Guerrilla History - Eco-Despair, Revolutionary Optimism, and the Fight for the Future: Part 1-Intelligence Briefing

Episode Date: August 27, 2021

Guerrilla History- Intelligence Briefings will be roughly a twice monthly series of shorter, more informal discussions between the hosts about topics of their choice.  Patrons at the Comrade tier and above will have access to all Intelligence Briefings. This Intelligence Briefing is the first half of a wide ranging conversation on apathy and hopelessness as a result of the climate crisis, how we maintain our revolutionary optimism, and chat about our fight for the future!  This half will be available as an early release to our Patreon members, the second half will be exclusive to comrades on Patreon.  We hope that this conversation gives you a bit of optimism and perhaps a bit of fire to continue the struggle for the future.  We have a world to win! Your hosts are immunobiologist Henry Hakamaki, Professor Adnan Husain, historian and Director of the School of Religion at Queens University, and Revolutionary Left Radio's Breht O'Shea. Follow us on social media!  Our podcast can be found on twitter @guerrilla_pod.  Your contributions make the show possible to continue and succeed!  Please encourage your comrades to join us, which will help our show grow. To follow the hosts, Henry can be found on twitter @huck1995, and also has a patreon to help support himself through the pandemic where he breaks down science and public health research and news at https://www.patreon.com/huck1995.  Adnan can be followed on twitter at @adnanahusain, and also runs The Majlis Podcast, which can be found at https://anchor.fm/the-majlis and the Muslim Societies-Global Perspectives group at Queens University, https://www.facebook.com/MSGPQU/.   Breht is the host of Revolutionary Left Radio, which can be followed on twitter @RevLeftRadio cohost of The Red Menace Podcast, which can be followed on twitter at @Red_Menace_Pod.  You can find and support these shows by visiting https://www.revolutionaryleftradio.com/. Thanks to Ryan Hakamaki, who designed and created the podcast's artwork, and Kevin MacLeod, who creates royalty-free music.

You remember Den Bamboo? No! The same thing happened in Algeria, in Africa. They didn't have anything but a rank. The French had all these highly mechanized instruments of warfare. But they put some guerrilla action on. to a guerrilla history intelligence briefing. Gorilla history is the podcast that acts as a reconnaissance report of global proletarian

history and aims to use the lessons of history to analyze the present. I'm your host, Henry Huckimacki, joined by my co-hosts, as always, Professor Adnan Hussein, historian and director of the School of Religion at Queens University in Ontario, Canada. Hello, Adnan. How are you doing? Hi, Henry. I'm well. Thanks. Good to be with you. It's nice to see you as well. And also, as always, joined by Brett O'Shea, host of Revolutionary Left Radio and co-host of the Red Menace podcast. Hello, Brett. How are you doing today? Hello. I'm doing okay, all things considered. Yeah, I think that that's an interesting note to

open up on because that's really what we're going to be talking about, at least at the beginning of this conversation. So just as a reminder for listeners, intelligence briefings are roughly twice monthly bonus episodes that are primarily designed for our patrons. About half of them are early access to patrons on our Patreon and half of them are Patreon exclusives. We're going to be trying something today where we record an entire conversation at once and we put the thing up on Patreon in two chunks and then unlock the first half of it onto our general feed. So if you're listening to this on our general feed, the conversation is going to get cut about halfway through the conversation, and the other half will be only on Patreon for people who

help support the show and keep us running. So just so you're aware of what's going on. But the topic today comes from one of our listeners who picked the topic that really flows well with some of the conversations that you've been having recently Brett on Rev Left, as well as one of the questions that came in on a Red Menace listener question, which is times are really tough right now, economically, especially in terms of the climate. The question is, is with these tough times, especially looking down the barrel of potentially catastrophic climate change with no real political will in sight to try to overturn that, how do you stay optimistic and how do you

