Hope: Beyond Self-Nihilism

"There's something inside, that they can't get to, that they can't touch... Hope."

The following essay is Harvey Kropotkin’s contribution to Nevermore’s Against the Rising Tide of Nihilism series.

From The Shawshank Redemption (1994):

Andy Dufresne: That’s the beauty of music. They can’t get that from you… Haven’t you ever felt that way about music?

Red: I played a mean harmonica as a younger man. Lost interest in it though. Didn’t make much sense in here.

Andy Dufresne: Here’s where it makes the most sense. You need it so you don’t forget.

Red: Forget?

Andy Dufresne: Forget that… there are places in this world that aren’t made out of stone. That there’s something inside… that they can’t get to, that they can’t touch. That’s yours.

Red: What’re you talking about?

Andy Dufresne: Hope.

I got into radical politics because every single system and relationship I encountered, even as a child, seemed completely foreign and upside down. Why would people actively (or passively) harm their children? Why do siblings fight so harshly for control of the limited attention they are afforded by their parents, who are just trying to survive, in a world where they are overstimulated and poisoned by every institution with which they interact?

Why would people force other people to do things? Why did I watch my mother cry after work because of the inhumane treatment by her bosses? She was my mother! She literally did all the right things and they still treated her like shit! Why did they treat her differently because she was a strong woman? It didn’t make sense. It still doesn’t, even though I understand why now.

Why did the entire education system force me to sit and stare and obey? Why was every single criminal charge in the state penal code in our agenda books we were given in school at the front of the book? Why were children being subjected to lawyer-ese that early, and unpaid for the privilege?

When I went to church one time with my uncle, I was amazed at so many people just reading these weird hymns they all somehow knew (clearly, I was not raised Catholic), as I tried to occupy myself. I see now maybe I could have gotten something out of the Bible if it was presented to me as something to be engaged with, not obeyed. Now I’m completely open to reading and thinking about the Bible. It’s weird for me to even type that, but it’s true.

I spent 20 years completely disembodying myself, but I did make it out alive, barely at times. Self-destruction, rage, pain, suffering, ruined relationships, conflict, more suffering, and for what? Some good lyrics and riffs, for sure, and a lot of friends made along the way, but all culture is fleeting—fun and awesome to produce, but fleeting, despite the meaning therein. All I really ever wanted was peace for myself and others, and right relationships with other people.

Why did I agitate, even to the detriment of my closest relationships? Agitate in the sociopolitical sense but also, just general agitation without purpose in all aspects of my life. Everything became a chore. Feeding myself decent food. Wearing clean clothes. Cleaning my living spaces. Wanting to be alive was exhausting and pointless. I would revel in working a ton of hours, then binge and purge as if I was bulimic, just with drug abuse and booze. I played in the fastest hardcore bands in the city, and I raged, and people dug it. I was almost in the 27 club without any of the money or notoriety or life insurance policies (suicide can pay!).

All of that energy just kept the pain and suffering going, and going, and finally once I met my partner, about a year in when things were getting real, I realized I was so close to completely going off the rails, I had to do something. I took my suffering and rage and inflicted on other people with my judgments, ideological purity, ignorance, narcissism, and stupidity. That is not peace. That is nihilism.

But I didn’t see that—it was blocked. There was a freedom blockage, a psychological impasse, a wall of pain. It was opaque, although over time, the opaqueness became more transparent—not in the Byung-Chul Han sense of transparency as domination, but as clarity, like when light hits a prism and the illusion, the fog lifts. There was a fog, a smokescreen, and social media almost got me. The system almost won the psyop. I was “crazy, but not insane” as Warzone once put it.

I was this close to becoming part of the machine. I almost became the very thing I swore to destroy. All because in my heart, I just wanted to help people. Violence does not help people. It can only destroy. It makes me sick to my stomach to think about harming other people and the harm I have inflicted on others in the past, knowingly and unknowingly. It makes me sick that I have physically harmed people—even if I had to to survive in that moment. I have experienced schadenfreude about murder. What was I thinking? How does that make me any different than the monsters I despise? Why am I like this?! Are my friends monsters too? What the fuck are we doing?! It’s so painful to reflect on, especially when you’re not pickled in booze and drugs and trash food to distract you from the truth.

