conceivable victories

I’ve had one mantra my whole po­lit­i­cal life: Nev­er give into cyn­i­cism.

           Cyn­i­cism is the refuge of the in­tel­lec­tu­al­ly lazy, the weak, and the en­ti­tled
           Cyn­i­cism ig­nores pow­er and in­vites ap­a­thy
           Cyn­i­cism is ni­hilis­m’s part­ner in in­ac­tion and self de­struc­tion
           Cyn­i­cism kills hope and with­out hope, what’s the fuck­ing point of any­thing?

Things are bad right now, real fuck­ing bad. The en­vi­ron­ment is col­laps­ing on it­self as a prod­uct of dog­mat­ic loy­al­ty to hy­per-con­sump­tion, our hard earned civ­il rights vic­to­ries are erod­ing to the point they may have lit­er­al­ly been il­lu­so­ry this whole time, and democ­ra­cy it­self seems to have just been a wish­ful delu­sion to keep us sa­ti­at­ed while we are un­know­ing­ly ob­jec­ti­fied by pow­er.

The worst part is we are in­su­lat­ed from the gross­est mech­a­nisms of po­lit­i­cal pow­er by the ar­bi­trary virtue of be­ing first world cit­i­zens.

I’m wa­ver­ing though late­ly. Pour­ing through ar­ti­cle af­ter ar­ti­cle as­sess­ing the de­gree of im­pact of cli­mate change, see­ing the end­less vic­to­ries of coun­terev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies and tyrants, and watch­ing our in­tel­lec­tu­al ca­pa­bil­i­ties fail to pro­vide in­no­v­a­tive al­ter­na­tives to the cat­a­stroph­ic sys­tem we’ve cre­at­ed.

Nor­mal­ly a quick study of his­to­ry as­suages any bur­geon­ing neg­a­tiv­i­ty – watch­ing the pro­gres­sive, al­beit in­ex­tri­ca­bly slow, march to­ward the “King­dom of Ends” rein­vig­o­rates my for­ti­tude, re­mind­ing me of the con­ceiv­able vic­to­ries still to be won.

How­ev­er when stand­ing at this mo­ment, star­ing at the ob­vi­ous his­tor­i­cal lessons bar­rel­ing to­wards us at full speed, I’m find­ing cyn­i­cism a com­fort­able loft above the high wa­ter mark. Though safe from the charg­ing tide, the end game is ob­scured from vi­sion leav­ing me won­der­ing what is even the point …

I fuck­ing hard­ly know late­ly and I know I’m not alone, es­pe­cial­ly in this ex­haust­ing cli­mate of the In­for­ma­tion Age. The last thread of willpow­er I can of­fer is what Howard Zinn wrote me when I was young: “Find a cause, no mat­ter how small, and ded­i­cate your­self to it. Work for change.” Find a cause. Ded­i­cate your­self to it. Work.

           There’s no time for cyn­i­cism
           no mat­ter how at­trac­tive
           no mat­ter how com­fort­able
           no mat­ter how bad­ly you need to pull the weight of the world off your shoul­ders, there’s only time to work –

So new mantra: Work is the best de­fense against cyn­i­cism.
 
 

—na­tal­ie michelle

Flom­mist Na­tal­ie Michelle does­n’t have a bio. She just rants. Copy­right © 2016 Na­tal­ie Michelle. Art © flom­mist Dan­ny Joe Gib­son.

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