What does it mean to Refuse Dystopia?

We cannot afford to despair. Time is running out, but we still have the opportunity to create a kinder, more humane world. Together, we can light matchsticks against the gathering dark.

Why start writing now?

This catalog of reflections begins with a simple premise: all around us lies the evidence of dystopia. From the lead in our water to the microplastics in our bloodstream, the inescapable, suffocating reality of our dystopian present seems to scream at us from every vantage point. Songs like That Funny Feeling from Bo Burnham’s masterful pandemic-era epistle Inside perfectly encapsulate the unspoken sense of dread that accompanies the sad, banal dance of late-stage capitalism.

We observe our dystopia at the juxtaposition of trite non-events designed to trigger mass media consumption and a growing sense of awareness about the end of the Anthropocene, and our seeming inability to prevent it. Films like Don’t Look Up attempt to speak to the panic of the watchmen who have raised the hue and cry for decades, only to receive no reply. Increasingly, the books we read and the media we consume attempt to capture the subtle contradictions of life at the end of the world. The alarm keeps going off in the kitchen, and we seem content merely to shove ethically-sourced cotton in our ears. 

Stories about overdose, climate nihilism, deaths of despair, and “doomerism” flood our screens and the pages of our newspapers. We have increasingly become resigned to an assumption that life will be bleaker for our children than it was for our parents, which is, at its heart, the ultimate reversal of the American Dream. 

Things are bad. Things are worse than they seem on the television. The news shows us only the superficial symptoms of a rot that we can all feel but few of us can see. If we truly interrogated the causes of mass gun violence, the opioid epidemic, the decline in living standards, health outcomes, and economic opportunity, we would find a singular thread of quiet despair. A society-wide suspicion that we are little more than a kite swinging in a tornado, and the only people who can do anything about it are too rich or too distracted to care. 

What is to be done?

But missing within this baleful parade of subtle horrors is any implication that something can be done about it. That something must be done about it. Because the truth is that it is not too late. Not for all of us. Not even for most of us. There is still time to shape the world into a more humane, gentler place designed to meet our needs and integrate us more vibrantly into the living pattern of things.

We are not designed to live the empty, hollowed out lives we feel compelled to lead. But we are fooling ourselves if we believe we can rescue the world using the very tools that put it on the path to destruction.

If you wanted to put out a fire, you wouldn’t hire the arsonist who started it. Yet now that we have finally admitted our predicament, we turn to the very people–products of the very systems–that brought us to the brink of extinction and expect them to pull us back from it. 

There is no Ex Machina that will liberate us from the ticking doomsday clock that looms large across all of our futures. There is no app, nor ark, nor rocket ship that will deliver us from the consequences of our insatiable excess. There is only us. We, the great majority of persons whose only vested interests are the purity of our water, the breathability of our air, and the health of our ecosystems. 

Where do we go from here?

To liberate the world from its devastating trajectory will mean dismantling systems, processes, and ways of thinking that have set us on this road to perdition. It is a herculean task, and one that is absolutely impossible without collective vision and action. That vision has to begin with an unlikely hope. After all, in the face of such overwhelming man-made horrors as those we face today, hope is the most radical perspective one can take. 

Isolation. Alienation. Disillusionment. Despair. These familiar emotions seek to govern our lives and shape our perspectives. But few are willing to label despair as what it truly is: a reactionary emotion. Despair is the handmaiden of privilege, for it is only those who believe in a fixed moral universe–a predetermined set of relationships between people–who have the luxury of despair.

The reactionary mind despairs of things like social progress, racial reconciliation, and ecological salvation because it sees human relations as fundamentally entropic, and catastrophe as inevitable. It is the mindset of the frontier, a mindset of fortifications and watchtowers lit to keep out the savage unknown. From its isolated suburban castles, the reactionary mind views interdependence and interconnection with suspicion, little imagining that both are vital to the health–and in fact the survival–of mankind. 

Our response to a looming apocalypse cannot be to buy a gun and bar the door, hoping to keep alive, in some wretched corner of atomized existence, the pale light of “civilization.” We are a part of this world, not apart from it. There is no ecology without humanity. For at least three hundred thousand years, the natural world has been shaped by human activity. We are Earth’s gardeners, not its parasites.

