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Doin' Stuff
Dec. 6th, 2009 06:42 pmI'm going to Copenhagen. I'm in London already, actually, stopped over at a friend's house en route, with another two-day stop planned in Amsterdam.
...And already, it is not turning out quite like I'd planned. My friend had to leave town at the last minute and hasn't actually been here to visit with, and plans for Amsterdam are starting to fall apart. So maybe it's a good thing I'm going in with low expectations for the climate conference/convergence itself?
Actually, reading up about the activist convergence that's planned, that is looking pretty damn awesome. Lots of really sound anarchist orgs have thrown themselves in to make the convergence pleasant and possible, with People's Kitchens and free sleeping spaces and that kind of thing. It's just the actions I don't have a lot of optimism about (nor, of course, the Conference itself).
I read a pamphlet recently decrying the emotion of 'hope', saying that the author had 'no hope' for environmentalism, and yet it was his very lack of hope that gave him the impetus and the strength to keep fighting as hard as he does. Hope, he said, is a passive and helpless emotion; like the offering of prayers to a god that doesn't exist or doesn't care, it is an abnegation of responsibility for action; it is passing the buck. In my own life, I have a superstitious injunction to myself to never look forward to anything, because with expectation there can only be disappointment. On both counts, then, I don't think that my lack of optimism for the conference(s) is merely cynicism. I am still going, after all. I will still lend a hand for The Cause; I'll still do what I can, when and where I can. I am just so very, very tired.
...And already, it is not turning out quite like I'd planned. My friend had to leave town at the last minute and hasn't actually been here to visit with, and plans for Amsterdam are starting to fall apart. So maybe it's a good thing I'm going in with low expectations for the climate conference/convergence itself?
Actually, reading up about the activist convergence that's planned, that is looking pretty damn awesome. Lots of really sound anarchist orgs have thrown themselves in to make the convergence pleasant and possible, with People's Kitchens and free sleeping spaces and that kind of thing. It's just the actions I don't have a lot of optimism about (nor, of course, the Conference itself).
I read a pamphlet recently decrying the emotion of 'hope', saying that the author had 'no hope' for environmentalism, and yet it was his very lack of hope that gave him the impetus and the strength to keep fighting as hard as he does. Hope, he said, is a passive and helpless emotion; like the offering of prayers to a god that doesn't exist or doesn't care, it is an abnegation of responsibility for action; it is passing the buck. In my own life, I have a superstitious injunction to myself to never look forward to anything, because with expectation there can only be disappointment. On both counts, then, I don't think that my lack of optimism for the conference(s) is merely cynicism. I am still going, after all. I will still lend a hand for The Cause; I'll still do what I can, when and where I can. I am just so very, very tired.
