Despair is a paralytic, yet our limbs must keep moving
My two cents
It’s too easy to look at the news and feel a crushing sense of hopelessness and misery. We’ve become enthralled to the ringing disaster-emergency-calamity bell of both traditional news outlets, and social media outlets – and in fact, the trend of negative, alarmist headlines has been increasing for years. No wonder we (just me??) are in a state of adrenaline-fuelled overwhelm, convinced this is the worst of times. Every day, every week, every year, there is some sort of huge, consequential problem to grapple with. It’s overwhelming. Social media has made us all more belligerent, less tolerant, less capable of critical thinking and more prone to ‘armchair activism.’ And we seem to be heading into a new era of deregulation and exploitation. A few emerging themes…
Mis&disinformation has done all of the above, but worse, because we are struggling to agree on what a basic fact is, and the perception of the world at large. I was really struck by this when I saw a thread from someone talking about how much they fear for the future, and how bad everything is at the moment. They wrote about a sense of helplessness at how the wealthy and powerful had captured America and completely ruined it, perhaps past the point of return. In sympathy, in agreement, I then scrolled down the thread and realised this person was so unbelievably right wing that his list of ‘wealthy and powerful’ included trans people and ‘third world people’, whatever that means. How astonishing that this stranger and I, both with entirely different political viewpoints, could share the same, fearful feeling of doom, the same recognition regarding the utterly alarming concentration of wealth and power, but such radically different understandings of why, who and how.
AI is quietly and quickly robbing us of our critical thinking skills. Someone posted a thread detailing the ways ChatGPT has ‘revolutionised’ their life. These included problem-solving abilities, writing speeches and generating ‘new’ ideas, amongst other things. Every time I see things like this, I have the urge to grab those around me and scream RESIST, RESIST, RESIST! I cannot stress enough how alarming it is that people are offloading very basic critical thinking skills to something they do not control or understand. Problem-solving, writing, creating, communicating, these are all muscles that make us empathetic, intelligent humans who can critically assess and question the world around us. If those muscles are not flexed, they will atrophy and wither.
Google doesn’t google right anymore. Has anyone noticed this? I used to work in political communications, which involved having to write press lines, briefing docs, campaign emails and social media copy quickly (often within half an hour) and accurately. One of the most robust ways I would research was by googling specific data points, topics or statements and then filtering by year, key word, and reputable news sources. I would then read those articles and find the links to reports, government statements, direct quotes, etc. Google is now so clogged with SEO bullshit, untrustworthy AI generated answers, slop and clutter that the information I really need is buried so far, it takes me twice as long to retrieve it. We’re in an era where there is more information available to us than ever before. The issue is, so much of it is fake, completely useless, unverified, buried, untrue, spon-con, paywalled, distracting, or alarmist. We sift through it all looking for gold, but the gold is increasingly impossible to find.
Oh, yes, and then Donald Trump was inaugurated as the next President of the United States. The executive orders, the front-row billionaires, the Nazi salute. Remember the floor is lava game? Increasingly, it feels like there’s nowhere safe to land.
There is a theory amongst feminists such as Naomi Wolf (before she become a conspiracist sycophant) that the origins of modern beauty standards came about to distract, divide and deplete us. From the age of, oh, about two months, girls are bombarded with both direct and indirect instructions for how to look ‘beautiful’ (pale, slim, small, ultra-feminine, restrained) and how to appear ‘sexy’ (submissive, exotic, voluptuous, titillating) in order to be seen as vaguely worthy of male attention and protection. Beauty is synonymous with goodness and value, the standards are impossible to pin down, constantly shifting, ultimately non-existent. I know you are waiting for me to connect the first part of this essay with the second part, so I’ll bullet-point what all this means.
· Distract: the endless churn - of products, tweakments, ‘hacks’, surgeries, images, aesthetics, body parts to optimise - keeps us trapped in this horrible state of distraction. It’s far, far harder to challenge and resist oppression when an internal battle of self-acceptance simultaneously rages - like trying to grasp a shadow. And don’t say ‘oh, just ignore it,’ as though decades of indoctrination can be shrugged off. Being intellectually aware of sexist, racist, ableist ideals does not somehow shield you from the harm they cause.
· Divide: the concept of beauty standards imply that there are those who meet it and those who don’t. And unfortunately, because misogyny, racism and ableism are deeply ingrained into all of us (even those challenging it) it’s all too easy to despise each other - either for trying to meet those standards, or for failing to. This whole environment breeds competition and a scarcity mindset, which encourages us to sabotage each other instead of bonding over how nasty all this shit is.
· Deplete: When the goalposts for how to be valued, seen and appreciated can never be defined or achieved, our sense of self is both narrowed and eroded. Resilience becomes harder and feels more futile as our energy is sapped. It is impossible to pour from an empty cup.
It is easy to trivialise beauty standards, much like it’s easy to trivialise the dangers of AI, unreliable information and crumbling media. But they serve similar functions, and I believe have similar – if not identical – intentions. People who are exploiting and degrading other people, who are actively seeking to destroy our planet, want us to remain disorientated and distrustful. It suits them perfectly, because we can all fight each other whilst they get on with sucking everything dry. Everything I have outlined here has happened not by accident, or because it’s the natural way of things, but by design and with intent. Which, yes, is very depressing, but it also means that those who suppress us know all too well that we are powerful enough to oppress. In the same way that women’s full political, societal, economic and spiritual power is constantly being diverted from us because of these unbelievable pressures to conform, our power as human beings is being eroded by these strategies of information suppression and manipulation.
All this to say: despair is a paralytic. It distracts, divides and depletes us. It reframes our perspective and convinces us the battle cannot be won, the end is nigh, resistance is futile. To be human is to be hopeful, to be hopeful is to refuse to accept that this version of our world is all there is, all there can be. That is not the same thing as vaguely insisting that everything will ‘just work out’ - I have no idea if it can, but hope has never dealt in certainties, has it? It requires pragmatism, resilience, persistence. It cannot be sustained without love and community, and it is the very thing those like Trump, Vance, Musk, Zuckerberg and all those cronies want to eradicate within us.
If you, like me, are in despair, then you must not let it paralyse you. To be able to rest from resistance is a privilege, and therefore it is also a duty. You are needed. So ease up and seek joy until the blood pumps through your body again. Our limbs must move, our lungs must contract from laughter, our hands must reach for each other. This is how we outlast whatever is coming our way.
A quick favour. I love writing these posts, and I intend to do them for free for as long as I can. If you enjoyed reading this, forward it to a friend (or three) who you think might like it too. It helps massively, because validation from strangers is truly the only thing that makes the horrors bearable for me.