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These days, it’s hard to imagine ourselves as living through good times.
Where once the future was brimming with hope and we were free to imagine a utopian society
for ourselves and our children, pessimism has steadily crept over our imagination, taking
hold of our future and shackling us with a vision of dystopia.
We’ve become accustomed to the idea that things won’t actually get better and it’s
not all that surprising.
Every day we’re confronted with these narratives.
Not just in movies or TV shows, but in our day to day life too.
We watch from the sidelines as proto-fascist regimes grow in power and popularity.
In front of our eyes, the institutions of our governments are taken over by those who
repress our civil liberties while the state’s forces descend into our streets and punish
our resistance with violence.
We see white nationalism, the very kind we had been told would fade away in our ever-progressing
society, swell and become more indiscriminate in its cruelty.
Year after year, report after report confirms the enormous toll that our reliance on fossil
fuels has on our environment and our health, promising escalation so long as we keep going
with business as usual.
And all the while, in the background, the machine keeps turning and pushing more and
more people into poverty, into sickness, and into endless menial work.
These past couple of years, and really the past couple decades, have not been easy.
And although this introduction has painted a grim picture of our society, in this episode
we will be focusing on its antidote: revolutionary optimism, both holding onto optimism as a
revolutionary act in itself and the necessity of optimism in working towards positive change.
Revolutionary optimism is several things.
For one, it’s the rejection of a defeatist or “doomer” outlook on life.
Revolutionary optimism means remaining hopeful that the goals of the revolution will one
day be achieved, and that these causes are worth fighting for, day in and day out.
What revolutionary optimism is not is a blind faith in the success of this struggle.
It is not falling into dogma and blindly assuming that the end of an unjust and capitalist system
is inevitable, and by that assumption, standing back as it continues to reproduce both injustice
and capitalism itself.
Revolutionary optimism is active.
But we should start with the flip side of the coin: despair.
Despair, pessimism, or more recently “doomerism,” is one of our greatest modern challenges.
Whatever you want to call it, it seems that more and more people are feeling it and have
given up, either on their own personal success, or that of the climate movement, the most
existential struggle in the history of our species.
Other times doomerism comes from the ranks of the left, where doomers are convinced in
the failure of a socialist future or the impossibility of wishing for a time where large-scale issues
like racial inequality will be resolved.
There is something understandable about this point of view given the magnitude of these
issues.
That said, there is also something deeply wrong with doomerism.
This mindset stops progress dead in its tracks.
We can see this in every progressive movement.
After all, doomerism justifies disengaging politically, in protest or elections, allowing
more committed political opponents to define the political sphere to their benefit, willfully
ignoring or amplifying the very issues that plunge people into doomerism in the first
place.
We see this in government explicitly, where politicians take advantage of defeatist narratives
in an even more detrimental way as they completely resign on tackling big issues.
Before a piece of progressive legislation is even considered by congress, we have seen
time and time again our elected officials giving up on it as if it were dead on arrival
instead of treating it properly, like the product of a political will they have the
power to influence and the responsibility as representatives to see through.
We’ve seen this with the $15 minimum wage, we’ve seen it with the Green New Deal, and
we’ll continue to see it so long as there is a resignation to fatalism on the left.
Before these bills ever made it to the capitol, democratic leadership admitted defeat, not
seeking to counter conservative narratives and bureaucratic obstacles with the same vigor
their opponents do.
Rather obviously, the more we prematurely give up and tell ourselves it’ll never happen,
the more likely that actually becomes.
And this turns out great for those who want to see progress stunted.
For a fossil fuel executive, there is no difference between a denialist and a doomer.
Whether you don’t support measures to reduce the effects of climate change because you
have given up or because you don’t believe in it at all, it’s all the same for those
who profit off the continued emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and the
pollution of our local environments.
But of course, there is an explanation to doomerism.
Behind this catchy internet term is often simply another form of depression.
This deep-seated feeling of despair brought about by converging social and societal factors
can be less a political philosophy and more an illness that affects many of us.
We know from 2020 and 2021, during which we saw a 30% increase in feelings of depression
and anxiety and a 45% increase in deaths of despair, that this is affecting more and more
people and that it is largely a product of our collective environment.
It would hardly be productive for us to single out those for whom this is a well-known issue
and pretend like it is them who are somehow to blame for the stagnation of American politics
or the difficult journey towards a more sustainable future.
Instead, it is imperative to counter the narratives that emerge out of doomerism with what is
lacking: a sense of agency and optimism.
And there are several reasons to be optimistic.
For starters, more and more people today are mobilizing for a better future.
People are taking up protest signs, spots in elected office, and roles in society to
both promote and actively bring about positive change on a scale that hasn’t been seen
for several decades.
Last year, city streets swelled with massive crowds the world over with people advocating
for a more equal society and the end to our dependency on fossil fuels.
On the left specifically, we’ve seen a massive surge in political awareness and support for
the socialist cause.
But if you find yourself falling into the doom and gloom mindset you likely already
know this and think it’s not enough, but don’t worry.
There’s more and there are things that you can do.
For starters, acknowledge that this isn’t your fault.
Plenty of people are falling into this sense of general malaise and there is demonstrable
proof that this is a product of our circumstances and the specific conditions most of us live
in today.