stay motivated to keep trying to push for a better world when all of the cards seem stacked against you? And I thought that this was a really good question. And like I said, it flowed with some of the conversations that you'd been having, Brett. So that's where we'll start this conversation, and we'll just see where the conversation takes us. Brett, why don't I turn it over to you now since you've been talking about this topic? And we can get some initial thoughts from you, kind of maybe things that you've been reflecting on since you have been having these conversations over the past month, month and a half at this point. Yeah, I mean, the first thing is first, this is the baseline of this conversation is the idea that we have a choice

isn't really there. We are in this position as conscious human beings that want to build a better world, our lives, our futures, our families, our communities are all at stake in the sense that the worst that climate impact gets, the worst that the economy gets, the worst that anything gets is going to negatively impact us, the people we love, and people across the planet that we care about. So there is no option to opt out if you're born into this, world. This is the situation that we're in. And another thing that I really think is crucial and something that I've been telling myself is not only do we not have a choice in the sense that we have to fight in the conditions that we're given, but that pessimism, cynicism, fatalism,

nihilism, these are ultimately reactionary. They're ultimately an example of cowardice. That's not to say that I don't feel pessimistic at times or that cynicism doesn't get the best of me. But to let that take you over to deactivate you, I think is a form of cowardice. And moreover, it's precisely what our worst enemies would want for us to do to be so overwhelmed, so blackpilled by nihilism and fatalism that we cease to act. And that by ceasing to act, we cede the ground to those who are looking forward to the chaos and taking advantage of it when it comes to fascists, when it comes to maintaining the status quo, which very much benefits the oligarchy, the imperialists, the elite, the world over.

And it's a betrayal to be taken over by fatalism and nihilism is a betrayal of every other human being on this planet. We need all hands on deck. And so those two things, the lack of a choice and the fact that so much of fatalism and pessimism are just cowardice and reactionary misanthropy dressed up as some sort of rationalism, are at least two ways that we can start this conversation and things that I've been thinking about lately. And Nan, why don't we turn it over to you now? How do you reflect on this moment politically and environmentally, especially considering that you have children?

Yeah. Well, I mean, that's a great question. You know, the IPCC report just came out, and there's been a lot of discussion about how grim the picture looks ahead. And I think what's worse is, is that we don't really see a lot of signs of concerted and determined action by governments. And the left forces seem incapable at this point in countries like the United States, Canada, you know, other Western European countries and so forth,

where there may be popular consciousness about the significance of impending, well, or, you know, the climate crisis and catastrophe that is, upon us to really have influence over these governments because they're no longer really democratic in a full sense of that word. They may be formally democratic. There are elections, but it seems that we keep being denied, you know, governments that actually seem to care. So in light of this, obviously, it's quite reasonable to be pessimistic. And it just reminds me of, um, Gromshi, who, you know, Antonio Gramsci, the great Italian Marxist thinker, you know, had a little phrase that I'm sure many of our listeners have heard, which is pessimism of the intellect and

optimism of the will. So when you look with a cold, hard rationality at the circumstances, the conditions, the present status of, you know, left-wing forces, of course, you would have to be pessimistic because you need to have a realistic assessment of what you're facing. But we still have to maintain some sense of optimism that if there's the political will, if we will ourselves to continue to be engaged, as Brett said, which, you know, we have no choice but to, you know, that can balance it to some extent. But what I turn to, well, I just want to add one other thing that is a little dispiriting at this particular moment, which is fragmentation even in the media culture of the left.

