Mickey Z
Cool Observer
Sunday, May 21, 2006
Hope is for suckers
Good morning all...Those are great articles. The one by by Jensen says a lot. Too many good quotes but here is just one.”...Does anyone really believe that Monsanto will stop Monsantoing because we ask nicely?...” I have been saying that about the war from the start. The “Peace activists” and others who practice the politics of convenience want the war to end because we ask them to end it. I believe as Jensen says that “hope” can be a negative because it keeps us tied to a failing system. Instead of hope, we need anger and outrage. Hope and optimism have kept us imprisoned in a system that has brought death and destruction.
Posted by RMJ on from Churchill 4 Prez Hdqts 05/21 at 07:20 AMmy favourite Henry Miller quote about hope, I posted here a while back:
“Hope is a bad thing. It means that you are not what you want to be. It means that part of you is dead, if not all of you. It means that you entertain illusions. It’s a sort of spiritual clap, I should say.”
that Portland video with the police cameras and peperspraying threeyearolds t’other day got me thinking, as well as today’s post: while protesting has some powerful effects such as helping people all around the world feel they’re not alone in distaste for massmurder, it’s too easily co-opted or steered, here the police routinely send in agent provocateurs to start a scuffle provide excuse to beat daylights out of everybody else and portray caring folk as a threat. And protesting to the purpose of speaking truth to power and making em see the error of their ways, ha. I’m more in favour of dedication to countless small acts, I feel it’s when opportunities for these are passed up is when the real rot sets in (something as simple as not voicing an opinion in say a coffeeshop for the sake of social acceptance), rather than in an easilymanipulated herd taking part in what Ambrose Bierce called a popular entertainment given to the military by innocent bystanders.
Albert Einstein said, “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it,” and I feel if someone wants to defuse situations caused by centralised bureaucracy, dissent must be as decentralised as possible.Posted by owen on from the trees 05/21 at 07:35 AMBravo Owen, that is a great comment. I like that Miller quote, too.
Posted by RMJ on from Churchill 4 Prez Hdqts 05/21 at 07:46 AMHere I am with my latest. I am a bit confused to not be hearing much support for WC now that the University has issued its report and there have been attacks on him on FOX etc.
http://tinyurl.com/pqjo8Posted by RMJ on from Churchill 4 Prez Hdqts 05/21 at 07:55 AMHi Rosemarie, and cheers. By the way, in Spanish the verb “esperar” meaning “to hope” also means “to wait.”
Posted by owen on from the trees 05/21 at 07:58 AMHello Owen and Rosemarie. I’m heading out now but will join in later. Great start to the conversation here. Also, Owen, thanks for the other Miller quote. I added it to the main post.
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 05/21 at 08:08 AMFantastic Jensen piece (and fine work from Jackowski as well). Owen I like what you say as long as “decentralized” doesn’t mean--as it too often seems to--sporadic and ineffective. Out of the system, yes, and decentralized, yes. But dissent, or in positive terms assent to something else, must be communicative in my opinion. First step is being a decent human being (as you mentioned Mickey) but then I think doing something that communicates to others.
I am guilty of very occassionally having had hope in the past, or rather using the concept of it in my work, as in this little thing from November 2001:
Let
Them Sing
)Out A Fight
Song Today And
That No One Can Sell
Them It Back Tomorrow
(hopeAnyway I hope many people will read this post and Jensen’s article and I hope it will inspire people to lose hope. Oops.
Posted by Keir on from The Hague 05/21 at 09:16 AMJensen is right on here...hope is what allows the majority of us to ignore what our military does in Iraq and Afghanistan...some sort of belief that eventually, our government will get it right.
On a personal level I identfiy greatly with Miller’s words about (in my younger years) having a hope that at some point in my life some great event would happen to change things...that somehow, some outside force would accomplish something for me that in reality only I could do for myself. That kind of hope can be extremely self-destructive.
