This Is No Way to Live

Feelings of powerlessness can be insidious.

Kelly Hayes

Kelly Hayes

— 10 min read
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Greetings, friends.

I have been frustrated, achy, and deep in thought lately, but I wanted to reach out with a few reflections and some must-read pieces that I think help illuminate this moment.

This Is No Way to Live

On Tuesday evening, as the anxiety, hurt and fear of millions settled into an uneasy and impermanent sense of relief, one sentiment was widely expressed: this is no way to live. This cycle of dread and panic, of being driven to the edge at full speed before someone slams the brakes, harms our nervous systems, and has the potential to break our spirits. Many people seemed acutely aware of this yesterday, after word broke that the threatened annihilation of the Iranian people had been forestalled, at least for the moment, and a shaky and incomplete ceasefire had been established. It wasn’t entirely clear what had caused this shift. Did Tuesday mark some kind of economic and strategic deadline, after which damages would be utterly unsustainable for the United States? Was Trump simply blustering out of desperation to meet that deadline? Did he plan to follow through with merciless attacks on civilian infrastructure, but get pushback from CENTCOM, as some have suggested? Tuesday night, all we knew for sure was that the promised attempt to wipe out “a whole civilization” had been put on hold, at least for a moment, and we wanted off this ride. 

As we awaited word about whether or not Trump’s threatened war crimes would take place, some people marched and gathered. Some connected with friends and loved ones. Many of us attended to our daily obligations and routines, however unnatural it may have felt. We attended work meetings, did housework, and watched TV. I saw someone post about not being sure whether it made sense to follow through on their daily tasks, given that all hell might break loose within hours. 

That post reminded me of my college years, when I was steeped in a near-fatal depression. On a regular basis, I would find myself debating whether I should do my homework, or whether I would kill myself that night. If I was going to die, did I really want to spend my remaining hours doing homework? But if I didn’t die, I would be annoyed the next day that I hadn’t done my work. This conundrum, which may sound ridiculous, was real for me. I found the world unbearably bleak, and I didn’t understand how other people could move through their lives without feeling hounded and haunted by atrocity and human cruelty. I survived, not because I had any particular purpose or will to live, but on impulse, and every day was a battle of impulses. The most fundamental instinct, to keep breathing, squared off with a desire to disappear completely.

I know too much about surviving a hopeless existence to be willing to live that way. 

One problem I had back then that I don’t have now is that I lacked healthy fears. I don’t view fear as an enemy. Fear is a primal communication. But our responses to that communication can also overwhelm and confuse us, distorting our sense of what is happening and to whom.

There is a difference between fearing catastrophe and living inside its blast radius. Many people in the United States were terrified yesterday, and not without reason. But our terror can also become a kind of narcissism if we allow visions of our own destruction to eclipse the realities other people are already enduring. Fears of nuclear war and its cascading consequences were not unreasonable, but the more likely scenario was the non-nuclear devastation of bridges and power plants in Iran. People in the United States are more responsive to horror when it brushes up against us in some way. We are not unique in this regard, but we have too often had the luxury of exempting ourselves from reckoning with the damage caused by the US government and US corporations abroad. That pattern has created a social weakness fascists can exploit: yanking us around by our fears when it suits them, and battering us into moral resignation in the face of other people’s suffering.

Meanwhile, in Iran, people were forming human chains outside power plants, using their bodies to tell a story about what they and their families stood to lose. Some people scoffed at these efforts, citing reports that Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian had called on people to take these actions. Those dismissals struck me as a refusal to hold complexity. Mere weeks ago, the Iranian people were protesting for change, but now, they are a people under attack. Their lives, their communities, and the infrastructure that sustains them are under threat. Under such conditions, even people who oppose a regime may find themselves in uneasy alignment with it, because foreign aggression can collapse internal contradictions into a struggle for collective survival.

Even people who seek to undermine or transform the systems they depend on will often defend those systems when they are under threat. People who want their society and lives to be organized differently still have individual and collective needs that are tied to extant systems and infrastructure. Those bonded needs lead to defensive postures, such as people forming human chains outside power plants in Iran, or people in the US fighting for some semblance of American democracy—no matter how broken and unsatisfying that system may have been. People will defend the systems they depend on, rather than simply spiral into oblivion. 

When I saw images of Iranians holding hands outside power stations, I felt a sense of kinship. They were reaching for each other, and also reaching for other everyday people around the world. They were making a moral appeal, and it was heard, however powerless I may have felt as I received it. As a person who has a long history of protesting, I must admit, I have been at a loss as I have tried to imagine what people of conscience might do to effectively counter this war. Large-scale, symbolic demonstrations of our disapproval are clearly inadequate. The public never approved of this war. The mad king didn’t care. If we sought to cause disruption and inflict economic pain, in an effort to create leverage, we could never hope to create the level of disruption and economic havoc that Trump himself has caused. Such dead end thoughts have left many people exasperated and unsure of how to proceed. 