I mean, there have been some very positive things that have developed in the last decade with alternative media. We always knew that corporate media was in the hands of capitalist forces. It was never going to portray and represent people's struggles and movements and tell us what's really happening and inform, you know, an active community of workers and citizens that want to change the world for the better. So people started developing online and through new technologies, through social media, the ability to inform one another to communicate and to set our own agenda. And what I think has started to happen is that we've had a kind of culture of political

celebrity, we've had, you know, polemic and factional sorts of fragmentation that is really undermining the value in some ways of the left media to be there for political education and to be an inspiration to activism. It seems that instead people are spending an awful lot of time in a kind of entertaining tit for tat and argumentation. And this is to my mind somewhat dispiriting because while we might enjoy the arguments and we do need to be rigorous on theoretical terms about the positions that we take, it's possible to make arguments and still be generous to one another and recognize that there are larger goals that is very easy for us to be distracted from. We're already kind of weak and disorganized, and if we participate and contribute further

by, you know, through egoistic or narcissistic, you know, attacks on one another, you know, we're doing the work of the right wing. You know, the right wing is delighted to see, you know, the disarray that I think, you know, we're facing. So, you know, I don't have good advice about how I can keep going, because I also have, you know, periods of feeling quite depressed about where we are. But what I look to in some ways as a historian and as someone involved in this project of guerrilla history is looking back at historical moments when you can see that people in the past faced even greater, you know, odds. Or, you know, I mentioned Antonio Gramsci. The man was

jailed for, you know, much of the career, many of the best writings that have informed us that we study today. He wrote in his prison notebooks, this voluminous, you know, set of notes that he took. You know, he's somebody who suffered under fascist, you know, fascist governance in Italy. but he maintained his hope for the future and tried to contribute to it as best he could. So I think looking at historical episodes, moments, seeing that, you know, if we feel isolated, we're part of a longer historical process and a legacy of struggle that's keeping, you know, the human spirit alive and engaged for the future. And that's all in some ways we can do.

So I'm hopeful that in some ways, perhaps guerrilla history provides a little bit of inspiration and education that can help people through what are clearly very dark times. I guess where I'm coming from this from is, as we've been saying, it's very easy to get pessimistic about where we are right now. And as the youngest person on the show, I'm 26, the impending climate catastrophe is very worrying. I know that this is something I'm going to have to live with the rest of my life. Even if we take incredible mitigation strategies right now, a lot of the harm that we've already done is irreparable. We can avoid, if we take dramatic measures, the most calamitous scenarios that are being mapped out by some of these organizations that are doing climate models.

But much of the damage that's been done is already locked in stone. And I'm going to have to live with that for the rest of my life. So it's very easy to become pessimistic about things like the climate. It's also very easy to be pessimistic about politics, more generally, being from the United States originally. We look at the political situation of the country. And every once in a while we get a representative or a senator who seems like to be a they might be rolling the ball in the right direction. You know, they're not where I want them,

certainly. But once in a while, it seems like there's going to be a representative who might be going in the right direction. But in the House of Representatives, 435 members. There's 100 members in the Senate. Even if you have one person who might be right on a particular topic, the vast majority of the forces of capital that are represented within the legislative body are going to completely snowball all them so that even their voice is being hidden. And we know that the media also plays a role in this. Adnan, you just pointed that out. The corporate media is not going to allow those dissenting opinions to be heard by the mass populace because who knows, some of them might be popular. So being from a place originally like the United States where we know that as the hegemonic

power, as things stand, you know, who knows how long that's going to go on for, but as the hegemonic powers, things stand, as the leading imperialist country, in the world, in order to create a better world, we have to change the United States. It only does so much to have national liberation in, you know, this country or that country. It only does so much for a socialist government to take power in this country or that country, these periphery countries. Until you have dramatic change in the imperial core, particularly in places like the United States, you're not going to solve the global problem because the United States is driving those

problems, both in terms of emissions from the United States, right, you know, if we're talking about the environment, or ensuring that we don't have a left-wing movement that sweeps up through many countries globally. The United States stands in opposition to those exact movements that we need to come in power globally to prevent the kind of catastrophes that are coming barreling down at us. So it's very easy to be pessimistic, incredibly easy. But if we're addressing the question of how do we stay optimistic, there are some things that we can look at. I always like to look at some previous movements where things looked absolutely hopeless. And this is kind of, I think you were alluding to this, if none,

at least a little bit. Lenin, for example, said that there are decades where nothing happens and then there are weeks where decades happen. Currently, we're in a political, moment where it seems like very little is happening. You know, we have this representative come into power. A, they're better than the person that they replace. But really, in the grand scheme of things, is anything happening politically in the United States? I would argue no.