Secondly, while this all seems so permanent, the odds are on our side, they’re on the
side of progress.
For climate change specifically, we’re kicking fossil fuels out of energy production at rates
we never expected 20 to 30 years ago.
In some countries, like Scotland, renewables make up almost the entirety of energy production
at 97%, a recent development that would’ve seemed unimaginable a generation ago.
Even in Global South countries like China, where renewables are a comparatively costly
option, an ever greater portion of electricity is coming from less polluting sources.
Very recently, China declared that it would cease all funding for new coal plants, doing
more for the climate movement with the stroke of a pen than decades of unproductive western
summits.
While it can often seem like our current moment in history is part of this long lineage, an
unbreakable string of events, we exist in a very new time that can just as easily transform
into something different.
Like Ursula K. Le Guin said.
“ [Though] We live in capitalism.
[And] Its power seems inescapable.
So did the divine right of kings.
Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings.”
We have more agency than we often feel like we do.
In a human history of over 200,000 years, our current economic model has only prevailed
for the past 500, our current conditions for less than a century, and our ability to change
them has never been so great.
As a last consideration, think about the ways you can get involved to make this change happen.
The best counter to a feeling that nothing is changing isn’t listening to a couple
of statistics, it’s actually working to make things change yourself.
It’s hardly a new idea that action is an antidote to despair, but we don’t need particularly
novel ideas for things to improve.
If you’re looking for an easy way to get started, there is always going to be an organization
or group near you making meaningful change in your community.
In most major cities, and most everywhere in the country, you’ll find a local branch
of the DSA, a socialist or communist political party, or your community's mutual aid collective.
And yes, for those of you who like to complain about the DSA and claim it’s a sham, I’m
going to continue including it because it’s always better to get involved and learn the
ropes of organizing than it is to call everything an op.
No it’s not perfect, yes some branches are way too liberal, but it’s a democratic organization,
if you want it to become more radical, get involved and work to make it happen.
Or at the very least attend a meeting, confirm it’s not for you, and then you’ll know
you’re not missing out on anything.
If these groups aren’t options in your area, there will still always be some place looking
for help or be some way that you can leverage your skills to make a positive difference.
If you can cook, you can participate in efforts to feed the homeless, or those demonstrating
at sit-ins, protests, and strikes.
If you're an artist, you can create posters and flyers for a local group or just to promote
socialist ideas.
If you’re a writer, write for whatever audience you can get, it’s never been easier to host
your work online.
Same thing if you’re a speaker.
If you have medical or first aid skills, help out when protesters are injured.
If you can edit videos, make your own channel.
I started with zero subscribers, a computer, and some opinions.
Anything is possible.
If you feel lost, start reading and learning about what other people have been doing, on
your own or in book clubs and online communities.
Participate in the movements you see spring up.
Speak at local government meetings.
Elect local leaders that better represent you, or run yourself.
If you can find even one thing that makes sense for you to do, do it.
At the end of the day, the message behind maintaining a revolutionary optimism isn’t
committing to taking up arms or immediately overthrowing a government you disagree with,
it’s about maintaining a consistent and continuous vision of resistance against capitalist
decline within a framework of solidarity and community.
A revolution is not measured by the moment a government or economic system falls, but
by the efforts of a united community.
And that takes time, people, and hope to build.
If this feels oversimplified, it’s because it is.
Of course telling you to make posters isn’t going to suddenly end climate change or resolve
any of the awful situations we’ve found ourselves in.
In the same way that no video will ever perfectly speak to your circumstances, or what you can
do, or even completely capture something as vague as “revolutionary optimism,” this
is only a first and deeply personal step.
The goal in these suggestions and the critique of doomer narratives isn’t to give you all
the keys, but to participate in the cultivation of a culture of positive action.
This is going to be the only way forward.
If we look to the past, positive determination and commitment to change has always been the
only way to achieve progress.
Every social movement has relied on positivity - not naive idealism or the misplaced belief
that society is further along than it really is, but a genuine desire to push forward and
strive for positive change.
Baked into the very idea of a movement for change is the idea that there is hope.
For a movement to exist it must both realize the inadequacy and injustice of the present,
but also believe in the ability for this to change into a better future.
That is inherently optimistic.
Otherwise, why create a movement at all?
On the pragmatic level, social organizers have known the importance of optimism for
a long time.
If their project doesn’t seem exciting, driven by enthusiastic people, or reasonably
likely to succeed, people won’t join and why would they?
Part of the reason one of the suggestions in this video is to join a local organization
is because collectives create self-reinforcing visions of hope and optimism.
When a group properly uses hope to set itself goals, both you as the member and the organization
as a whole are pushed forwards towards social change.
Hope becomes much more tangible, and therefore so does the chance of a difference actually
being made.
If you’re still unconvinced, start reading about past revolutions, present social movements,
and the central role played by revolutionary optimism and hope.
As always the sources for this video, including an academic paper that details the importance
of group-based hope for environmental action, are in the description.
This is not an optimism meant to distract you from everything that has gone wrong and
the legitimate fears you may have about the future.
This is not a justification for complacency.
This is active change.
It is solidarity in response to toxic individualism.
The future is ours to determine, but it will take dedication, hard work, and revolutionary
optimism.
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