Perhaps it is melodramatic to regard our American, let alone global, status quo as ‘dystopic’. Yes, it seems that violence, enmity, and militarized aggression are reaching quotidian heights unseen since the commencement of the Iraq War. Ukraine threatens to metastasize into a further stage of probing malignancy, President Putin cannot seem to recall the benefits of rapprochement and general sanity, IS dares President Abe to usher in a new era of Japanese militarism, Boko Haram refuses to subside, North Korean political prisoner camps continue to bulge, and of course the perennial Syrian Civil War. Through little more than their mention and concomitant shaping of a dire image, these symptoms of humanity portend little hope for the resurgence of peace in the coming months, even years.
From the origins of Orwell to the imagination of P.D. James and Slajov Žižek, an incarceration of ‘dystopia’ seems apropos if not narrow-minded: take North Korea and it’s dearth of purview for the scale of atrocities—there are most likely many unknown unknowns at this juncture that could redefine the suffering of this period. Even the ongoing experiment of the Eurozone is seeing fractures in the logistics of ideology with the political triumph of Syriza and the consequently unsettling Podemos rally in Spain. Domestically, the Republican congress is a regretful polemic to President Obama’s progressive initiatives, most recently of which his proposed budget plan would curb overseas corporate tax loopholes and seek to bolster infrastructure maintenance. I cannot conceive of why such legislation should not be enacted; then again, thankfully, despite my reflexive hypocrisy, I am no politician.
Hope is a distinctly irrational pathology. To believe in the potential for positive creation and reformation in the face of reactive conservatism borders on the Sisyphean. Herein we must practice faith in Hope because to make sense of the world otherwise lends itself to a zeal compulsive enough to reify the tragic spectrum of reductio ad absurdums: from the nihilistic jingoism of contemporary Russia to the solipsistic brutality of Kim Jong-un’s emaciated North Korea, those with privileged foresight and influence must abandon the king-of-the-hill vanity of egocentrism. If the legacy of Aristotle is worth anything, then somewhere between Russia and North Korea we must endeavor to maintain a Mean of actionable morality: please, now, let us discuss, let her share, let him share, let us uncover consensus. I cannot claim to be an ethicist, in fact I consider myself something of the opposite, an addict: my compulsions necessitate theoretical calisthenics when not encumbered with sweaty, uncut hedonism. However it is from this vantage point, in the nadir of the valley, boulder in front of me, that I choose to practice faith in Hope, to smile as my rocky burden bursts the blisters anew.
Hence our portmanteau. May we pause with Camus: “Happiness and the absurd are two sons of the same earth.” Likewise, the dystopia compounded between nihilism and solipsism is as much a part of our indomitable human spirit as is the hope we can derive from, thank goodness, sources more myriad than whatever our conception of them may be. If we thusly dispose ourselves before our sensory construction of Is, Action, and Reaction—and all the world’s great religions will propagate the following as much—then we must be compelled towards compassion. We must thrive in creation. Because, as our sacrosanct Myth of Sisyphus decrees unto us, “The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”
Two of those prominentIy mired in this struggle I find to be particularly iconic beacons. Jon Stewart begins almost every discussion of contemporary liberalism, won partly through traversing sheer continents worth of unadulterated shit stamped “Fox News” and transmogrifying that content into something watchable; for that feat alone, I believe he knows happiness, however fleeting it may be. And that other great wit, Luz of Charlie Hebdo, I believe he too can find happiness again, hopefully in his cathartic grief, continued work, and the consumption of all the good in the world that is created as a direct result of his very existence. I credit these voices in no small part as to why I very consciously choose to believe in happiness; every moment that I consume some fresh, sanguine suffering of our shared dyshopia I choose to believe. To believe in Hope, in Humanity, and in doing so I find that good works are more likely not only to be created, but to also be encountered. In choosing not to believe, we greatly diminish the potential for positivity, letting malice and sadness rampage unchecked, as they will exist and propagate regardless of our beliefs. Churned about the vicious cycle, belief learns to forgive the Hate side of the coin, the Thanatos side, which, in time and with proper devotion, inverts to reveal Eros, Love. Let some stranger show love to the would-be extremist, who may just yet choose to forego his hate and focus instead on anything, anything else. If you pray for the prey, you must just as sincerely pray for the coyotes. We are all animals, after all.
Dystopia+Hope=dyshopia. It is my hope that this word may inspire some discussion of the Human Question: of how best to move forward with our acute affliction. For even the tiniest hope can nurture any seedling into a Totoro-esque majesty. I am thankful that there is violence, mistrust, and hate because by that same token there exist the opportunities to create peace, trust, and love.
dyshopia 