And again, this is, you could say this for almost every country, but let's focus on the United States just because of the overwhelming sway that they have on the global stage. It seems like nothing is happening. And if we're entirely focused on this representative or that senator or this person who's running for president, we're going to be stuck in this rut where nothing really changes. We need to understand that in order to get to these changes that we know we need and we need soon, we need this dramatic rupture where we see decades happen in a period of weeks. Lenin was leading this relatively small band of people.

against a dynasty that had been in place in Russia for a very long time and was immensely wealthy, whereas most of the people in Russia were incredibly poor, illiterate, starving, overworked. And yet what happened? You know, it looked for the longest time that this movement was going to do nothing, but eventually they succeeded. Or let's look at Ho Chi Minh. Ho Chi Minh was fighting for Vietnamese national liberation against the French originally, right? Right. And things looked pretty, not very good. I mean, if you looked at what the French were able to bring to the table militarily and economically versus what the Vietnamese had, it looked kind of helpless. That's why Ho Chi men literally wrote to the United States asking for help in their national liberation struggle back in 54-ish, saying things like Abraham Lincoln said this and this would support national liberation. Come on, United States. This is in your DNA. And the United States says, our DNA is really. in upholding the imperialist order.

And only at that point did Hocheeman understand the United States was not a friend. It was not going to be a friend. It was never going to be a friend of a national liberation, anti-imperialist struggle in Southeast Asia. So when he realized that, he decided he was going to take on the United States too. Now you're looking at Vietnam against the French and then the United States. But what happened? Hocheeman was victorious. You know, the Vietnamese were victorious in their national liberation.

Let's look at Cuba. Cuba, this tiny nation, 11 million people, very poor, was controlled by it with an iron fist, by a military dictatorship, propped up by the United States. It had all kinds of money flowing in and out by the mafia from the United States. The United States government was propping up the government there. Fidel, Raul, Shea, Camios, Cuyoos, they came in. they were successful. But then, ever since then, the United States has been trying to crush Cuba. It looks like a hopeless situation, right? You have the United States completely strangling this small

poor country, and those people can persist. Those people can persevere despite the overwhelming situation that's leveled against them. And then let's look at Gramsci again, as you mentioned, Adnan. Gramsci was in prison for a decade writing his greatest works. He was literally seeing his own teeth rot out of his face while he was writing his prison notebooks, but yet he still had the optimism of the will. He was still able to persevere. And if he can persevere through watching his own teeth fall out of his face while he's locked in a fascist prison, if Ho Chi Minh can persevere against the French and the United States, if the people of Cuba can persevere

against an economic blockade that's been going on illegally for decades, if Lenin can overturn the royal family of Russia, we can persist, we can fight against the imperialist order that we're living in, we can fight against the impending climate catastrophe, and we must. That's how I stay motivated.

I look at these moments from history where things look helpless, and they persevered and they won. Okay, Brandt over. Brett, why don't I turn things back over to you? Where do you want to go with this? Yeah, no, I love all of that. And I think it's really important to remember that quote from Lennon about decades happening

within weeks is always at the front of my mind. A book I read recently is Man's Search for Meaning by Victor Frankel, who is literally in the concentration camps, watching everybody around him die, barely made it out and comes out and has this contribution to humanity through his work after the fact. So it ain't over till it's over. And I think that's that's really important. Another thing that does give me hope in this last IPCC report has shown us this, there has been some actions taken. It's not fast enough. It's not nearly enough, but the modeling has gotten better and sufficient amount of actions have been taken to at least

