Despair is a Sin for a Reason

The Only Way Out is Through, and You Gotta Build Through It

Welcome back, and thanks for reading! Today’s post is one of those arguments against a deleterious trend I see that I feel compelled to do every so often, such as the one from a bit ago against Right Wing Third Worldism. It is primarily for paid subscribers. As always, please tap the heart to “like” this article if you get something out of it, as that is how Substack knows to promote it! Listen to the audio version here:

[ADUIO] Despair Is a Sin for a Reason

I recently had the pleasure of appearing on Michael Ferris’s “Coffee and a Mike” podcast, and apparently managed to get a great many of his listeners angry by arguing that the tendency of much of the online right to act as if “collapse” is always on the horizon is ridiculous, unhealthy, and counterproductive.

Yes, much of what is going on right now is bad. Much is trending in the wrong direction. The South Africanization issue and the fact that diverse juries can’t be trusted to reach a just decision because of racial in-group preference are massively problematic, and put our lives and civilization at risk. The long-term fertility rate collapse we’re seeing all over the world will likely be a disaster, and things like a Chinese-originated orange blight wiping out the American citrus industry is infuriating…while also raising the specter of even more deleterious crop catastrophes in the future. There is much about which one could worry, and some about which it is probably worth worrying…so that a solution can be found and enacted.

That said, one’s response to such things matters a great deal. One must remember that despair is a sin for a reason. It is an outgrowth of faithlessness, and as such is toxic.

On one hand, there is, to use the internet parlance, the “blackpill”¹ response. This is despair incarnate, the decision to wallow in feelings of hopelessness and despair while doing nothing to try and prevent the outcome, work around it, or make one’s family better off despite it. “I want to fantasize about a collapse that confirms all of my recently developed and loosely held beliefs while doing nothing whatsoever to better myself or improve my position,” the thought seems to go. This comes up a lot with younger guys in the context of everything from home prices to DEI in the workplace. It’s a natural—though also indulgent and self-destructive—response to entrenched problems and obvious injustice.

The other response is to fight the dying of the light, and try not to get too held up on that which is unfortunate but currently too entrenched to solve. This response involves understanding the massive issues we face, along with the potentially existential nature of them, and then moving on from there and setting about fixing them or one’s personal situation rather than wallowing in a pit of despair.

I couldn’t help but think of that as Operation Hulk Smash Epic Fury has set Iran alight and led to much despair about President Trump online.

Were I president, would I have bombed Iran right now? Probably not. Keeping the teetering economy from falling over before midterms, not alienating the next generation of voters, and generally not getting dragged into some debacle abroad seem more important. Particularly, doing all that so that deportations can continue well into the future is critical, as deportations and remigration are what must happen if we are to avert The Death of the West.

But, as both John Carter and Librarian of Celaeno pointed out in their fantastic articles on the subject,² there is likely much about what is going on behind the scenes that led to the “special military operation” that we don’t know. More importantly, catastrophism is both uncalled for and entirely counterproductive.