A growing body of evidence suggests that the Amazon Basin, the world’s largest carbon trap and home to the widest array of wildlife on this planet, is not a pristine, untouched wilderness, but rather the world’s largest garden, shaped by 11,000 years of intense human activity. We can find great courage in the realization that we may have been the knife that made the wound, but we are also the scalpel that can heal it. 

And who are we, privileged creatures of the modern West, to recline into our comfortable despair and choose apathy when faced with nothing short of looming extinction? Indigenous communities in the Amazon fighting deforestation have not despaired. Indigenous North American activists who have seen their land stolen, their water soiled, and their air choked with toxic fumes have not despaired. They cannot afford despair. Their entire existence, their entire survival depends on hope. It is a birthright passed down from their forebears to cherish an unlikely hope.

In our hour of greatest need, they have extended a helping hand, worn by suffering but carrying an unquenchable optimism, to the rest of us. It is in their footsteps that we must now follow, and to their wisdom that we must now lend an ear. One of the lessons that they offer us is that only at the nadir of our despair can we begin to rise. Only once we have reached the predictable limit of our cancerous mindset of limitless growth can we begin to lay the foundations for a healthier, kinder world.

This would mean a political revolution, of course. But authentic political revolution can only follow a cultural and spiritual shift. It is only by sacralizing the gifts of the natural world, and endowing them with the same panentheistic reverence of our most sacred religious traditions that we can preserve, for future millennia, the precious bounty of nature’s womb. 

A hopeful vision

There is a place at the convergence of science, technology, philosophy, and religion where mankind can find the answers to the problems that beset us. A place informed by the past, but not seeking to usher in its return. A place invigorated by the future, but slow to remove the guardrails to its approach. Within this Golden Mean, where the insight of scientific innovation and the foresight of spiritual and philosophical tradition meet, we can find the seed of a salvific hope. The aim of this publication is to begin to assemble, in its own small way, the scaffolding of a more hopeful future.

This hope must not resemble the false optimism peddled by Silicon Valley charlatans or silver-tongued politicians. It is a hope that will only be born of a collective commitment to wrest our lives, our communities, and our earthly home from the grip of forces that would seek to divide and exploit us. 

The project of our generation must be nothing less than the salvation of mankind. Grandiose, perhaps, but “where there is no vision, the people perish” (Proverbs 29:18). Due to the carelessness and excess of our fathers, we have been presented with no other alternative, besides annihilation. We cannot accept that fate. We must not.

Together, in the face of paralyzing despair, we must steel ourselves with the courage to rage against the dying light. That begins by refusing to tolerate the dystopia that has been prescribed for us. 

This humble compendium of thoughts and reflections is an attempt to light a matchstick of hope against the growing dark, with the expectation that other matchsticks are sure to follow. I am sensitive about my writing, and I am reticent to expose my scattered and incomplete thoughts to a broader audience. Somehow, it is easier to record videos of my thoughts or create informational graphics than to offer up my writing for anonymous censure. I have been convinced to overcome this reluctance, and encouraged by the feedback I have received on previous written reflections.

I believe that if I can write something from the heart that truly resonates with someone else, spurring them into action, then that is an act of defiance against the regime of isolation and social disintegration that has been imposed on us by an unfeeling enemy

A final word of gratitude

This newsletter will quickly come to resemble my brain; scattered, meandering, with occasional sparks of insight hidden inside layers of anxiety and distraction. Nevertheless, I am grateful that you have found yourself here. I hope I can count on your patience, and possibly your support.

This newsletter is my first step in an attempt to finally turn my creative passion into a means of supporting myself. It is a step I have been afraid to take for ten years, and only recently have I found the nerve to do so.

I plan to make much of this content freely available, but if you select the option to be a paid subscriber, you are helping enable my transition from the restrictions of the corporate world to a life as a full-time creator. I am thankful that you are willing to come along with me on this journey.

If something I say resonates with you, please let me know. Do not hesitate to send me an email (hello@charlesmcbryde.com) or leave a comment on one of my posts. You have little idea how deeply meaningful such feedback is for me. I keep an album on my phone of all the encouraging messages I receive from my community. They give me hope, remind me to keep the faith, and give me the courage to refuse dystopia.

Thanks for coming alongside :)

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