say that the most, the worst case scenario from the last IPCC report is off the table. That's a little glimmer, a little glimmer of something like hope and optimism to have at least the worst case scenario chopped off the end of that possibility spectrum. But what's going to happen is we're not going to get the best case scenario, i.e. keeping it below 1.5, and we're not going to get the worst case scenario, i.e. some sort of apocalyptic four degree plus by the end of the century scenario. What's going to happen as with so many human endeavors is we're going to be somewhere in the middle. Our job is to fight as hard as we fucking can to move that closer to the best case trajectory and to keep it under two degrees of warming. But even at that level, these thresholds

of 1.5 or 2 degrees of warming, these are ultimately arbitrary. They're nice, you know, full numbers that we can say, let's try to keep it below this. But every 0.1 degree of warming that we prevent is a victory. And not only, it's not just the left, project, right? And this also gives me a little bit of hope if we're talking about some general optimism. Rich people don't want to live on a burning planet, you know, politicians don't want to live on a burning planet. There is a loud and vocal minority of people, especially on the far right, that already have and will continue to retreat into conspiratorial and alternative realities where this isn't happening or if it is, it's the fault of insert enemy here. That's going to

happen. But most people do not deny reality. And specifically young people coming up, Henry, you mentioned that you're 26. I'm 32. I have two children. It was their first day of first grade and seventh grade today, respectively. I have another child on the way. I have multiple nieces and nephews. Already the older kids are aware that this is happening. And they're not going to sit back and let their futures be destroyed. They don't have the luxury like some Fox News boomer does to retreat into a false. reality of fever dreams and conspiratorial thinking. And so as these young people come up, there's going to be an increasing amount of pressure. As we see the impacts of climate change,

there's going to be an increasing amount of pressure. Just over the last year, a recent polling from Gallup has showed that for the first time, climate change has broken into the top three issues that Americans care about because they're looking at the wildfires. They're looking at the heat waves, they're looking at the droughts, and they're saying, this impacts me personally. The only other, interestingly, the only other issue that was above climate change in the recent Gallup poll was healthcare. These are two winning issues that the left has championed for years and years and years and will continue to champion going forward. Another little layer of optimism, and I say this just to fight against the worst aspects of black pill nihilism, is that we've done a lot

of irreparable damage without a doubt. But nature is also. astoundingly resilient, if given half a chance, it will bounce back. We have done things like tackled the ozone problem, which was, you know, turning out to be an existential crisis decades ago. We've stopped the problem and even reversed it in some respects. There have been species that are going extinct almost every day, but there have been species that have been brought back from the brink by conscious human intervention and the stopping of bad human actions. That's going to continue. farming. This is a core of any human civilization. Farms all over the world realize that they're hyper-exploitative, soil depleting, you know, spray fertilizer on everything, way of agriculture is

an already dead form and that regenerative forms of agriculture are absolutely necessary and nature is forcing us to look at those ways of doing things. So all of these things are going to continue to develop and intensify alongside the negative aspects. Now, when you go on 24-hour news or you go to the headlines, you're going to see horror stories till the day you die. That's true. And even if we stopped all carbon emissions today, as Henry alluded to, we have another 20 or 30 years of warming baked into the system already. So it's not going to be pretty. But at the same time, sometimes focusing on those headlines, which are sensationalists and get clicks, can take away from having a balanced perspective of all the other developments that are happening

alongside those negative ones. And so it's not going to be the best case scenario, but it's also not going to be the worst case scenario. It's not going to be the end of humanity as we know it. It's not going to be extinction, but it is going to be a radical transformation. Will this radical transformation end in a better, more equitable, more sustainable planet for all living beings? Or will that radical transformation be something like sending humanity back a couple

centuries? That's the fight. Those are the stakes. That's what's on the line here. And to look at that and to give up. to say I don't have anything to do, I'm not going to participate in trying to make a better world. That's fundamentally cowardice, even despite the fact that we all have pessimism and we all struggle with cynicism. We all struggle with depression and anxiety. I have eco-depression. I have

