Mini-manifestos: Part 10
The collective spectrum of Doomer Optimism
We are back with Part 10, the final run of our mini-manifesto series. Skip the introduction if you’ve read any of the previous parts.
The umbrella of Doomer Optimism is not one vision for the future, it is an orientation that says: we see the world as it is, and we move forward with a practical, positive vision despite the challenges.
We defined Doomer Optimism as “a collective dedicated to discovering regenerative paths forward, highlighting the people working for a better world, and connecting seekers to doers.”
To demonstrate the variety and breadth of people engaging with such a perspective, I have asked for Doomer Optimists to write mini-manifestos clearly stating the vision for the future they are working toward.
I hope this exercise will make clear the very many thoughtful people working on practical initiatives to bring about a better future. I also want to make legible the specific philosophies and toolkits being used, so that others may find what resonates with them and thereby, find their community.
Doomer Optimists don’t all have to agree with one another. In fact, many virulently disagree. It is my goal to highlight the good work people are doing, and to lift them up. I also think of our collective as a place to interrogate each other’s perspectives. With public vetting and pushback, each of our individual visions can become stronger.
Here are all the previous parts:
Part 1: Aris Roussinos, Tara Ann Thieke and Empty America
Part 2: Joe Norman and Chris Ellis
Part 3: Shaun Chamberlin, Jeff McFadden and Adam James Pollock (AJP)
Part 4: Roxanne Ahern, Tucker Max, and Matthew Pirkowski
Part 5: Chris Dancy, Pentti Linkola Stan, and Julie Fredrickson
Part 6: Kathryn (@artsyhonker), Simone Cicero, and Solarchiect
Part 7: Mary Harrington and Chris Smaje
Part 8: Willow Liana, Ali Katz, and SidewaysKoyote
Part 9: Anarcho-contrarian and Neal Clark (BoiltOwl)
The final part we hear from the young men with a strong vision and values: William Wheelwright, Apex, and Posts from the Underground.
Adventures in Depth
The word ‘commit’ is almost onomatopoeic when taken in the context of its etymology. The prefix co- (with) has the hardness of an arrow being knocked, while the ‘m’ (of the Latin mittere [to send]) is softer, the pursed lips almost necessitating understatement, like the whoosh of the arrow’s flight. (If you like, perhaps it hits its target with the splatter on the sound of the ‘t’). To commit: to send with, as an arrow is sent with an aim.
Is it not strange, the way in which original meaning and connotation diverge, only to reconvene in open contradiction? Today, our understanding of ‘to commit’ is not ‘to send with’, but to hold fast, to unite one’s self to the object of the commitment, even to the point of dissolution of the duality presupposed by the preposition/prefix, ‘with’/’co-’. Is this mismatch reconcilable?
The modern world is an idiomatic orphanage, where the origins of words—their parentage—are increasingly cut off from their offspring, perished in some gruesome accident of history. What greater tragedy is there than this, this germ of social disasters like the misinterpretation of the notion of ‘commitment’ as a burden—a ball-and-chain—rather than what it really is: an adventure, an exercise in depth, a deliverance.
In today’s parlance, the word ‘commitment’ connotes that by which an emergent amorous dalliance becomes something more serious. On certain sections of the online right, with which I am, in many ways, aligned, cynicism with regard to the fairer sex has, at times, supplanted reason. Indeed, in some corners there appears to be an unironic preference (at least in fantasy) for globetrotting promiscuity and the company of prostitutes over the menace to whimsy that monogamous, married life might be.
My meaning is not to comment specifically on the moment’s fraught relationship between the sexes (indeed, I commiserate with many of the aforementioned group’s laments on this matter), but rather to analogize the above polarity (the cosmopolitan whoremonger vs. the housebound husband) to the predicament I wish to address in this discussion of the notion of commitment. Put another way, this is the predicament of breadth vs depth.
Necessarily, the man of breadth limits himself in terms of depth, while the man of depth limits himself laterally. This trade-off is ordained by the laws of physics. And so, he who must who live in a certain way, must choose the way in which he is to live. The choice between these two option is the choice whether or not to commit: to a family, to a place, to the idea of commitment itself, etc. (it is not lost on me that the other option also involves an illogical sort of commitment to non-commitment). But how strange that within the etymology of the word, ‘commit’,—to send with—we find that adventurous spirit that is at odds with the word’s connotation of settlement and rootedness.
Here we arrive at the manifestation of my manifesto: that there is no such contradiction. That the true adventure of life lies in going deeper down, rather than further out. Of course, there is, especially for young men, a biological need for lateral expansion, for exploration, the pursuit of the horizon, for the foray into the unknown. But what is adventure when there is no homing beacon at the center of one’s life to which to return? Deprived of this central element, this tendency devolves, as the modern experiment has now conclusively shown, into what the Spaniards would call “quijotadas”, which is perhaps best translated as: self-important yet ultimately aimless wanderings in the style of Cervantes’ Quijote. Even Quijote had his—albeit imaginary—Dulcinea to tether him to a sense of purpose, I observe with great sorrow that the modern youth lacks even such a phantom muse.
