TO DESPAIR OR…
Written by Ben Tallon
The morning after the 2016 U.S. presidential election, I sat there in disbelief as Donald Trump entered the White House by borrowing directly from the playbook of my beloved professional wrestling. Shouting bollocks, he smarmed and grinned and made big statements and when you boil it right down, people are simple creatures. They are emotional and when they are pissed off in their lives, those emotions rule the human. Trump used that psychology and technology masterfully to exploit their vulnerability, as we’d seen here in the UK with Brexit. I felt horrified. All of my environmental terrors would be compounded and this caricature was about to lead the human race off the highest of cliffs.
We have no way of truly charting the damage he did in his first term, but we know that it wasn’t good. And now he’s back. But in contrast to my moping around my then London flat in 2016 – in fight, flight or freeze mode, my heart erratic, my mouth open – this time I got on with my day. Yes, I felt sadness, yes I felt anger at the naivety of my kind, and yes, I felt fearful as I watched my children playing, and wondered what impact this would have on their lives.
But as I watched them, I also allowed my mind to wade through the dismay and slowly ascend the bank on the others side because those two humans need a leader. We all must be the leaders of our own lives; not lost souls on the internet, angry at the other, imprisoned by what might happen. We might perceive those who’ve lashed out once more as others, but we are in this together, and if we can’t find a way to address our differences, to get together in person and recognise that we’d all just like to get on with our lives, then this will get worse.
That day in 2016 I created nothing. I struggled to exist that day. Today, I had meaningful conversations, felt good, made things, developed ideas, ran around the woods with my dog, and worked out, because if I stop and admit defeat, then fear takes over and I am no good to anyone. And just now, every single one of us is needed to fight for what we believe in. If I’m energised, and ideas flow, and I see colours where there might just be grey, then I can be additive to the lives of others, so I exerted my conscious awareness and shut down my negative spiral. I’ve seen more than my fair share of instances when an individual’s actions moved many people and shifted culture. In each case, resolved was required and the individual could never have predicted or engineered that.
At various intervals, those fears seeped in, but like a cartoon stalker, each time I fixed my gaze upon them, they froze, and eventually fled. It’s not easy, it takes training, but it’s worth it because the alternative is to surrender my optimism, and nobody in my life deserves that. As far as I can tell, I’m only here once, and I’m not without responsibility for what my species does here during my time. So let’s make great art, let’s use that negative emotion spectrum to its fullest and show how beautiful and intricate we can be, even in the face of hyper-capitalism at its worst.