eco-anxiety. I'm grieving for the loss of the biosphere. I break out in tears randomly throughout the day in the face of what's happening globally. But that should just provoke me to continue to do everything I can to push the envelope in the other direction, not deactivate me. We can't let any of this deactivate us. And that's essential. You know, this is such an important conversation because we're all dealing with this. I'm so glad that you had a couple of episodes of Rev Left to talk with people about it and have introduced this because, you know, I found it very helpful, to be honest. to hear how others are feeling, you know, we're often isolated and we're just talking about the issues, but, you know, behind that, it isn't easy to always keep going and finding the energy

in the face of, you know, the grim reality we're dealing with. So I find actually also just being able to talk honestly about these struggles that we have internally also, how to stay motivated, how to stay engaged. Obviously, what we really need to, I mean, and I actually, what I come down to is feeling on some level that I just wouldn't be able to live without the struggle. You know, like, could you just shut down and say, well, look, I, you know, I'm going to just deal with the material struggles in my life and I'm not going to engage and try and educate and try and put political pressure or organize. I, you know, maybe everybody's different, but I feel like anybody with a conscience, with a sense of morality and ethical principles, which everybody on the

left should be coming to this work and to those positions from a place of those kinds of principles, of caring, of empathy for others, of a sense of justice, you can't really shut that down. You may be pessimistic and you may turn away for periods. Sometimes you may need rest from the intensity. It's possible to burn out. We cannot be so obsessed that we're unhealthy and we aren't balanced and that we burn out and then are useless for the future struggle. Sometimes you need those breaks. That's understandable. But to really actually shut off your ethical kind of conscience and to just allow despair to turn you to disengagement in a fundamental way, I think that's actually impossible for people of conscience. So you can't really live without

this struggle. The real thing is how do we engage in it in ways that preserve our energy and don't burn us out? And, you know, what are the sources of rejuvenation? We need to be aware of those things, I think. Everybody needs to be aware of those things. I mean, for me, and I think maybe, you know, Brett, you might have a lot to say on this as well as obviously having some sense of a spiritual orientation that aligns your emotional kind of inner life with your politics is important. And it's something, of course, that the left isn't always that comfortable discussing because we don't want to mystify. You know, we're engaging in changing reality, not just, you know, the imaginations of our own, you know,

condition or creation. But you have to have something, it seems, that is an outlet for rejuvenating your spirit, your sense of optimism, your energy and willingness to engage. And I think for many people, it's also something very social, is having meaningful emotional connections with people that you're engaged in in struggle with, doing things together, involving in projects locally where you can cooperate and collaborate directly. I know it's been very difficult during the pandemic, but as things open up, we hope that there will be more community-based activity,

that people can be engaged with one another. We need to, when we come back into our social worlds and in our communities, be carrying over these ideas because there are a lot of opportunities right now for people who are going to be engaged and active in your local community. And that's maybe a place where you can also see positive changes and developments. We know that, of course, this situation requires grander, large-scale transformation. But in terms of keeping us involved and engaged and looking toward a livable future for

ourselves and for future generations, coming together and working in local projects on small things in your civic communities, you know, parks, mutual aid, you know, these kinds of support systems and engaging with other people, I find it's also very therapeutic. So I've been involved with some of these things in my local community this summer, and that's really sustaining. And for other people, it is also maybe yoga or, you know, other kinds of disciplines for meditation and things where you can kind of re-senter yourself, recover, and then re-engage. These, I think, are really important to keep us sustained over the longer term, because it's going to be a long struggle. That's something we can all agree on.