Commitment—to whatever it may be—is an adventure in time, it seems to me, rather than space. We often hear about how the conservative is he who stands athwart history, yelling ‘stop!’ Don’t do this. Instead turn right, and travel perpendicular to Kronos’ trajectory, into earth:
…Round and round the fire
Leaping through the flames, or joined in circles,
Rustically solemn or in rustic laughter
Lifting heavy feet in clumsy shoes,
Earth feet, loam feet, lifted in country mirth
Mirth of those long since under earth
Nourishing the corn…
–TS Eliot, Four Quartets
The Masculine Urge to build something Real
By Apex
About 6 months ago, I stumbled upon a YouTube video about a rock climber spending a year during COVID buying an abandoned house in Catalonia, Spain and painstakingly renovating it. I was hooked. The house is gorgeous, the landscape is gorgeous, and I was jealous.
But I wasn't just jealous because I felt that he had a nice house and I live in a one-bedroom apartment in Techno-Babylo-, I mean, New York City.
I was jealous because he built it.
I think there is something primal-ly satisfying about creating something that can be passed down through the generations. To know you imagined something with your mind and then gave it form with your hands; that this thing you created has sufficient value that it can be passed down to your children, and then their children, and so on. To know something has a life that goes beyond just you. To take part in the grand landscape of human ancestry and tie yourself to the past and future.
Compared to the house-building rock climber, my work generates nothing of lasting value. I'm an excel monkey, staring at spreadsheets and proprietary databases for 12+ hours a day in an attempt to explain to rich people how to get richer.
Part of a fulfilling life, of proper human flourishing, is making a meaningful impact/contribution to the world. This has been robbed from most of us, as we drown under layers of debt, sterile hedonism, and alienation.
Considering this, I must stress that GDP is a worthless measurement, as likely (if not more likely) to mislead us as it is to bring us greater understanding of the world and better predictions of the future.
It's time to focus on building an economy focused around human flourishing and stop making the patently absurd assumptions that either a) the market will allocate resources towards human flourishing, or b) that participating in the market is a more important element of human flourishing than being able to make a meaningful contribution to the world and being connected to your ancestors and descendants and your community.
This begins by looking at real, concrete measures of HUMAN conditions: "How many hours of work at minimum or median wages does it take to afford median rent in this town?", "Are people getting the medical attention they need?", "How healthy is the populace?", "Are people satisfied with their lives?", etc.
And so we need to ask, do our economic activities actually improve our ability to live full lives? What does "human flourishing" mean, and how do we achieve it? The home that Nate Murphy built is one that he could pass down to his children. Each day he can wake up and look around at the product of his own hands. Even if not everyone is cut out to build their own home, I believe there is a longing for more meaningful work than what we have today. Re-orienting ourselves around human flourishing instead of vulgar productivism, around measures of human conditions instead of GDP, will require us to consider how we incentivize production in our economy and how we ensure that we build the healthiest society possible.
And so, if we want to address poverty of purpose and dignity, we need to focus on building a society that truly allows for people to build lives worth living.
An excerpt from: :
Whence Come Doomer Optimists?
Doomer Optimists are often born as the result of the Doomer-Bloomer Oscillation. Although it is a perennial human experience, its frequency (or at least our understanding of and interest in the phenomenon) has greatly increased in recent years.
We seem, to many people, on the verge of crisis. After all, the economic growth which was expected, which was promised, which was embedded as a feature of most every system and institution for the last several decades, is failing to arrive as promised. Social capital and those systems which bond and bridge us are on the decline while polarization, righteousness, and tribalism are on the rise; we are becoming more and more disconnected from age-old wisdom and traditional ways of living by the day; and to top it all off, environmental and demographic concerns are a constant, looming threat on the horizon. It is no wonder why so many Doomers wander our streets.
However, whereas the Doomer is bleak, pessimistic, and detached from the world around him, the Bloomer is a bright and optimistic figure, enthusiastic and committed to the pursuit of a good and meaningful life despite being well aware of the world’s darker aspects. But from where do these Bloomers come?
They are those who, despite or in spite of the failed systems around them, over which they have no control, shift towards bettering those close-to-home systems over which they do. They tend to adopt an ascetic conception of liberty, which is rooted in internal control of our desires instead of the perpetual multiplication of means to fulfill them. They have bloomed from a perhaps infertile soil, but nevertheless find ways to make the best of both sunshine and rain.
Doomer Optimism describes what we have already been doing for centuries, millennia, in light of the Doomer-Bloomer oscillation – reconciling bad times with good people. It does not describe those who are ignorant about the world's problems or naive enough to ignore them. It’s not those who are smart enough to understand humanity's problems but too hopeless or bitter to do anything about them.
It describes those who adapt to darkness and gloom by learning how to spark a fire, even if it burns them. It's those who focus on family and community instead of the all-too-broad "society" that seems to be crumbling. It's those who embrace and circle back to the doom as a means of furthering the bloom, not stuck in either position, but in a constant, blissful oscillation between the two.
(Based on passages from "The Doomer-Bloomer Oscillation")