on HOPELESSNESS

It’s like trying to keep the ocean at bay with a broomstick. You sweep out one wave and all the others pour in around you. That’s really what we’re dealing with: an ocean of dysfunction, with a powerful set of conditions that bind all these issues together. That’s what I wanted to address [with HOPELESSNESS]. Some have criticized the project by saying that by addressing so many different issues on a record, there’s not much room for depth in these investigations. But they’re missing the point that I wanted to address – the constellation of crises as a single system.

That income disparity, nuclear power, global warming, corporate sovereignty and exploitation, capital punishment, patriarchy, mineral and fossil fuel extraction, the subjugation of women, surveillance, racism, unregulated end-game capitalism, colonialism and the assault of indigenous communities, the destruction of biodiversity, the collapse of forest and ocean systems, drone warfare, consumerism, addiction and the weapons industry make up a bouquet of issues forms. It is a unique syndrome: a system, a new disease.

With AIDS, they were first like, “What, you’re dying of pneumonia? Oh wait, he’s dying of kaposi sarcoma, oh wait you’re dying of toxoplasmosis,” and then one day they said, “Oh wait this is a system, a syndrome of symptoms that could be identified as a single disease. A single disease called AIDS. And that’s what we’re dealing with.” The insidious collaboration of a thousand faces, of our brokenness that climax in ecocide. Ecocide is the final result of these systems of brokenness. It seems to be what you’re talking about, and what Suzuki said.

I remember when my father would say, “When I was a kid in London, the air was so choking. Now, the Thames is relatively clean. There are even fish in there.” So if he’s to trust the evidence of his own senses, and he sees that a local issue has been addressed, he deduces that things are getting better - all is well.