hope

Russian pensioners carrying placards at a demonstration: 'Thank you, Comrade Stalin, for our happy childhood!'

'Are you mad?' a passer-by exclaims, 'Stalin wasn't even around in your childhood!?'

'And for that, we thank him!'

There are three positive side-effects to losing hope: the first is that the world proceeding as normal (as opposed to getting worse) is a relief rather than a disappointment. The second is that minor upturns are perceived as minor miracles, a source of major joy, relief and general satisfaction with the world. And the third is that one scales down expectations.

Perhaps it is a bit of cheat to count that as 3 different side-effects, but counting the same thing 3 times seems to magnify the positives.

The 3rd one is the important one, and maybe we can even stretch it out to 4...

By scaling down expectations, we (evidently) make them more realistic and thus more realisable. So those reduced expectations now carry an increased chance of becoming reality at some point (even if that point is far into the future, maybe when we are not around to see it). Surely another positive. Better, anyway, than the sound of over-inflated expectations popping.

But seriously: realising that change is far, far more difficult than you imagined in your naive dreams, that the system is more robust and more corrupted and corrupting than you imagined in your naive nightmares, and that small tweaking of the creaking engine is the most that we can hope for is probably a good lesson to learn, if not a very pleasant one. At least it makes us value small successes.

remembrance is horribly artificial. Trawling the web for information is an unhealthy way of living. It either feels sick, and one feels sick; or else one manages to detach oneself and then everyone else's contributions seem sick, voyeuristic - remembering only for the sake of remembering.
those who can remember have to be able to forget if they are to be able to lead normal lives; and those who have already 'forgotten' have probably done so deliberately. So i am really beginning to wonder why I have started this. it is only making me sick and will never reach the only people who need to see it because they will be the ones who turn the page to look for something else.
how are you meant to strike a healthy balance between being aware of the horrific things we allow to happen by our passivity and believing in a move towards a world and a view of humankind in which those things don't happen?