No.2748
Hello everyone. I'd like to inform you that optimism is dumb. Like, really dumb.
Optimism is essentially a yielding to the most basic temptation - to want things to be better than they are because of attachment, and to then adjust your worldview, to the exclusion of contradictory facts, in order to accommodate this viewpoint. Among those in the trenches this tendency could be forgiven; among westerners, not actively engaged in combat, merely offering analysis, this tendency is unreasonably stupid. It's not wrong for those at a distance to be attached to the fates of others; this is correct. However, it is wrong for those who are at a distance to align their projections with those who are experiencing war up close when those at a distance have an opportunity to detach their analysis from emotion and be more objective.
In essence, if your family and friends aren't being killed around you right this very minute, you don't have to make your projections based on a faith that justice will come. In fact, if you are in the west, it's imperative that you don't make your projections based on a faith that some other will overcome the destructive power of US empire. You don't have to be totally stoic, but your analysis should strive to be stoic rather than being shaped by your emotional attachment to a certain cause. Again, the sin here is not the acceptance that some outcomes are better than others, the sin is not to be attached to the creation of better outcomes, the sin is to allow that attachment to create in you a delusion that the best outcomes are the most likely ones. To combat this sin, it is best to be pessimistic, to presume that the worst outcomes are the most likely ones, to acknowledge that bad things are happening constantly and that this is the reality on which you must shape your worldview.
Pessimism should not be confused with defeatism; this conflation is, frankly, also very stupid. Pessimism is a recognition of reality, a baseline perspective from which being wrong can only be good, and this viewpoint prepares the individual to go up against the worst of odds, understanding without fear that by not doing so failure & death would be the only certain outcomes. By accepting how bad it really is, by accepting that failure is the most likely outcome of anything and death is the only certain outcome, a rational person cannot justify anything except the strongest action in opposition; failure is always likely, but only absolutely certain if you refuse to work towards a good outcome. Death is always certain, and a life spent subjugated without resistance will not be spared from this fate. Defeatism, therefore, is the refuge of imbeciles; there is no mercy to be found for those accepting defeat, it will never save them, and, if anything, only worsens their likely fate. It is true that the revolutionary is a doomed man, but not all who are doomed have accepted their own revolutionary potential; in fact, most doomed men today are not revolutionary at all. Most men, today, are doomed, and they have no idea how lucky they are to be doomed. By shedding delusional optimism and truly accepting how bad it is, a man becomes extremely powerful immediately; if even half the doomed men of today admitted the level of their degradation and sought to take the actions necessitated by this understanding, it would be completely impossible to stop them.
The power of men is not just in sheer brute force, nor even really in capital alone, but in the ability to perceive time and to plan and learn and work collectively. By refusing to plan for the worst in favor of naive, faithful optimism in some other you have no direct connection to, you are ceding what little power you have left as an individual in the west. All the while, what do the capitalists do? Why, they pass laws to suppress you, to spy on you, to strip you of your rights to speak and resist even in this historical period of relative peace. They build cop cities and militarize the police because they understand that things are going to get worse, economically, and they know exactly what they want to do when it reaches that point. It will reach that point soon, within the next six months, and I will be prepared for war as best as I can against the genuinely evil people who run the USA. I know what's coming, and so, knowing this, I implore you to admit how bad it is, how it is getting worse, and how inaction and complacency will not save you. You and I are damned no matter what we do, but it is not necessary that this damnation be eternal; our penance for the sins of ages has unfolded in front of us for our entire lives, the only existing chance, however slim, that our fates, and those of future people, will change is dependent on what actions we take to change things directly. We, the doomed, have no rational excuse nor incentive to do anything else.