There Is Always Hope

Asperaque

So recently I saw that I was mentioned in an essay by Neoliberal Feudalism, where he explains how a piece of mine prompted some reflection on his part on the distinction between optimistic and pessimistic writers on rightist Substack. He places me (along with many others) in the former category, with himself and a relatively few others in the latter. In his view, the optimists are generally more popular and successful by virtue of the fact that they are outgoing networkers spinning happy narratives, while the pessimists are brooding introverts unable to find common ground even with one another, let alone a large section of the reading public. This makes it difficult for him, pessimist that he is, to get his message across, which (as I understand it) is that an evil cabal of bankers of centuries-old vintage so thoroughly dominates the globe that even to dream of working against them is wholly futile.

By way of clarification, to me, the distinction between an optimist and a pessimist is one of, for lack of a better phrase, tendency of anticipation. An optimist tends to believe that things will generally turn out well; the pessimist the opposite. To the degree one strongly believes one over the other is the degree to which one is optimistic or pessimistic. One might say that there is a third category- realist- someone who tends to sit between extremes, but then, the optimist and the pessimist often each hold that they occupy exactly that position over and against their extreme counterpart.

By way of experiment, feel free to send me as much Bitcoin as you like to see how it impacts my optimism levels.

All that is to say that I’m not really an optimist, nor, I suspect, are many if not most of the people NF quotes me mentioning. For my part, for example, I anticipate that some good will come of Donald Trump’s presidency, but any potential accomplishments are by no means assured. I don’t expect people to become generally better than they have been- more loving, more honest, more brave- as a result of any political changes wrought by the adoption of the policies I advocate. My consistent position has been that Trump is far more effective as a symbol than as a man possessed of personal nobility and high-mindedness. As I am a monarchist, I hold that at present this is the best that can be expected. At most, government can ameliorate the worst tendencies of human nature and create a positive space in which to cultivate virtue for those willing and able to do so. But we are fallen creatures, and mortal, and all of our works are mortal in turn. Our victories are only ever temporary and even the most thorough victory will one day be as though it never was.

They actually posted this on the White House X account. I like that whoever made it felt that one eagle wouldn’t be enough.

On a personal level, I am similarly not inclined to believe that things in this life work out for the best, at least in human terms. This summer has been an enormous trial in every sense. I tend to avoid talking about my personal life absent some didactic purpose, but over the past five months I’ve lost my job, had to move (not only my home, but a large classroom library), experienced multiple hospitalizations of family members (some ongoing) and horrible strain on pretty much every relationship. I just recently had to abandon a project in which I’d placed high hopes, and my output here has slowed far below my personal expectations, and I believe I’ve lost some paid subscribers as a result. NF gives introversion as a characteristic of pessimists; I am highly solitary by nature, have few skills at networking, and generally look to myself to solve problems. As the only relatively healthy adult male in my family, however, I’m looked to to help others, a responsibility I take very seriously, but one which militates against the kind of freedom I require to write. Those of you who know me have probably guessed that I’m typing this on my phone on the couch when I ought to be sleeping. I have no logical reason to suppose that any of this will change in the near or indefinite future.

Perhaps all of that sounds pessimistic. Superficially it might seem so; I’ve basically just said that I do not expect in either my personal life or wider society that things will generally improve. But there is another element to this that the simple optimism/pessimism dichotomy obscures. To understand what I mean, it would be useful to look at the latter category from the perspective of those NF labels as such.

The people NF cites as pessimist writers are, as he describes, quite dark in their outlook. While they differ in their particulars, in general their worldview shares a sort of template. There are basically four sorts of people. The largest group are the normies, oblivious cattle who mindlessly consume their way through life. Then there are the grifters, the people who profit by conning the normies. This category has many levels- Mainstream Media, NormieCons, RW Anons- but no matter how critical of the system they seem, they are really its willing or unwilling agents. Then there are the Illuminati. I use the phrase as a generic placeholder for whatever group or groups the pessimist holds actually runs things. And they do in fact run things- omnicompetent, omniscient, and omnipotent, they are omnipresent and invisible all at once. Generally (though not always) in these spaces the Illuminati are depicted as Jews, but just as often this is paired paradoxically with an aggressive denial of the existence of present and historical Judaism. The same people who argue that the Jews control everything will state authoritatively that there never was a Davidic Monarchy, that the Hebrew Bible is a plagiarized and bastardized Hellenistic philosophical text, that the Jews that exist today are actually Khazars, that their characteristics include being insanely clannish and distinct from the nations they parasitize while at the same time possessing a truly inhuman ability to blend in so thoroughly to white society that only the early life section of their Wikipedia pages can give them away. The Holocaust was a well-deserved punishment that also obviously never happened. As Umberto Eco might say, they are everywhere and nowhere, aided by the fact that they don’t exist.

