Gonna start getting quite sharp about this kind of thing, people who have *zero* to lose from lying back and going 'well, what can I do? *Try*?'
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I don't see an alternative to trying, I mean, what else is there?
sep 1, 2025, 11:44 pm • 159 15 • view
Every right thinking person has a duty to try.
sep 1, 2025, 11:57 pm • 2 0 • view
I think this is it. Despair is easy and you get to feel wise, and it doesn't really place any obligations on you or force you to speak out or do anything, really.
sep 2, 2025, 12:37 am • 240 51 • view
One of my school friends in London got called the P word for the first time since primary school this week. The wall between social media and real life is clearly breached. I'm frustrated I'm not back in London tbh. A vol-private sector coalition would not be hard to set up, this is a crisis.
sep 2, 2025, 6:38 am • 1 0 • view
My post is more about pricess than effect. My 16 yr old nephew told me over the summer that Trump is a very good President, just what the US needs. I asked (non-confrontationally) why. He didn't produce a single reason other than to say he'd seen it on YouTube.
sep 2, 2025, 7:25 am • 3 0 • view
Process. Process, process, process. Why did they put i next to o 😠
sep 2, 2025, 8:16 am • 0 0 • view
I think there’s a difference between snark and despair. Snark is healthy and stops you sinking into despair. I’m not sure it’s always obvious in a short tweet if people are just being snarky.
sep 2, 2025, 9:30 am • 0 0 • view
This is, I think, the core of why it was regarded as a sin in the middle ages. (The official reason being "it denies faith in God/the working of grace", which it does, but in quite an arrogant way which also denies faith in ourselves, in our own power and in our own capacity for action).
sep 2, 2025, 6:59 am • 4 0 • view
(Standard long-term depressive caveat that it's probably a good thing it stopped being classed as one of the Big Sins because it's really easy to misinterpret as "feeling despondent is morally wrong" but that I don't think that was what was being cautioned against, more the arrogant inaction)
sep 2, 2025, 7:01 am • 3 0 • view
That is a Théoden of Rohan level take right there.
sep 2, 2025, 6:53 am • 1 0 • view
Can’t really afford despair when you have kids.
sep 2, 2025, 8:00 pm • 1 0 • view
Apologies, that sounded like: “DESPAIR?! In this economy?” Although kids are an expensive luxury.
sep 2, 2025, 8:08 pm • 2 0 • view
😂
sep 2, 2025, 8:08 pm • 1 0 • view
On the despair point, personally I see organisations like the Labour Party and the BBC failing to push back against this creeping racism in the way that they would have done in the past and I do feel despair because I feel somewhat disenfranchised. The values they had no longer match mine.
sep 2, 2025, 6:20 am • 4 0 • view
And I don’t think my values have changed. I don’t feel wise for thinking this, I feel abandoned.
sep 2, 2025, 6:23 am • 2 0 • view
Agreed. Think Stephen is right it's all in the balance, the need to fight, but like, it's not unreasonable to ask for an analysis as to why institutions of the c right (Tories/Times) or c left (BBC/Labour) you'd expect (for their own existence if nothing else) to uphold norms on racism/far right 1/2
sep 2, 2025, 7:23 am • 2 0 • view
have not just capitulated but seem to be aiding their framing and ideas, and why the law and regulation is not being upheld by say Ofcom or EHRC, and what is the way to changes these things.
sep 2, 2025, 7:25 am • 2 0 • view
Think we all also need to remember that it's not just "other people" who are conditioned by their feeds. We all are. We all easily accept the unreality of eg "London is a lawless hellhole" but we need to be equally questioning of other assumptions that we accept as true (like the racists have won).
sep 2, 2025, 7:09 am • 0 0 • view
It’s been very noticeable that every time there are far right protests, the counterprotests massively outnumber them. They only win if we let them.
sep 2, 2025, 7:16 am • 2 0 • view
One thing I really hope we can leave behind in the 2010s/early 2020s is the idea that being cynical = being wise. If you want to have an impact on the world, that involves being sincere. Yes people will sneer, but sneering has no impact. Genuine sincerity breaks barriers and moves mountains.
sep 2, 2025, 12:47 am • 177 31 • view
I think this is linked in part to increasing atomisation and being permanently online. Just going outside, seeing the world, and making real live connections with people in all their complications, is part of the solution. A start any way.
sep 2, 2025, 8:52 am • 0 0 • view
Completely agree. Also just need to rediscover the importance of optimism as a rallying cry and how corrosive the reverse is on any effective activity.
sep 2, 2025, 1:01 am • 127 9 • view
Yes, and…to adapt Oliver Wendell Holmes: ‘For the optimism on this side of despair, I wouldn't give you a fig. But for the optimism on the other side of despair, for that I would give you anything I have.’ Simplistic optimism is brittle to events. Fire-tested optimism is bone-deep & more robust.