I'll just come in and say briefly that I agree with everything that you're saying, Adnan, that having some sort of spiritual background could be useful, and that, really engaging in a community is important. I myself don't have that kind of spiritual grounding, but I certainly am engaged within community, community building community activities. The pandemic has made it hard, as you mentioned, but previously I was engaged in many struggles in my community,

in different ways that you would construct community. There was different communities that I was involved in. But one thing that also most, motivates me is beyond the fact that I know that it is possible for us to break out of the seemingly impossible death spiral of capitalism, imperialism, and climate change. I know that it is possible based on historical examples, like some of the ones that I laid out through some theoretical examples. Like, for example, I believe it's in chapter 10 of capital. Marx writes that the tendency of the capitalist class is to try to increase the number of working hours

to the point where they're going to extract the most amount of surplus value from the workers is possible. It's through workers' struggles that we actually have a reduction in the working hours over the day, which has been borne out through history. We look at the data. Yeah, I see Adnan says yes to chapter 10. Okay, there we go. As these workers struggles go on, and we have empirical data of this, workers' struggles

and the resulting legislation as a result of some of these workers' struggles are what reduce the amount of working hours in the day. And then, of course, you know, we have the conversation about relative surplus value and how that plays into this, and we're going to leave that aside for now. The point is, is that by struggling, we can make change, but something that also motivates me. And it's probably not the best thing to have as a motivating factor. I'll be interested to see what you have to say about this, both of you, but is anger. Because I see the injustices in society.

And I understand the injustices that are taking place by, for example, corporations who are selling our future. in order to make profit in the short term by, you know, donating to candidates who are going to cut environmental regulations, for example, just a very, very obvious example, something that happens every single election cycle. The companies that produce most of the environmentally hazardous, dangerous, degrading chemicals, they always find candidates who are going to cut any sort of regulations that would inhibit them from extracting the most amount of profit possible from their production processes and they put the money to them. They know that they're harming the environment. They know that

people like me and like your children, Brett's children, they know that we are the ones who are going to bear the cost of this. It's just an externality to them, something that they don't even have to think about. And that makes me angry because they know. They know. And they know. Same thing with the cigarette companies. They knew that the cigarettes were causing lung cancer. And they hid that intentionally in order to keep making the profit. These things make me angry. Imperialism makes me angry.

When I see the U.S. and France involved in West Africa, just look at what's been happening in Mali recently. They've had coup after coup after coup, literally coups within coups, led by the same people cooing themselves in order to, you know, lock down more power? No, I'm serious. I see, you know, Adnan, you're laughing, but this is literally what's happening. There's a coup. Guy comes into power. Didn't, he realized he didn't have enough power, so he leads another coup. Well, he's already in power in order to consolidate power. I mean, it's crazy. And the conditions for that

are set up by American and French imperialism in West Africa, both within Mali itself, as well as the surrounding countries, Libya being a very obvious example of this. These things make me angry, and that's what motivates me to continue to fight against it, because one, I know that change is possible, right? So that's kind of the optimistic side of things. But then I also have this pent up rage that there are people that are intentionally causing harm to people that they see as less worthy of humanity than themselves for their own benefit. And that anger is something that drives me. And I know that that's probably not the best motivation, but But, you know, it's something that drives me.

I don't know if either of you have anything that you want to say about that. Because I know that, you know, you're not supposed to act as a result of anger. You get told that ever since you're, you know, two years old or whatever. But that's something that has always been a driving force behind my activism and whatnot. The things that make me angry are the things that I speak out about. Yeah, I mean, I think that's an unavoidable part of having a conscience in a world that's so fundamentally unjust. and anger, I mean, I feel violent rage.

