doing nothing or doing something,
published 16 October 2024
In the world we live in, it can feel impossible to not have a doomerist mindset. Look around you. Our world has been devastated by colonialism and imperialism, ecocidal empire and mindless industrialism, dominated by a consumer culture that will not stop until everything is dead around us. On some days it can be hard not to just stare out into the inky black sky or into the smoggy horizons or our lovely concrete wastelands and not just break down from the weight of it all.
And sometimes, it can be hard even knowing what you’d do with the power of a god. Fighting over this or that politician, this or that ideological system, this or that organization to fight with, this or that ends to fight for. And if we can’t even figure out what would be the right thing to do, how could we ever hope to actually do it? How could we ever hope to bring our plans into action and save our world?
Oftentimes, when I look at the solutions offered to us by our global system (namely, by our governments and our corporations), all I can feel is this meek rage, a sadness and anger that they are making it rich causing the problem only to make it richer selling us the pseudo-solution. Every day we are misled with one false solution after another, each day being told that either we are one step closer to solving the problem (and that oh, it will be solved, so long as you trust in global capitalism), or that there is no solving it (and that you can and should engage guilt-free in the endless consumerist machine).
And yet, both these paths will lead us astray. Blind hope in the system is only a foolish faith that everything will magically work out. It won’t. And nihilistic hopelessness will only encourage us to sink further into a depression where we do nothing.
Instead, do something. Hope itself is not a radical act, and yet the actions spurred by hope can be. Hope that we can solve it, hope that no, nothing is set in stone and nothing is unbeatable and hope that that means we can do something to stop it. Hope that no matter how much they tell us it is solved or that there is nothing we can do, that you, yes you, do something about it.
Placing that hope in someone else and doing nothing is not radical. Hoping that some amazing person or some powerful system or whatever mystical force will solve everything is the same as giving up everything and allowing the hedonistic nihilism to subsume you.
Do something. Help your neighbors, volunteer at your local food not bombs, start a garden, join a queer org, do anything other than sit around and wait for the end to come. Do not wait for someone else to save you. You are all we have.