sep 2, 2025, 6:34 am • 1 0 • view
There are a number of us who have recent experience of advocating a position that decent, normal people were broadly in agreement with but that was opposed in full-throated screaming fury by the media (whilst sensible centrists chipped in from the sidelines about all the ways we were doing it wrong)
sep 2, 2025, 12:10 pm • 0 0 • view
The upshot to which was decent, normal people came round to believing the position we advocated was deranged fanatical extremism🤷♀️ So there’s optimism and its reverse for you
sep 2, 2025, 12:12 pm • 0 0 • view
100% - I firmly believe that we will make our way through this moment because, well, what other choice do I have? I'm not about to voluntarily relinquish the best weapon we have against opression and prejudice!
sep 2, 2025, 8:29 am • 0 0 • view
One thing that really radicalised me on this was during the pandemic and people who really didn't know what they were talking about were insisting that the Warp Speed vaccines were just pie-in-the-sky and weren't going to have any meaningful impact for years.
sep 2, 2025, 8:56 am • 15 1 • view
Yes. And that the mass roll out of personal antigen testing was pointless, even when the prevalence was through the roof. There's a difference between a mathematical argument, which can be entirely true, and the actual use scenario which ends up providing a benefit.
sep 2, 2025, 9:01 am • 5 0 • view
The more I think about the pandemic the more I'm convinced it is the thing we should talk about more in this moment. Human ingenuity and organisation saved millions of lives - and I'm not sure we celebrate that enough
sep 2, 2025, 9:53 am • 4 1 • view
That's difficult to balance with the societal aspects which people directly felt far more & have left many lingering repercussions. Governments curtailed freedom in unprecedented ways. There were good reasons for that but the counterfactual of bodies literally piling in the streets weren't felt.
sep 2, 2025, 10:14 am • 0 0 • view
oh I'm not trying to convince people! I am trying to stay positive - and the pandemic really was a human success story, even considering the enormous suffering, failure, and the repressive qualities of lockdown. From a personal perspective, it's a useful corrective to the 'we're all doomed' stuff
sep 2, 2025, 11:40 am • 3 0 • view
Ah, yes absolutely.
sep 2, 2025, 11:53 am • 1 0 • view
100% in agreement here too. It is so easy to slip into it ("hope is a discipline", etc) and it is so corrosive. Of course we can all take time to privately despair, mourn, rage, rest, recover, etc but that needs to be in service of getting ourselves back in the game to *act* and effect change.
sep 2, 2025, 2:08 pm • 0 0 • view
Optimism ✅
sep 2, 2025, 5:40 am • 1 0 • view
One million times this. People are desperate for some hope. The language of ‘delivery and growth’ needs to be replaced with a more active one, and with Day 1 impact on people’s lives. If that’s making buses free, so be it.
sep 2, 2025, 5:59 am • 7 1 • view
I don’t necessarily mean the free buses thing. But things that make a material impact are infinitely preferable to milquetoast speeches about growth, and vapid answers about flags.
sep 2, 2025, 6:01 am • 6 1 • view
100%. It was the cynicism and "they are all the same" that gifted the world Trump
sep 2, 2025, 9:12 am • 1 0 • view
Sincerity ✅ Authenticity ✅
sep 2, 2025, 5:39 am • 0 0 • view
Can’t despair and speaking out go together? I know I feel despair and powerless about the government I voted for over the genocide it grotesquely supports in Gaza but I keep yelling at them on the issue via my MP and different SM accounts and other ways open to me.
sep 2, 2025, 6:37 am • 1 0 • view
No. Despair may be pointless and unhelpful but it isn't easy. In my case it's been hard earned.
sep 2, 2025, 1:57 pm • 0 0 • view
It may convince the speaker that they feel wise, but it feels absolutely the opposite of wise to take a position opposite to "society is just the behaviour of people, and therefore my behaviour matters in shaping society".
sep 2, 2025, 6:16 am • 4 0 • view
Just... act in the manner of the society you want to live in. How hard is that?
sep 2, 2025, 6:16 am • 6 0 • view
It was noticeable that the reporter tried to de-escalate and the bookshop owner was both prepared to come out *and* speak on camera to say it was wrong (and name one of the enabling factors). Good people can do this.
sep 2, 2025, 7:41 am • 3 0 • view
Agree. I think our history as a democracy bears this out - there have been many predictions that the populace will succumb to or actively embrace fascism & other extremes, & so far we haven't. Not because Britain is immune. But there are resistances we forget once they've helped ward off calamity.
sep 2, 2025, 12:00 am • 7 0 • view