I wish I had a bag full of revolutionary optimism. It is incredibly difficult to avoid falling into the darkness and become paralysed. We know our planet is gonna get cooked, us and other animals too. Despite of this, wars are being fought and imperialism is trying to provoke WW3. Europe is diving into fascism and like in Finland workers are being stripped from rights to strike. People aren’t fighting any of this…
It’s bleak. Very. All I can think of is how to survive all of this and die peacefully of old age somewhere far away. Farming. I wanna do small scale farming by some bog and forest. Live in a simple cottage and knit socks for kids. That’s a good escape.
But I do remember the words of Bobby Sands, “our revenge will be the laughter of our children”, and it keeps that revolutionary fire burning inside of me just hot enough for me to push through yet another depressing day.
Maybe there still is hope. Just maybe we can stop this madness the western world is dragging us into. Maybe.
I want to share my experience, because I felt this way a while ago for months on end, and my mental health suffered a lot because of it. I still feel this way every now and then, but only briefly.
I remember when I started getting into socialism, I was first indignant, and then despairing, because I realized how far we are from overcoming capitalism, and how widespread injustice and reactionary attitudes were, far worse than I had thought before.
Still, what helped me persevere was also the realization that there is a way out, that there are sound, material explanations for things that people see are going wrong, that there are ways to reach them and explain it to them, and that the road is long, and it’s an uphill battle, especially in the West, so small steps to agitate are already good at this stage, even though it may not seem like enough, when the majority of the world have it way worse and are suffering the consequences of imperialism. Contribute in whichever way you can, even if it doesn’t seem like much. It will add up.
I really like this quote from Lenin: “Despair is typical of those who do not understand the causes of evil, see no way out, and are incapable of struggle. The modern industrial proletariat does not belong to the category of such classes.”