As we all see this hope that many of us have about the world and our place in it seems suicidal.
Posted by JOS on from my brother's apartment 05/21 at 09:25 AMGreat conversation here today Keir, Owen, JOS, MZ.
In the USA now “hope” is the false belief that things will change even though we continue to do the same things over and over. Is there anyone who thinks this country will “get it right” in our life time?
Should the saying on the Statue of Liberty be changed to read, “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.”?Posted by RMJ on from Churchill 4 Prez Hdqts 05/21 at 09:48 AMDave Lindorff on KPFA now
http://www.kpfa.orgPosted by Robert B. Livingston on from San Francisco 05/21 at 11:41 AMI am unclear as to why “hope” should be equated with “fantasy.” How did that equation get started? One doesn’t “hope” to win the lottery, or to have a life-issue resolved from without; one antasizes these things will happen. That ain’t hope to me.
Hope is, in my lexicon, the force that enables us to see a better way/day/life/government (that one’s fantasy, I fear) and, for me at least, provides the motivating impulse to overcome hope’s evil twin, despair.
I don’t write to prisoners, or act as a community chaperon for a sex offender, out of anger or outrage. I do it in hope these efforts might bear some positive fruits in the lives of these men, and to make myself “feel right” about the myriad of privileges I enjoy by virtue of being white, male, and American in a world where those things (wrongly, IMHO) matter.
Like the reparations issue (wrong, or else I want some too), I am out of step with the Expendable Consensus. I do not acceptthe equation of hope and fantasy. I think that ticks The System off more than anything else.
Posted by Mudge on from Austin 05/21 at 11:51 AMMan… so much to dwell upon… but I have to rush out to a sudden weekend proofreading shift. Thanks for now for the inpiration that sometime I’ll make an unbelievably negligible difference.
Posted by James on from Hell's Kitchen 05/21 at 11:54 AMAnd before I go, here, enjoy, esp. with a high speed connection: http://threeleggedlegs.com/humans/
Posted by James on from Hell's Kitchen 05/21 at 12:32 PMKVOA and the AP are reporting a surge in volunteers helping those who cross the southern border. That just gave me a little “hope” and faith in the humanity of man.
Hi James...I am on very low speed with my internet connection. Sorry to miss some of the fun things.
Mudge...you do the things you do to make yourself “feel right” because of the level of virtue that you have achieved...but you may be in class almost by yourself. As I once said about you, “You are unparalleled.”Posted by RMJ on from Churchill 4 Prez Hdqts 05/21 at 01:26 PMHello again Expendables. Nice article, RMJ. Great comments and links all around.
Mudge: I can only speak for myself, but I’m not equating hope with fantasy and I never said anger and outrage were the only possible motivations. (However, I’ll bet you are angry with a system that has created the situations you are dealing with.)
To me, the word hope seems to imply a certain amount of delegating outcomes to fate.
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 05/21 at 01:32 PMI feel being a decent human being is all there is to it, Keir - when your resonance is right you can heal someone just by walking past them.
Mickey/Mudge, when I find myself hoping for something it usually means I’m not doing anything about it.
Posted by owen on from the trees 05/21 at 02:38 PMI’ve been thinking about the Jensen article, please indulge…
His statement that love of something or someone else is the force behind his actions seems okay, but imagine you’re trapped in a box with one other person. You want that other person to be happy (or satisfied, or safe) not necessarily because you love them, but because if the other person is not happy (or whatever), you’re stuck in the box with an unhappy person. Your actions to help this person are self-centered. But that’s not a bad thing in this case. On a larger scale, I’d rather that the people I share the planet with are not hyper-aggressive, ecocidal monsters or those who blindly support them. So my actions to inform, encourage, and demonstrate alternatives are at least in some sense based as much on what I want as what others need.Well. Owen, maybe you’re right. Decent human beings communicate with each other anyway.
Posted by Keir on from The Hague 05/21 at 07:10 PM
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