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The final and smallest group are the pessimists themselves. They’re freebasing redpills, inhaling the ether of hard and forbidden truth that the Goyslaves of the world can’t fathom. The former are such naive idiots- they think they can make a difference by voting for Trump, or protesting, or getting married, having kids, working a job, and helping their communities. And sure, it might look like some people are able to do all those things, and that positive change can be effected through hard work and advocacy, or that the Trump administration is doing some good things. But that’s just what they want you to think. Every minute of every day the Illuminated Ones are plotting to undo it all- rug merchants that they are, they’re just waiting for the opportune time to pull it out from under you.

NF offers that the pessimists are unpopular because people prefer neat and happy narratives. I suppose on one level that’s true, though it doesn’t explain the enduring power of things like Greek Tragedy or Lovecraftian Horror. But I think there’s a bit more to it than that. In the first place, as he notes, the pessimists tend to be introverts, in the sense that they have difficulties forging connections with others. There’s something of a chicken and egg scenario here, though, where the sense of alienation and the self-regard as free-thinking truthseekers feed into each other. Excluding NF (we’ve always had pleasant exchanges), I would say that the salient characteristics of the pessimists- generally speaking- are sullen and arrogant misanthropy coupled with a manifest aura of helplessness and bitter resignation. Peruse the activity feed of any of the people he mentions and you will see a steady flow of declarations of the comprehensive evil of the enemy alongside castigation of the stupid masses for not appreciating its obvious nature. What is absent is any sense of being able to fight back or change things in a meaningful way. The ones who love Hitler for his Holocaust that didn’t happen see him as both the high point of fighting Big Jew and a tragic and inevitable failure. Evil Mustache Man let them down, as- one suspects- so many other father figures have done likewise.

The world wasn’t ready for this kind of love.

To engage with these people and their writing is to experience profoundly unattractive personalities attempting to convey unpleasant ideas to a public they despise. When they’re not naming the Jew, they’re lamenting constant personal and career failures, all of which plainly stem from a lack of intellectual and social humility to which they’re oblivious. They lack the ability to get along with the people who agree with them, much less very different general readers requiring leaps of empathy and imagination with whom to engage. Few of them seem to have wives or children or fulfilling work, or admit of the possibility of them, despite approaching or being beyond middle age. A good number are homosexuals, transgenders, or, oddly, pretending to be such. I don’t say this to condemn, (I’m not linking to anyone) but simply to point out that dooming and indolent, selfish hedonism are natural corollaries.

So while it’s possible the pessimists are just too real to be popular, I would posit that it’s at least equally likely that their relative lack of success compared to the optimists can be ascribed to a general aura of misanthropic impotence. “We’re doomed” is not merely unattractive, but repulsive on a level so visceral that to explain it one must move beyond the psychological to the theological. That’s why I feel that pessimist isn’t the best term for what animates these people. Their problem is despair.

Don’t be like this guy.

We tend to think of despair as a psychological condition, but it is fundamentally spiritual. The man of despair is a doomer in the truest sense. He is possessed of a thoroughgoing sense of futility wedded to meaninglessness. It would be a mistake to think this is wholly the same as having no sense of agency; that’s not really what distinguishes him from others. He might believe that in some sense he is in fact free to make choices and that his beliefs reflect his individual independence in the face of a world full of others who lack that faculty. But this only serves to alienate and disempower him further. He knows the solution is white unity or destroying Christianity or nuking India, but the more strongly he comes to those conclusions the more aware he becomes that he lacks the power to instantiate them. His agency, rather than freeing him, only serves to underscore his impotence- he can do or say whatever he wants, within his cell.

At its root is a longing for connection. The doomer desperately wants others to see him, to validate his ideas and his sense of worth. He knows the world despises him and despises it in turn, but hungers for its approval nonetheless. But in every meaningful way the doomer is held back by his pride, by his unwillingness to acknowledge others in turn and give to them the same deference he would have. Neither loving God nor his neighbor, he lives in the dark and empty space where that rightly-ordered affection should be, alone. Note that despair is a continuum, and that no living man can be wholly despairing, much like absolute zero or absolute evil are impossibilities. Some doomers despair more than others, but all possess this characteristic to a degree.

