Combating hopelessness

[Eivets Rednow]

I’ve had a bit of a dip in my combatting of hopelessness. I certainly don’t feel hopeless, but I have lost the exhilarating high that I had a couple of months ago. This is probably healthy, as it’s not really sustainable to have such a strong force of energy propelling you forward into action in a constant way. You’ve got to land sometime. Otherwise you get lost in space.

It’s nice to have experienced the high. I’d say I’m at some kind of medium level now. Certainly not a low. I’ve got a plan, and I’m trying to logically work towards it. I do worry that I keep being tempted to just fuck everything up. But that was probably a temporary emotional shock as I adjusted to a necessary crash. Normally, I’m able to at least attempt to play the game well. Hopefully I can get back to that soon while also being happy.

 

[hitmouse]

New Grace Blakeley thing:

What Can We Do?

A newsletter about how to fight individualism and build collective power

wcwd.substack.com

This is also on my to-read list:

Burnout

In the struggle for a better world, setbacks are inevitable. Defeat can feel overwhelming at times, but it has to be endured. How then do the people on the front line keep going? To answer that question, Hannah Proctor draws on historical resources to find out how revolutionaries and activists...

www.versobooks.com

 

[CH1]

Maye I shouldn't be on here. Some years back I followed this thread because I assumed it was sort of mental health/depression oriented - myself being diagnosed as Bipolar/Borderline PD and all that. Personally I have taken the (lithium) tablets for 20 odd years and before that had periods on other so-called mood stabilising preparations - carbamazepine and sodim valproate in conjunction with various anti depressants which did not work very well.

I can see that many people on here would say "That's not my problem" - or even "That's not your problem - you shoud be combatting Neo Liberalism"

Be that as it may, one of my hobbies is collecting books and texts about topics of interest.
I had never heard of Byung-Chul Han before today. The Goethe Society have the Burnout Society free online:

https://ia804705.us.archive.org/13/items/byung-chul-han-the-burnout-society-2015-stanford-briefs-libgen.lc/Byung-Chul%20Han%20-%20The%20Burnout%20Society%20%282015%2C%20Stanford%20Briefs%29%20-%20libgen.lc.pdf

I found this quote interesting (page 11)
The complaint of the depressive individual, “Nothing is possible,” can only occur in a society that thinks, “Nothing is impossible.”
No-longer-being-able-to-be-able leads to destructive self-reproach and auto-aggression.

I must watch the video when "The Cunning Little Vixen" has finished on Radio 3.

 

[BigMoaner]

Maye I shouldn't be on here. Some years back I followed this thread because I assumed it was sort of mental health/depression oriented - myself being diagnosed as Bipolar/Borderline PD and all that. Personally I have taken the (lithium) tablets for 20 odd years and before that had periods on other so-called mood stabilising preparations - carbamazepine and sodim valproate in conjunction with various anti depressants which did not work very well.

I can see that many people on here would say "That's not my problem" - or even "That's not your problem - you shoud be combatting Neo Liberalism"

Be that as it may, one of my hobbies is collecting books and texts about topics of interest.
I had never heard of Byung-Chul Han before today. The Goethe Society have the Burnout Society free online:

https://ia804705.us.archive.org/13/items/byung-chul-han-the-burnout-society-2015-stanford-briefs-libgen.lc/Byung-Chul%20Han%20-%20The%20Burnout%20Society%20%282015%2C%20Stanford%20Briefs%29%20-%20libgen.lc.pdf

I found this quote interesting (page 11)
The complaint of the depressive individual, “Nothing is possible,” can only occur in a society that thinks, “Nothing is impossible.”
No-longer-being-able-to-be-able leads to destructive self-reproach and auto-aggression.

I must watch the video when "The Cunning Little Vixen" has finished on Radio 3.

I'll just say lastly on BCH, he's the real deal. This is not a "logical" philosopher who will give you lots of facts and logical argument. "Theory casts patterns on the nature of things". His books are purposefully hyperbolic.He wants to take the modern neoliberal "achievement subject", take his entirely modern, entirely constructed painful psychic modern internal narrative and evaporate it into new realms beyond the logic of modern capitalism. He is not saying anything original, but he is using people like Heidegger for this, and Buddhism - not the "feel calm/good" popular western buddhism you see in waterstones, but some of the weirdest metaphysics possible. He's written a dozen or so 100 page books and he covers so much of modern life and so much of suffering. In a long line of post modern theorists/philosophers who approach philosopher as an art really, a form of poetry, but also on occasional liberatory. I am very rarely fan boy about anyone, but i am him. He's changing my psyche every time i read him. Another wya i would describe him is he is a philosopher of Atomisation, per excellance. He's writing about the very real structures of atomisation, largely caused by capitalism and especially tech capitalism.

The Internet’s New Favorite Philosopher

Byung-Chul Han, in treatises such as “The Burnout Society” and his latest, “The Crisis of Narration,” diagnoses the frenetic aimlessness of the digital age.

www.newyorker.com