on the basis of other stuff they’ve seen or heard. So if I say, “hey, let’s try to imagine a better future!” they could reasonably interpret it as me, a middle-class white dude, saying, “Joe Biden/Elon Musk/Bill Nye1 will fix this! We don’t have to worry!”
What they do not see in those videos or articles is the ten years I’ve spent struggling with depression, nihilism, and despair. They do not see the years of therapy, the years of grappling with a problematic identity, the years of guilt and shame that I internalized growing up as a conservative Midwestern Catholic, or the slow decay of any faith I’d ever put into the concept of American Democracy.
They do not see the cognitive dissonance I’ve felt reading books by scientists, activists, and thinkers pointing at our civilizations catastrophic trajectory and begging us to pay attention, and then turning around and spending time with peers and family who often shrug off climate change and the impending collapse of industrial civilization with a thought-ending cliche like “the politics just aren’t there to fix it.”
But because I’ve felt this way a long time, because I’ve been in treatment for my depression for years now, and because I have kids and owe it to them to fight for their future, I’ve decided not to just feel angry and depressed forever.
One of the revelations I’ve had in therapy is that depression, rather than being some sort of biochemical anomaly, is often2 a totally normal way for a body to respond when fucked up shit happens to it. It can be brought on by physical or emotional trauma, by isolation, by excessive consumption of drugs or alcohol, by lack of physical activity, by nihilism or ennui.
Given that our modern society seems thoroughly committed to constantly traumatizing and abusing us, to denying us any sort of access to community or care, and to distracting us from any sort of healing human activity it can’t profit off of, it is no surprise that so many people are depressed.
I do not write about hope because I’m no longer depressed. I am! I take daily antidepressants and still sometimes have trouble getting out of bed! I still sometimes lose all hope! But my depression really started in 2014, which is when I moved to New Jersey. I had a work from home job and I knew no one in the area, so I was isolated. My previous belief system was collapsing (this collapse sped up precipitously when Donald Trump was elected president), and my relationships with my family were shifting in uncomfortable ways. I was also drinking too much and exercising too little.
The reason I write about hope is that virtually everyone else in the country went through something similar in 2020, and are now about where I was circa 2017. A lot of these people don’t see any way out, and it seems important for me to stand up and say, “Hey, I’ve been through this, the anger and sadness don’t necessarily go away, but you can also eventually rebuild space for happiness, hope, and joy in this world, even if it seems like it’s heading towards shit to you.”
Anger and despair are reasonable responses to our current civilizational predicament. They just don’t have to be our only and permanent responses.
A dope world
One of the dumbest things I watch on a regular basis (like literally every time I’m high) is the cartoon Major Lazer, which features the music of the eponymous band. One episode has a time-traveling villain named Lady Vanessa Rothschild (voiced by Charli XCX), and in it, she says maybe my favorite line in television history, right before getting into an across-time kung-fu fight with the bionic rastafarian hero of the show3:
I love this line so much I put it in my Instagram bio. Does Lady Vanessa Rothschild say it because she’s gone time-mad and wants to kill Adam and Eve and become the mother of humanity with Major Lazer at her side? Sure. But out of context, it seems like the most hopeful statement one could make: it says, hey, things could be better, and I could be a fundamental part of that. I have agency, regardless of what everyone in power tells me.
Come to think of it, our society seems pretty intent on making the type of people who say that either villains or people who have been pre-ordained as “special.”
I wrote in my (paywalled) article from a few weeks ago that there’s a distinction between hope and optimism, that the latter is a faith in external events, while the former is an internal orientation, or, as Vaclav Havel put it, “a dimension of the soul.”
I also said that optimism that ignores reality is pointless, and pessimism that ignores possibility is pointless.
You may still be in the “reality” stage. And when we start to come to terms with the horror of what’s happening in our world right now, it can be paralyzing, totally overwhelming. If that’s what you’re still feeling, then please: don’t let anyone’s talk of hope and possibility stop you from feeling it. You need to feel it.
But you will at some point need to feel more than just that. And when you do, we’ll be waiting for you, ready to talk about the possibilities.
HUGE apology to Bill Nye for lumping him with those other two.
To be totally clear: NOT ALL DEPRESSION IS THE SAME. I speak from my experience and from what I’ve read on the topic.
I know, I know: I just sold you on the show. Here’s the full episode. Just keep in mind that this only got cancelled because John Boyega left to become Finn and The Force Awakens, which is baffling, because LucasFilm never gave him a line as cool as “Okay, Major Lazer! We’ll handle the zombies! You go back in time and save the universe!”