I was so ashamed, and so lost. I have been holding onto this for a really long time; I just didn’t realize what was wrong. I wanted to kill myself. (I’ve never written that down in such a direct way, ever, kind of hard to chew on still.) I legitimately wanted to be dead. We’re all just trying to survive and this is what the system does to us if we let it.

In 2020, my brain blew up, along with everyone else’s. I have not been the same since, and it’s been kind of rough. So rough I was ready to fight, fight, fight as I always have. Fight is a trauma response and it’s all I knew how to do in my non-work life. But at work, in the system, in the illusory world of bullshit, as a student, citizen, worker, I was, on paper, the ideal human capital, information chattel. Perfectly attuned to run the machines and pull the levers of death to rain bombs on children. Although, my role was more of the “therapeutic” support of the death-machine rather than a direct lever-puller.

I knew how to navigate the systems to optimize outcomes that others chose for me. I was successful in the neoliberal achievement society, but I didn’t take care of myself. I let the hatred get to me. Everyone who did not “sacrifice” (such a funny word in retrospect) was my enemy. I used the 20^th century leftist agendas on top of a 21^st century problem. I used economic theory and bureaucracy as a shortcut to spiritual freedom. I used systems to dismantle systems! What?! That doesn’t make any sense!

I betrayed my values. After 5 years of that, I had a full-fledged meltdown a few months ago. No psychiatric treatment or anything one might call conventional mental health “treatment,” but definitely a really, really weird time in my life. It was like this out-of-body experience where I felt like I was vomiting every single day, and many days, I felt nauseous all day, every day. I was deeply sick in the mind. The spiritual rot was deep, like a sick old oak, just limping along until Saruman sets me on fire to power the machines.

I was not being real. That’s why I felt like vomiting every day. I had betrayed my own values, and here’s the kicker: I had no one to blame but myself. I wanted to be dead. Eventually, I spoke to my friend WD James, who had been plugging away, writing really cool stuff online which I wasn’t even paying attention to. Someone who is writing cool stuff! That is literally my favorite thing in the world. I love reading and writing more than anything. I wanted to be a writer! That was my dream as a child! I used to have dreams beyond this!

I was so busy with all my neoliberal capitalist selfish fucking bullshit that I didn’t even engage with this amazing publication and all of this stuff that is literally what I most value. I was so exhausted from “performing” at work and not even living my own life that my relationship was falling apart. I stopped writing riffs. I stopped wanting to play guitar. I stopped doing the things that once gave me lifeforce to survive this world. I could have lost everything if I kept going down that path. I would have given everything to the machine, and sold out my values.

I was literally the system’s clown. I was letting them win. I am too stubborn to let them win. I am too suspicious of bureaucracies, who will always fuck everything up. I am too stubborn to lay down for anyone.

Never again. I choose now. I am laying down my guns, unless I have to defend myself, and even then, I find the most disarming thing of all is peace and understanding. People generally will not want you dead if you are nice to them and try to do the right thing. There are psychopaths in positions of power, of course, which are never to be negotiated with–I do not negotiate with spiritual terrorists.

This world can be connected, relational, and full of love. I will still write hardcore punk songs because the energy has to go somewhere. But the fuel of hatred, the poison, the internalization of discipline and destruction perpetuated by the global state-capital apparatus… I can’t fix that alone through any of my actions. I choose to proselytize (again, it feels really, really weird for me to say verbs like that) to the people out there like me.

So that is why I am here, and what I want to share with others. I want them not to feel alone. I was so sad and hurt because I felt alone, but I was never alone. My friends were trying to shake me and help me but I wasn’t listening. I had gone down the wrong path, and committed philosophical suicide.

I just want to love people, and I was the only one getting in my way. That is why I constantly think about Antisect’s ”They (The Eternal Myth and Paradox)” because relationships are why we are on this planet:

We can reach new horizons of trust and respect
We can live hand in hand and let peace take effect
We can open our hearts to compassion and love
We can open the cage that imprisons the dove
We can open our minds to be alive and be free
We can take down our barriers and reveal the true we
There is not them and us
There’s only you and me.