I feel like disgusting feelings of like murderous revenge when I look, even today at like politicians who want to dance around the subject or say we don't know enough or just when I think about every single right winger I've ever debated with for the last 15 years who, you know, all the way through were climate denialists until it's just undeniable. And then they shifted a little bit. well maybe humans aren't causing it and then that's proven to be false like well there's nothing we can really do i mean these people are in every sense of the word fucking evil and there's two types of climate denialists there are the cynical scumbag lying snakes of exon and republican politicians who know better and then spend their money time and energy muddying the water so they can continue to extract as much profit out of this situation as possible i mean those people in any just society deserve to be publicly executed

in my humble opinion. And then they're the useful idiots, the people who, because of their already pre-existing ideological commitments, maybe just don't really know and are wanting deep down ideologically to, I mean, they don't really want to challenge capitalism anyway.

And so, you know, it's a nice narrative to take on board and their side saying it. And so they really, they're not really lying, but they're sort of like the useful idiots of the snakes at the top of the hierarchy that are lying.

Those people I have, no patience for but less violent rage toward but at the same time i realize the limitations of those feelings of rage and and revenge and hatred that i have in small order they're important motivators um as you say i'm enraged in the face of any injustice but then i try to balance that with a love of all the people that are innocent that you know i want to be good in the world that are that are being hurt by these very people. And that love, hate balance, I think is an interesting dichotomy to play with. You don't want to get burned up in nothing but hate such that you lose your ability to love and see the other side of the people you're fighting for, the future of humanity that you want to

live good, healthy lives. And so whenever I'm feeling too burnt up with that rage, I try to counterbalance it with love and gratitude for the things in my life and the people in the world that I do care about. And I think if you can maintain that balance, that's an important motivator on both ends, but you don't get too tilted into either naivete, you know, or into a sort of rudderless rage that doesn't do much for anybody except kind of hurt you in the process, because feeling rage and feelings of needing to get revenge actually eats you up from the inside. They're not pleasant emotions. So you don't want them to get too out of control. But I would say importantly before I hand it off to Adnan, and I have plenty of other things to

say, but on this one point, it's essentially crucial that we don't let our compassion die. There is such a thing as compassion fatigue. There is such a thing as seeing so much tragedy and unnecessary suffering that you sort of get burnt out on your ability to feel compassion at all. That's a natural process. There's only so much that that emotion can take. And that's where I think either conscious spiritual practices that consciously cultivate

compassion can come in or getting embedded in your community such that you see day to day the people's lives that depend on you making a better world and that can generate a compassion as well. So don't let this system destroy your empathy and compassion because that's honestly what it seeks to do in so many ways. The nihilism, the hyper-misanthropy we see sometimes, humans are cancer, fuck them. That is your compassion being slaughtered by the powers that be that want to maintain the status quo. revolutionary to maintain radical love and compassion in the face of that. And then one more thing I just wanted to say about plus the spiritual stuff and the anger motivation

is I find it very helpful to spend as much time as you possibly can in nature. Alone. Go on walks and it doesn't have to be crazy. You don't have to go like on seven day camps. Go go out to a lake. Go kayaking. Walk through the woods. Marvel at the beauty of the natural world and embed that love deep into your soul. And you won't ever have a question of whether or not you want to fight for it. It is just so part and parcel with who you are at a certain point that defending it is as natural as sleeping and eating. And in that sense, we become the earth fighting for itself. We're not separate from this thing.

When we seek to protect the biodiversity of the planet, we bubble up out of the planet. We are the planet fighting for itself, seeking to heal itself. and that in and of a self can be a very powerful motivator and hedge against the worst of burnout. Yeah, I want to echo everything that you said, and I just want to clarify that. My anger is because of my love and empathy for my fellow man. It's not completely separate from that. Like, I'm not angry for the sake of being angry. It's because I love my comrades, my community.

It's because I feel empathy for the people to have injustices against them. that I feel this rage. And I'm just going to say the obligatory Che Guevar quote. If you tremble with indignation at every injustice, then you are a comrade of mine. That's really the tact that I try to take here. Now, Adnan, I'm going to turn this over to you now, but I'm actually going to cut the episode right here so that this part will be going out on our general feed. So if you're hearing this at the end of the general feed to hear the rest of the conversation,

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