Existential dread

This is a topic I am chowing on for quite a long time. So let me take a few steps back and explain the setting here.

Context

I am in the end of my 30s and live in a small city where my generation of queers and anarchists all moved away as soon as they could manage to leave their parent's home. Not me though. It never drove me to the big cities and while others moved away after highschool to visit a university far away and never come back, I dropped out of school at 17 and started a 3.5y apprenticeship as a machinist. Then moved away into an even more rural area, came back, and live here since.

Now, things have changed and the younger generation, now in their 20s, doesn't move away anymore. Which means that now there is a vibrant scene of activists and queer anarchists like me, just 10-15 years younger. And they are all burned out sooner or later.

My social role as the somewhat older and more experienced in life woman in hte scene is mostly a care role. And I like to be in this role. I have learned to keep my boundaries and not burn myself out in the process but still I want to have something to offer for the young people. Some alternative to the inevidable burnout.

Fear

Talking to friends revealed to me that all of them are afraid of the future. Of climate collapse, of raising fascism. And all of them have hope that if they just do enough activism, things might still turn out less grim.

Now, that is a rational fear. Climate collapse will probably fuck us all over bad time and raising fascism? How would anyone assume fascism is in decline while our own government pledges allegience with the USA under Trump, with Israel under Nethanjahu. While social spending is being cut left and right and the Nazi party rises up in polls every week.

Now the gist is, we are pretty fucked. To me this is not a belief but fact. (And if I'm wrong, cool, please let me be wrong on this one.) I have no hope for the west. And by all means, I won't defend the west either. I also have no hope that we will stop the climate collaps. Because we won't get rid of global capitalism in time to do so.

But I am not afraid of this. I accepted that there is a chance I will die in a camp. And I know I will continue to do poetry there then. It doesn't scare me anymore. So why does it scare them? I am not some super-brave person, by no means. Neither am I psychopathic. I am in no way fundamentally different than them, except for my age and starting activism later in life.

Hope (an illusion)

So those conversations continued over time, sometimes they gave me more insight. And what I eventually found out is that the fear is based on hope.

Hope is a strange thing. Because I don't have a lot of that. But they do. They have hope in their activism. Asking them what they'd do when there's no reason for hope, most people said they'd have no reason to continue.

And that is a part I couldn't get behind for a long time. But I think the solution boils down to faith. I had found my way to God a couple of years ago when studying the Qur'an and that took my fear. Now, what does "finding God" mean, in a generalized sense? For me it was the poetry of scripture that was the vessel for faith but I cannot assume this is the right vessel for everyone. And I don't mean faith in Allah, the abrahamic God, but faith in itself.

Coming from an anarchist tradition of thought, anarchists (and peoples who's conception of society matches our western word "anarchism") have faith. Faith in justice, in love, in resistance to power, etc. Reading texts coming from the most nihilist corners of insurrectionist anarchist movements, nothing describes their system of faith worse than nihilism.

Yet, this spree of anarchism, based in faith, resulting in doing the right thing even when no measurable better outcome will flow from it, is rare among my community. Most come from a traditional leftist tradition, rooted in a strong believe in hope and utopia.

That is not to say that I don't have a utopic vision. I just do not believe that whatever I do, I have even a small chance to see it existing within my lifetime. What keeps me going is my faith in Gods path being a path of justice, in the last day and in the reward in the afterlife.

Faith

Do I know there is a heaven? No. Do I know the last day is a literal event that will happen and justice will prevail above all? No. But believing is not about knowing. It is about deciding to believe. And a strong faith doesn't need hope to persist.

Now what do I have to offer for the young activists? Sure I can walk around teaching them about Islam but that's not a viable strategy. Right now the offer I have is for them to seek for spiritual advise. Yet, there is a lack of understanding of the meaning of spirituality so that is not where most of them are.

I do not need them to find faith in the same things I believe in. But I want them to have the freedom to do the right thing, regardless of prospect, regardless of hope. Because a person driven by fear is never free. I want them to loose their fear of loosing hope. Their fear of death.

Among Muslims, we call this the greater Jihad. We have a language and a tradition to draw from here. And scripture teaches us that engaging in the greater Jihad takes precedence over engaging in the lesser Jihad, the worldly struggle (fighting climate collapse, injustice, etc.). We know that when we're driven by fear or anger, our actions will not be sustainable and we will not be bestowed the strength to stead fast.

Every time I see a young activist burning out because they cling on to hope, making them exceed their resources too far and ending up in depression over not being able to do more, I feel grief. I can feel the torment on their hearts.