Consolations of the Damned
An offering of words
The aftermath of every election feels different. Panic ebbed into hesitant relief in 2020, shock and disbelief swelled into rage in 2016, 2008 was an imperious moment of jubilation so bright that the shadows seemed to thin and disappear, fading so much that even the cynics like me started to believe they might not return. This time, in 2024, there was silence, and a slow, pained collapse into despair accompanied by the gentle shattering of so many cherished illusions. Many, for the first time, are fearing the hard times they had convinced themselves were long gone or contained at a distance - held aback by wisdom, wealth, or providence. We all, even I, wanted to believe, so desperately, so fervently that we truly lived in a gentler world, where justice was always near at hand, where the fruits of our efforts would be our own to taste and always so sweet. But, as surely night follows day, the dark has returned.
This is not the time for recriminations. Those who know me personally will know that I've spent years as the resident paranoiac, now resident abroad specifically to avoid some of the worst implications of this moment - a desperate bid to keep my loved ones safe after realizing that no amount of knowledge or power I could gain on my own could spare America and Americans the results of our collective sins. I feel no relish. I have no theory of why. I have nothing to say about this moment other than I'm sorry, so miserably sorry for any way my actions or inaction helped ease us into this ruin. But, those words are bitter, empty, and useless. So, we must turn to the next moment, because there is always a next moment.
My best friend likes to say that true hope is on the other side of despair. It's a phrase that lives in the centre of my heart. Hard times are inevitable in the course of history, if only because folly and fragility are the only true iron laws of humanity. But, we can choose to endure. There's no specific reason I will offer you for that, because there is no reason that is universal. For some, it is a love of justice that lights the darkest nights, for others wanting their children to see a beautiful sunrise, for others still, it is just a stubborn defiance against the presumption of inevitable doom. It's one of the triumphantly insipid parts of humanity - that some of us never can quite give up, even when all signs point to our personal immiseration. For some fool reason, even when sinking into mire, some humans try to plant seeds.
I like to think it's because there will always be another time. Or, that we can always buy another time, another chance, another fragile opportunity to make things right, or as right as we are able given what feeble means and efforts we can muster. Maybe we won't live to see it, maybe our children won't live to see it, maybe whatever lives to see it won't even be human, but the foolish, irrational decision to resist the idea that humanity has ever engineered, or will ever invent, a total, inevitable apocalypse is always just at hand, just within our reach if we choose to grasp it.
In this moment, we can choose to plant seeds, if only on the vain hope that long after we're gone, our broken bodies will feed them, our tears will water them, and our vital essence will give them the spark to push through the dirt and blossom. We can etch the lessons of the moment into our bones, so that when we are found - namelessly interred in that forgotten plot - those who come later can reclaim the traces of courage from our marrow. We, even now, harried by fear and lured by apathy's sweet scent, can choose to toil, to embrace the cold comforts of being the nameless forebears to a future generation's success.
"All is excruciating pain. I breathe fire and torment. I birth a world of suffering, to mire and plague. In one fleeting moment, lives come and go, ever moving towards the unknown. And in that fleeting moment, they cry for the answer to the question: Why, given life, are they meant to suffer. To die... As fragmented, imperfect beings, yours is a never-ending quest. A quest to find your purpose, knowing your end is assured. To find the strength to continue, when all strength has left you. To find joy, even as darkness descends... And amidst deepest despair, light everlasting." - Hydaelyn, FFXIV : Endwalker (Square Enix, 2022)
To be clear, there's no rational reason to take this path. There's nothing in the cosmos that says justice will prevail. I don't believe there's any loving divine who will carry us all to glory, at least not without our own titanic exertions. I do not believe there's anything in humanity that binds us to compassion, and, wisdom more so than cruelty, and, hate. But, we can nonetheless choose to accept fulsomely the grand pains and meagre joys of being the anonymous masses who scrape, and, strain so that one day a Moses can lead people to a promised land that even he himself will not enter. We can always choose to believe, to fight in what ways, however snivelling or pathetic, we are able - to hide a banned book, teach a forbidden lesson, encode verboten culture into a new, innocuous form.
"When I choose to see the good side of things, I'm not being naïve. It's strategic and necessary. It's how I learned to survive everything. ... I know you see yourself as a fighter. Well, I see myself as one too. This is how I fight." - Waymond, Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022)
This is not a time of glory. This isn't the setup for some redemptive narrative. This isn't the prologue to a cyberpunk dystopia we can ironically meander through. These are, and really have always been, times of great suffering and hidden valour, times where we are drowning in grief enough to fill the oceans while protecting droplets of hope as precious heirlooms, the terror of a long, long, dark, lonely night while we desperately try to keep the coals of the fire smouldering, even just preserving the smallest spark, even if we have to burn ourselves to do it.
"However ruined this world has become, however mired in torment and despair, life endures. Births continue. There is beauty in that, is there not?" - Melina, Elden Ring (FromSoft, 2022)
There's a cruelty in being human. We live lives that barely reach a century, but have hopes that span eons. But, in a way, that's the beauty of it. That our hope endures. That our febrile wishes can be transmitted through time, space, and generations until they reach those who can fulfill them. We, the damned, can stack our bodies to the heavens so that someone else can touch them. Our failures are not total, our deaths will not be the end. The comforts of faith and hope enduring are meagre, threadbare, coarse, and ill-fitting, but they are ours to don. So, if you want, if you are able, after you've wept, and shaken, and cried out against a cursed fate as I have and do, you can join me in walking, however haltingly, forward.
"Lands that stretch on forever. Skies one could drown in. The heartbeat of nature, silent yet strong. And amidst it all, a people. Beacons of light and life. Laughter that warmed my heart like naught else before. They are my meaning and my purpose. My love. In spite of...or perhaps because of this, I choose to believe. In mankind's potential. In his ability to find a way forward. So let there be no way back. From that temptation I sunder us. No more shall man have wings to bear him to paradise. Henceforth, he shall walk." - Venat, FFXIV : Endwalker (Square-Enix, 2022)