So, yesterday, we waited. Some in the streets, some in our living rooms, some at work. Some scrolling, some weeping, some reaching for one another. 

We waited. 

I waited. 

Perfectly still, and yet barreling toward a cliff’s edge. 

And then someone hit the brakes.

This is no way to live, we said. And it isn’t.

So, what do we do? 

When I was a young person, lost in suicidal depression, it took years for me to find my way out. We don’t have years to sort through this. Hell, I am lucky I had years then. Each day was a dance with catastrophe that could have been the end, and the same is true for us here, while an unstable man wields nuclear authority.

When I don’t know what to do, I often check in with myself about what I do know. I know that simply reenacting normalcy while the president threatens to wipe out civilizations is wrecking us. Yesterday, I never questioned whether Iran would comply with Trump’s demand for an “unconditional surrender.” I knew they wouldn’t. But I did worry about our potential surrender. People of conscience in the United States have been demoralized in recent years by our inability to stop the genocide in Gaza. Feelings of powerlessness can be insidious. When the violence of one’s oppressor feels inevitable, when people don’t know how to stop what’s happening, the risk of moral surrender is real. Will we allow our sense of empathy to become dull and fade? Will we tune out the violence our military inflicts? Will we give up on these families and strangers overseas, who are holding hands and encircling the infrastructure that sustains their lives? Will we give up on each other, and stop defending our neighbors?

The empathy you feel for Trump’s targets is not, in and of itself, a rebellion against fascism, but we will never win without it. We have to keep reaching for each other. We must gather, protest, and build power and connection wherever we can, because our enemies want us isolated, frightened, and alone. We have to break the pattern of trying to reenact our normal lives, as though the world isn’t being ripped apart. I don’t yet know what it looks like to meaningfully break that pattern, just as I didn’t know what it would look like to meaningfully break the patterns of my depressive youth. I only know that I was never going to find those answers alone in my room, having arguments with myself about whether it made more sense to do my homework or simply kill myself.

Survival is a collective process. We weren’t meant to do it alone, just as we weren’t meant to solve problems larger than ourselves alone. We are social beings who need each other to survive. Our courage and our potential are collective, and we will only find our way out of this together. So go to a meeting. Gather. Hold vigil. March. Talk to other people about what you do know and what you can do. Do not stop doing these things. Do not recoil and do not surrender.

ICYMI

Last week, I shared a conversation with Tanuja Jagernauth about conflict resolution. It’s the first in a two-episode arc on this steadily requested topic. Conflict is nothing new to our movements, but in this chaotic, high-stakes political moment, finding common ground can be harder than ever. In the latest episode of Movement Memos, Tanuja and I discuss the language people use to describe harm and conflict, the difference between disagreement and abuse, and how organizers can move through conflict with more clarity and care under fascist conditions. You can listen to Movement Memos wherever you get your podcasts.

Must-Reads

Here are some of the most important articles I’ve read lately. I’ve divided them into categories because there’s a lot going on.

War

The War at Home

The Tech Onslaught

  • ‘Creepy Surveillance’: Why Some Cities are Shutting Down Flock Cameras Amid Privacy Concerns by George Chidi. “A bifurcation is emerging between cities that view the cameras as a relatively inexpensive enhancement to an overstretched police force – and a mechanism for generating ticket revenue – and those that do not want to be held responsible for assisting federal immigration enforcement while ICE engages in politically toxic behavior.”
  • As AI Breathes Down Our Necks, It’s Time for a Luddite Renaissance by John Nichols. “The great value of the Luddites for the purposes of our contemporary discourse is that they mounted an informed resistance to a warped definition of progress that threatened not just their livelihoods but their humanity.”
  • What Teens Are Doing With Those Role-Playing Chatbots by Kashmir Hill. “When I was a bored teenager, I would read a book, or bike to the community pool, or watch TV, or call a friend. These kids chat up a bot.”
  • Welcome to the Technocracy by Anton Cebalo. “[Howard] Scott would form a movement known as Technocracy Incorporated, which by 1933, at the height of the Great Depression, boasted hundreds of thousands of members. Its followers took an oddly fascist look.”

In Closing

Thanks, as always, for reading and thinking with me. I know these are difficult times to stay present and engaged. I hope something here helped you feel a little less alone, or a little more oriented. Please take care of yourselves and each other, and keep reaching for one another.

Much love,

Kelly

Organizing My Thoughts is a reader-supported newsletter. I’ve been losing a significant number of paid subscriptions lately as more people face financial strain, and I completely understand that reality. These are hard times, and I hope we all see better days soon. Paid subscriptions are what allow me to keep this work accessible to everyone, because I won’t put it behind a paywall. If you’re in a position to pitch in and support the creation of these letters, interviews, essays, reports, and lists, I would be grateful for your support.

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