From Despair to Politics by Henry Mantel
The future looks pretty bleak right now, doesn't it? I know I'm not the only one who sees it. Follow the current trends of climate change , economic inequality , and right-wing extremism to their logical conclusion and the outcome is clear: we're fucked. Historically, each of these alone always precedes civil unrest at best, calamity at worst, but all three together? We're completely and utterly fucked. Anyone who can't see that is being willfully ignorant at this point. With the Internet, everyone can have a front-row seat to the sixth mass extinction event, the lives of billionaires , and live-streamed acts of terrorism. As a young person, it often feels like I was born just to bear witness to the end. When faced with the realities of today, despair is inevitable. Despair is nothing new, of course, we all feel the cold flutter of the void against our souls, but this is different. This is not a personal fear of my own mortality, this is an unprecedented, peer-