Hope Is For Suckers - Yes, Indeed!

I couldn’t agree more with my fellow western-Queens-based revolutionary Mickey Z. when it comes to his thoughts about “hope”…  So here are a few excerpts from his excellent article “Hope Is For Suckers,” which I found at Infoshop:

“Hope is the worst of evils, for it prolongs the torments of man.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

We can’t give up hope, I’m often told.  Keep hope alive, the saying goes.  If we lose hope, nothing will ever change…or so they believe.  Well, I’m here to say:  Fuck hope.  We live on a planet brimming with hope yet that same planet is under perpetual assault…and the hopers are losing.  The corporations raping our eco-systems don’t hope they can steal more land, exploit it, poison it, and make boatloads of cash.  They make a plan and make it happen…damn the torpedoes.  (You might even call it “direct action.”)

. . .

“Hope is a bad thing,” sez Henry Miller. “It means that you are not what you want to be. It means that part of you is dead, if not all of you. It means that you entertain illusions. It’s a sort of spiritual clap, I should say.”

. . ,

Author Derrick Jensen explains the impotency of hope as good as anyone: “I’m not, for example, going to say I hope I eat something tomorrow. I just will. I don’t hope I take another breath right now, nor that I finish writing this sentence. I just do them.

. . .

How about some good old-fashioned anger, rage, and passion?  (Che sez: “If you tremble with indignation at every injustice then you are a comrade of mine.”)  Let’s forget hope and aim for vision, clarity, strategy, courage, and finally: some goddamned results.  “Creativity comes from trust,” sez Rita Mae Brown.  “Trust your instincts.  And never hope more than you work” (as they say in South Florida:  bingo).

At its worst, hope is a dangerous cop-out.  At best, it’s a frivolous idea.  But even so, as Henry Miller sez: “Ideas have to be wedded to action.”

Wedded, huh? Repeat after me: “I do.”