Redtree Times

When they must despair, men will always prefer kneeling to standing.
It is their cowardice, their fatigue that aspires to salvation, their incapacity to embrace comfortlessness and in it find the justification of pride.
Shame on the man who dies escorted to his grave by the miserable hopes that have kept him alive.”

— Emil Cioran, The Trouble with Being Born (1973)

I started putting this together yesterday while watching the furor grow over the ICE shooting of Renee Good in Minnesota. I debated writing let alone sharing this post since I espouse the idea of maintaining hope in much of my work and writing. I use the word hope a lot. Probably too much. It emerges reflexively and without thought now, taking away much of whatever power it holds.

And hope has some power. It is a noble concept, one that has helped many people through trying and dangerous times. But there are times when hope fails and even hinders the chances of survival. We sometimes hold on to hope like it is some sort of lifesaver keeping us from drowning, believing that if we simply hold on, someone else will come along and rescue us.

Recent history has shown us that is not always the case. Sometimes those who come along are not going to attempt to rescue you. Sometimes they are there to finish the job they started, as we bob helplessly on the waves.

Those are the times when hope be abandoned, along with the idea that there is someone else to come to our aid. Hope must be replaced with thought, action, and the will to overcome. This moment seems like an inflection point, one that brings us closer abandoning the hope that the checks and balances, guardrails, and legal constraints that serve as the lifesaver of hope to which we cling so desperately.

It is a time to rely on the power of hopelessness.

I know that sounds awful and darkly depressing. Well, these are deeply dark and depressing times.

I debated using the passage above from the 20th century Romanian philosopher Emil Cioran, who is known for a brutal pessimism and cynicism towards man that borders on total misanthropy. I can only read snippets of his work without wanting to open a vein though while I am repulsed, I sometimes finding myself laughing. For example, from the same book as the passage above comes this dark thought:

“Sometines I wish I were a cannibal – less for the pleasure of eating someone than for the pleasure of vomiting him.”

But in this book Cioran puts forth the idea of the belief in hopelessness as a sort of religion. And for this moment, that is how I am beginning to view it.

Below is a post from 2020, in the final year of trump’s first term at the beginning of the pandemic. Good times. It is about the power of hopelessness. It might even be our superpower if we can come to better understand what every authoritarian/fascist regime has failed to recognize: that the hopelessness and desperation they create makes their repressed citizens take risks and actions that would seem unthinkable in normal circumstances, that desperate times make for desperate actions.

Hopelessness is the seed of courage.

From 2020:

“The Americans have no sense of doom, none whatever. They do not recognize doom when they see it.”

― James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room

At the bottom of the moods swings that occupy my waking days and dreaming nights as of late. In the studio at 5:30 this morning, a Tom Waits song playing with huge clunking beats and his coarse, smoke burnt voice yelling over it all, And the earth died screaming/While I lay dreaming…

Shuffling through things, trying to find something to hold on to and I come across this little painting at the top, one that I quickly did years ago for my eyes only. Never meant to be shared, just a private reminder to myself of those days when the dark crows of doom have gathered around my door. Meant to keep me aware of the signs that appear when these crows are coming back, to remind me of the immense fatigue and sense of doom they bring with them so that I might be able to stay clear of them this time.

To avoid hopelessness.

But sometimes hopelessness cannot be avoided.

If you have been at a point without hope, you know there are only two outcomes:  to succumb to the doom or fight. You realize that hope, at that point, has become your enemy, a distraction that weakens your resolve and keeps you from being fully engaged in the battle.

Hope is a tool used by agents of doom, to tyrants and despots who tie themselves to religions that keep the masses passive with promises of better days ahead and in lives after this one on earth. Hope makes you look forward when you need to be only in the here and now. Hope makes you sloppy and inattentive, willing to surrender to nearly the same terms and conditions– and often worse– that have brought you to this point.

Hope is a promise unfulfilled, a wish without action.

No, in times of doom, hopelessness is your greatest ally.

Hopelessness demands action.

Hopelessness is the greatest agent of change.

Hopelessness is fearless, with nothing left to lose.

I wasn’t planning on writing this this morning. God, I want to be cheery and optimistic and, dare I say, hopeful. I have always preached hope on this blog but that was in times when I thought the future was still a bright sky, not a dark and foreboding one like the one I see now, where the storm clouds have been amassing for the last four years. I’ve watched them gather but hope made me think it would somehow resolve without me engaging, that the sky would brighten of its own accord.

But I was wrong to trust hope. I can’t turn to hope this morning.

No, I am looking to hopelessness as my savior. I’ve have sometimes visited that abject blackness down where hopelessness dwells and it has always sent me back upwards. It has invariably set me in action and stiffened my resolve. It has made me realize that this life is a precious thing that is worth fighting for, against all hope.

Against all hope. I never thought about that term before, though I have used it on more than one occasion. I think we are at that point, where we must struggle against all hope with hopelessness as our great ally.

So, for the time being, I am setting hope aside. Oh, I’ll hope you’re doing well and staying safe because I want us all to have a brighter future at some point soon. But I will not depend on hope or trust that it will bring that desired future.

Only hopelessness can do that.