1.3 Defy the global dementor
Despair is a terrible enemy because…
It shuts you down.
Maybe you keep busy so you don’t have to think about what’s happening inside you. Maybe you sustain a public display of bravado, but…
Inside you’re running on empty.
Ordinary despair is bad enough, but now despair has gone global. Look around the world and you see mass exploitation and mass suffering and mass helplessness.
You see major nations putting heartless, dangerous sociopaths in charge. Leaders who don’t just tolerate the suffering of others, but feed off it.
And this is true even of democracies, like my country, the United States, where tens of millions of people have voted into power leaders who get their endorphin highs from destruction.
Why do people vote as they do? Why do they suffer politicians who hurt them and their families?
My guess is they submit because…
They’ve given up on politics.
Which means…
They’ve given up on us taking care of each other.
Which means…
They’ve given up on human togetherness.
Which means…
They’ve given up on humanness itself.
This is ontological despair, the deepest possible despair, and…
It calls for the deepest possible self-care as a matter of self-defense.
Global despair is a terrible enemy. It wants to take from you everything that makes you a blessing to the people in your life.
It’s become a global dementor…
Hellbent on sucking out our souls.
The billionaire oligarchs and corporate elites are fine with this. They’re fans of the dementor. They want us to submit so we won’t fight them as they take more and more control over our lives and take more and more of our resources for themselves.
Given that this is the state of the world, despair is the most logical response. But…
It’s not the moral response.
To defend ourselves, we need more than a random collection of easy-step how-tos. We need to…
Take a gutsy moral stand.
For ourselves and against despair.
There is in each of us, in the deepest place in our hearts…
A special power.
It’s a fierce desire for nurturance to win, nurturance of the kind that won’t be daunted or tamed. It’s this desire that’s…
The source of deep activism.
In many people this desire has gotten buried. But being activists, we have direct access to it. We’re able to call forth this power and put it to work so we can hold our own and keep the dementor at bay.
And the first thing this nurturing power says to us is…
Feel for yourself.
So maybe you talk directly to despair and tell it…
I didn’t ask to get shut down. I didn’t ask to be swamped by helplessness and hopelessness. I hate you. With all my heart, I hate you.
And maybe you say…
I’m morally opposed to you. I don’t want anyone to be taken over by you, not me, and not anybody. Not ever.
And maybe you tell it…
When I see you taking over the world, yes, I feel sorrow. And it runs deep, and it’s not fun. But I need my sorrow. You want to shut me down. You want me to feel nothing. Be a nobody. But I embrace my sorrow, because it keeps me being me.
And maybe you say…
You hurt so many people so badly and that makes me so mad that I’ve decided to do something about you, to stop you if I can.
And now we’re segueing into the second thing this special power says to us…
Fight for yourself.
So maybe you speak to despair and say…
I’m not a despair person. I’m a fight person. That’s who I am. That’s my identity. And you’re not going to change that.
Maybe on a day when despair has gotten the upper hand, you say…
You might own my day today, but you do not own me.
And maybe you say…
I refuse to collude with you. I refuse to make it easy for you. I refuse to surrender. Instead I’m going to fight you with everything I’ve got.
And maybe you say…
You’re clobbering me right now, but I’m declaring a state of emergency. And I’m going to do every bit of deep nurturance I know how to do with myself until I’m back in action.
And maybe…
You go see a friend who understands what it is to wrestle with despair. And she asks you to tell her your favorite fight stories. That means times when despair was stalking you, circling in on you, and you stood your ground, and stayed true to what’s deepest in your heart and you triumphed. And in telling your stories, you remember who you are, you recover yourself, and reclaim your fight, and are okay again.
Or maybe…
You go see a friend who’s in worse trouble than you are with despair, and you ask her to tell you her fight stories, and to keep telling them until she climbs back out of the hole she’s in, and as she does so, you climb back out of the hole you’re in, too.
And maybe…
You redouble your efforts to create an anti-despair life. Which includes deep activism, because that’s a way of playing offense against despair. A way of incarnating your hatred of despair. A way of countering the things in this world that feed despair.
And maybe you say…
Despair, I know the odds are against me. It would seem you have every advantage because you’re a global giant and I’m just only me. But this fight in me is a force to reckon with. It has the power of nurturance and love and life, while you only have the power of death.
Defying global despair is deep self-care. And in our daily acts of defiance, we’re caring for ourselves, our fellow activists, our communities, and in fact, our species. How can you beat that?
