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The Seduction of Despair

2023-03-14 · letter vlog · John · 4:00 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Philosophy & meaning · mode: Personal essay · tags: heavy topic

Filming with a hurting back, John says despair is seductive because it is simple and easy to justify, but it is neither helpful nor the whole truth: child mortality halved because people collaborated, and hope lies in slow reparative work and quiet kindnesses like his friend Chris listening to him.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — John's back pain; why despair is seductive: simple, easily justified (TB deaths), and it answers personal horrors

  • ★★ John says pain is insistent and won't shut up: his back hurts, so he tries standing, then hides behind a plant, which he finds hurts less than regular sitting. — 00:00:00
  • ★★★ John finds despair compelling first because it is simple: as a worldview it has a reassuring, if horrifying, consistency. — 00:00:12
  • ★★ Voicing despair, John says life sucks, injustice worsens, the sun will boil the oceans, and there's no need to balance futility and struggle, as Fitzgerald put it: only futility. (satire) — 00:00:20
  • ★★ John says that if you look around seeking justification for despair, you will find it. — 00:00:51
  • ★★ John says 1.6 million people will die of tuberculosis this year (2023), not for lack of understanding or cures, but because of inequitable access to health care, impoverishment and other injustice. — 00:00:55 · tuberculosis, health equity
  • ★★ John says despair also answers personal horrors (feeling he fails those he loves or is a burden on them, fear, grief) in a straightforward, holistic way. — 00:01:15
  • ★★★ John sees two big shortcomings in hopelessness: it is not helpful, and it is not true, or at least not the whole truth. — 00:01:37

00:01:40 — Despair is neither helpful nor true: temporary lives matter, care does not lessen worth, child mortality halved through collaboration; regressive change is organized too

  • ★★★ John says despair is simple whereas consciousness is multitudinous: mere despair won't suffice in response to life, nor will mere optimism or mere outrage. — 00:01:47 · optimism
  • ★★ John rejects the idea that the mere boiling of the oceans negates our shared work, since it implies others' lives are meaningless just because they are temporary. — 00:02:00
  • ★★ John does not believe that needing care makes a person less valuable, as the idea that he is merely a burden implies. — 00:02:10
  • ★★★ John says millions of kids will die needlessly of impoverishment this year (2023), but 30 years ago kids were twice as likely to die before the age of five. — 00:02:16 · child mortality
  • ★★★ John says that change was neither natural nor inevitable: many people collaborated across time and space, in anger, frustration and disgust, but not in hopelessness. — 00:02:30 · collective action, child mortality
  • ★★ John notes regressive change also involves organization and collaboration, such as attempts to overturn free and fair elections or take away the rights of the marginalized. — 00:02:47
  • ★★★ John says despair is the wrong response to consciousness because we are going to change the world together, so we should be thoughtful about how we do it. — 00:03:00 · hope

00:03:08 — Hope in slow reparative work and quiet human moments: Chris's call, a Philip Larkin poem, sign-off

  • ★★★ John says destruction is fast, loud and dramatic, reparative work slow and quiet; that's where his hope is, in big projects (a maternal hospital in Sierra Leone, US voting rights) and quiet human moments. — 00:03:10 · hope, Maternal Center of Excellence, Sierra Leone, United States
  • ★★ Last week (week of 6 March 2023) John's friend Chris called because he knew John was in pain, said he was sorry, listened and believed him; it didn't help the pain, but it helped. — 00:03:33
  • ★★ John says he keeps coming back to an old Philip Larkin poem whose closing lines urge care and kindness toward each other while there is still time. — 00:03:52

Threads in this video

Mentioned

Central: despair · hope

Also: People: Chris Waters · F. Scott Fitzgerald · Philip Larkin

Works: The Mower

Organizations: Maternal Center of Excellence

Concepts: child mortality · collective action · democratic backsliding · health equity · optimism · pain · suffrage · tuberculosis

Places: Sierra Leone · United States

Also centred on despair: taking a break · Gastrointestinal Hypermotility in Tuatara · Moving to Hope from Hopelessness (3 ways) · Despair is Not Wisdom

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