My last week of college (through which I have sought desperately for hope) and my teacher prefaces a thought with:
"i just wanted to quickly point out the reason why none of our efforts will come to anything..."

AWESOME!
luckily the point wasn't even news, or shocking after an entire quarter of hope-shattering, but I still found it amusing in a morbid way. I don't know how some people continue to live in this world, myself included. At least I fall apart and sob for a few hours every day and consider the possibility that I might not want to live in the world. No, I'm not suicidal (at least, not any more than I have been since age 13), I just think about it a lot. No worries. I am bound... caught in the personal responsibility vortex, where nothing we do matters but we can't not do anything. Well... I suppose I don't believe that anyway. Of course it matters. It matters to the people (and non-people) around us, right now. It's like the starfish story: "it matters to that one."
It just feels like everything's a coin toss, or worse. How does good outweigh evil if evil has more power and resources, and being good depletes your resources? Not that I want to think in terms of good/evil since it's not so cut and dry, but... monsanto compared to a food co-op I guess is my point. Also... what constitutes resources? Love is a resource right, and one that is inexhaustible and self-perpetuating (i think, i hope), and it's at least no less real than the money we so-often base our lives on. Oh, I thought of a helpful equation:
love doubles, or at least grows, when spread.
radiation halves and dissipates.
It's an emotional idea shoved into a semi-logical math problem and yea, it's dumb, but if you were in my brain right now, that really wouldn't matter. I'm just trying to find some hope.

Hope. You know? That thing that gets you up in the morning when you're depressed. The idea that propels you forward when all else seems lost. The thumb that you stick out when you are ejected into outer space and have like .33 milliseconds to get picked up before you implode. You know: Hope.
I see the problems with it:
You get your hopes up. They aren't realized. You're disappointed/devastated, or feel wasted.
Or maybe you rely too much on hope alone and don't do anything to make something happen, or not happen, or change.
I get it.
But it's still valuable. It's worth like a hundred buckets in some situations (though I suppose in some situations a bucket equates to hope.......... beside the point). Hope helps, sometimes. If something is hopeless, why continue with it? That's how I know Bret has hope, even though he says those things, even though they are grounded in logic. He has kids. He is still fighting.

Derrick Jensen, in his article Beyond Hope, give the definition: "hope is a longing for a future condition over which you have no agency; it means you are essentially powerless [...] Many people say they hope the dominant culture stops destroying the world. By saying that, they’ve assumed that the destruction will continue, at least in the short term, and they’ve stepped away from their own ability to participate in stopping it." but... it doesn't always work that way. sometimes it is the hope, the possibility, that is only reason you can muster the ability to keep trying in the face of great odds. At least for me, in many instances, it is hope that propels or initiates action. If life is meaningless and there is no hope and nothing can do about nuclear radiation killing us all, then fuck, I might as well just stop lamenting what can't be changed and forget about trying to change it and just enjoy my life like nothing is wrong. Or off myself... Not that I could do those things, but isn't that Camus' existentialism in a nutshell? And don't people subscribe to that? Hope that there is meaning, hope that meaning can continue, hope that life can continue allows us to try to do what is in our power to make that happen. To try. To try hard. To fight like hell.

Though, now I'm all confused because I was thinking about all the reasons I've found myself hoping for collapse... but is that something I would want to try to make happen? Probably not... even though I think its the quickest way to halt the extractive, destructive machine of human society that's out of control. And I also realize collapse wouldn't solve the issue of nuclear. Damnit. It's like K-19. (Don't put shit like that on a submarine. Or a planet.) Hmm, that makes me think: Maybe this issue is something that's been after me my whole life, giving me clues and cues to pick up on, until the right moment when it could attack and I would understand. I was fascinated by that movie even though it disturbed me so deeply. And now that disturbance is resounding times a hundred million squared. I have to do something about it. And in order to do that, I have to be able to hold onto some hope that something effective can be done. I don't know if I have that yet, which explains my equation (and the sobbing). But now we're back to me falling into Jensen's trap...just trying to find a way to feel like even if nothing changes, it's still okay. Which it isn't. But what if there is nothing we can do? Is love the backup parachute? Not just. It also helps in other ways.
...blah, rambling.

geez. i'm tired.  oh.. that's cause its really late.
so much for homework... though I guess this is.
goodnight

I'll take a compliment first though:
"Dear Alex Courage Eisenberg..Ms. WiseBeyondHerGeneration (and maybe many of ours)..thank you for giving back!" --
gosh. there it is. love just spiraling out and out and out...