"Should we embrace despair?"
Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying. 98th DarkHorse Podcast Livestream Sep 25, 2021 - Your Questions Answered.
Heather:
Final question, for today. "Could embracing despair help at this time, rather than hope? Hope seems impotent."
I don't think so. I think grief is often adaptive, sadness, moroseness... but despair, as the opposite of hope, as a kind of hopelessness, effectively guarantees that you won't escape... whatever it is.
There's a little story in our book - imagine you're in a boat on a river, and you find that you're being pulled more and more quickly into a waterfall that you didn't know existed. And you like howling like hell, even though, as you get pulled faster and faster into the path of that waterfall, into which you will likely plunge. you have no idea how high it is, and it seems ever more likely that you are going to die... Despairing guarantees your death. Maintaining hope, even as the evidence looks more and more like your hopefulness is somewhat delusional, is the only possible chance you have to survive.
Bret :
Yeah, so there's no evolutionary reward for giving up. There are circumstances in which there could be, but the point is that in the case that you don't know that it's hopeless, giving up hope can't possibly solve the problem. And, therefore, even tiny amounts of hope are enough. But in reference to this question, I would say: a) I think it's been set up wrong. I do think there is something to be said for looking into the abyss, but in order to get over it. You've got to look at it, and say "Yep. That sucks." And it's going to take you time...Looking...that sucks...We shouldn't have got here, we shouldn't have allowed it to happen, but we are here. But at the time at which you've just grown accustomed to it, the point is *then* you can go back to doing stuff that's useful. And that's what you need. And I think that people spend so much time avoiding looking into the abyss, lying to themselves about it, that they actually end up paralysed in this kind-of pre-despair state, rather than ...
Heather:
It could be that you are advocating for a “Staring into the Abyss, embrace the despair, but make sure that that's finite”.
Bret :
Absolutely!
Heather:
But that is a little bit of a different to the answer that I gave.
Bret :
Yeah. I really think that it's something that you don't know,unless you've been put through something that causes you to do it, or to have no choice but to do it. But the point is something like.... Things are very serious. That could preoccupy you to no useful effect. If hope is effectively lost, then you have licence to gamble on things that might work. Right? And so, the point is there's a liberation ... I'm not going to quote the song lyric... but there is a liberation that comes from the recognition that there is nothing that's going to address the issue. And, frankly, I think people would be mentally healthier if they found themselves there. And, ironically, we'd be a lot more likely to solve the problem. Because if your point is "Yep. I have seen it I have seen the monster - it seems very dangerous - let's figure out what our best shot is. Let's take our best shot, because what else are we going to do?". I think it's a kind of a last-roll kind of thing. I absolutely advocate it, it's healthy. And frankly, I think, if you do it, you will end up finding there are others, and you will join them and you will feel a lot better about life. At least, if it's not going to work, it's not going to work. You'll at least know who to talk to about it and not feel crazy. And if it is going to work, it's going to be the people who aren't paralysed by despair who are going to figure out what to do. So... it's sort of the right answer no matter what.