Words&Dirt

“It is time for a new form of motivation. Turning our backs on hope might be the best thing we can do at this moment in time. To be motivated by hope is to be stripped naked, to be vulnerable, to be disempowered. To be motivated by a sense of obligation, a commitment to virtue, is to put on a Kevlar bodysuit. ‘Lack of power consists only in this,’ Baruch Spinoza points out, ‘that a man allows himself to be guided by things outside him, and to be determined by them.’ Psychopathic serial killers tell us that the way they control their victims is to give them little tastes, little slivers of hope––but when their victims lose hope, they can no longer be controlled.

The writer Derrick Jensen nails it when he proclaims that he does not ‘have much hope. But I think that’s a good thing. Hope is what keeps us chained to the system, the conglomerate of people and ideas and ideals that is causing the destruction of the Earth….A WONDERFUL THING happens when you give up on hope, which is that you realize you never needed it in the first place.’ You are free to act rightly, because it is the right way to act and not because your action will move you or the world toward some future state.

So here’s what I want, what I think we need so desperately. I want us to replace ‘I hope’ with ‘I resolve to do the work’ or ‘I will be this kind of person, I will live this kind of life’ or any sort of utterance that focuses on virtue rather than on consequence. Any sort of commitment that is not subject to the fickle and fragile focus on the results of our actions and commitments. This, I think, is the new ethic in the face of a future without hope. This is the only moral anchor imaginable in the sea change rolling our way.”

––Moral Ground: Ethical Action for a Planet in Peril, “To a Future Without Hope,” by Michael P. Nelson, pg. 460-1

“Life had gotten back on its own sweet keel. The uprooted corn was gathered together by the children, and a week after Nort’s resurrection, they burned it in the middle of the street. The fire was momentarily bright and most of the barflies stepped or staggered out to watch. They looked primitive. Their faces seemed to float between the flames and the ice-chip brilliance of the sky. Allie watched them and felt a pang of fleeting despair for the sad times of this world. The loss. Things had stretched apart. There was no glue at the center anymore. Somewhere something was tottering, and when it fell, all would end.”

––The Gunslinger, by Stephen King, pg. 49-50