I cannot overemphasize how serious a problem despair is, or how pervasive it is in the modern world. I do not wish to single out the Substack pessimists; quite the opposite. Despair, pace NF’s view, is quite ubiquitous and not unwelcome in our repaganizing world. The same self-centered alienation that prevents people from forming meaningful connections is there in normies as it is among doomers. The difference is that the latter are sensitive enough to perceive it and lack the social inhibitions that prevent normies from acknowledging it. The normie is repulsed by open despair, especially women, but rather than face it, the normies numb the pain with consumerism, hedonism, and novelty. The doomers, not inclined to normal lives, are much less affected by such narcotics.

As I’ve said, the world is a fallen place. To look around is to see a million reasons to give up. Life scourges us with pain, exhaustion, loneliness, and drudgery. The doomer looks at those people and institutions who are supposed to ameliorate those conditions and sees failure, decadence, hostility, and eventually, an all-encompassing conspiracy of malicious aliens. His world is run by devils.

Or so the devil would have it. Despair was the lot of mankind generally once. It lies at the heart of the pagan worldview. The great heroes of the Iliad slaughtered each other by day and wept over their fates by night, with conqueror and victim alike destined to a grim eternity as bloodless shades. The heroes of Norse sagas could hope to feast in Valhalla, but only as a prelude to the Twilight of the Gods, the final destruction of the world. The philosophers, east and west, did all that human reason could do to ask if there was more, for those wise men realized that man was meant not for this changeable world, but for something more, for transcendence. But there was something yet missing.

There was a great gulf between man and God, a primordial alienation caused by the corruption of the will through sin. Man could not reach God, so God, being love, reached out to man. God’s justice and mercy were both satisfied by the atoning death of his Son, and through His resurrection came the promise of eternal life. Christ gave the world hope. Hope is not optimism. The latter is a temperament; hope is a virtue. Like all virtues it must be cultivated, and like all specifically Christian virtues it requires prayer and repentance. Hope isn’t something you have. It’s something you do.

Better men have better things to say about this; I encourage you to read them. I generally dislike writing about theology, given that I am a poor sinner and my life is no example to anyone. But I will say that, for me, hope is the act of looking at every reason to despair, every reason to quit, every reason to believe that the world is evil- and choosing to believe otherwise. It’s embracing the paradox that I have the agency to change things and that, ultimately, everything is in God’s hands. Suffering and blessings both are guides on my right and left to prompt my remembrance that this life around me, its joys and sorrows all, will end, and that there will be a life to come.

I’m still learning to hope. To elaborate on what I mentioned earlier, I got laid off from my teaching job due to my school being unable to attract enough students. I lived on campus, so we had to move. I got a call from my dad’s wife in Florida, telling me that he’d gone to the hospital with severe chest pains, this on top of his cancer. Just over a week ago, my mom also went to the ER, also with chest pains. They released her with a clean bill of health the next day, only to have her collapse as I tried to help her out of the car with a blood pressure of 68/45- right back to the ER, where she remains after eight days. And yes, along the way, I had chest pains as well, and I too went to the ER.

Basically me

I called my dad’s wife the other day to check on him and to get more details about the heart surgery they had planned. She tells me that they discovered an embolism in his lung, which they successfully treated, obviating the need for surgery, and what’s more, that his cancer is now in full remission. He’s getting around better than he has in years. My mom’s BP has stabilized (though now quite high) and they have deemed her well enough to return home, the diagnosis being some unwanted interaction among her medications; she’s also now doing a lot better. And my chest pain was … gallstones, not fun but also not exactly deadly. I have a much better job at a new school where my girls will soon be able to attend. In each case, I had every reason to assume the worst outcome, and did, and yet each time was proven wrong by the likely scenario not playing out as it could have. To the degree I lacked hope I let myself down, because looking back there was just as much reason to have it.

Of course, one day mom and dad won’t come back from the hospital. One day I’ll teach and that will be my last day, forever. One day I’ll pass on, as will my family, as will all of you. That’s reality. But what’s more real than that is the promise of what is to come, that the most logical thing about humanity is that all of our longings have some means of satisfaction, and our deep (though easily obscured) drive to transcend mortality must have its answer. We are made for more than this.

If you’re reading this, and you’re inclined to despair- or pessimism if you will- I urge you in all love and charity to interrogate that impulse ruthlessly, to ask yourself if your well-reasoned critique of the world is clouding your vision of something better. To do so is to discover the power within yourself to fight for good and beautiful things not as a futile stand against entropy but in the full knowledge of ultimate victory. To do so is to be able to find allies and inspire others. There is always hope.