I remember when I first got involved in an anarchist group, two things stand out to me from that time, the first is how ridiculously overconfident I was, after about two weeks in the group I wrote a seven thousand word article on the radical changes I would make to the group I joined (which wasn't half bad in my humble opinion).

Secondly was the sense of resignation I got from some of the people around me after a few meetings and actions. I was confused by how the people there didn't seem to have any urgency, they didn't really seem to explain why they did some of the things they did, they just did them out of duty.

Pretty quickly I found a few other people who were also overconfident and ready to get very active, they had the same sense of urgency I did and it felt good, we were all new but were learning, very slowly, together. There were around seven of us in that little cohort, out of them, three have pretty much completely stopped organising politically, two moved away (one has also stopped organising completely, the other I don't know where he is or what he's doing) and then two of us are still very active.

That was quite a heavy hit to take when I really thought about it, of our energetic bunch who wanted to change things and fast, around 70% don't do it anymore, there's a lot of different reasons for each of them, but for all of them, radical organising and the spaces it has led them to took their toll quite heavily.

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Two pretentious quotes I quite like are from Malatesta and Seneca

"if one suffocates the revolutionary spirit... every advantage will prove illusory and ephemeral, and in all cases will bar the roads to the future society."

"If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable."

I really don't blame people for being pessimistic and I don't want to sound like a religous style marxist who is so sure the revolution is just the round the corner, but sometimes I'm so tired of feeling like one of the only ones in the room who isn't completely pessimistic about our chances of doing anything good or positive. As Seneca captures, without any aim or hope everything just feels useless and negative, I want to do things and I want to win. This isn't a dig at a specific political position, I've found this resignation to the situation and acceptance we've already lost isn't tied to any one tendency.

I'm angry when I hear the exact same arguments used by radicals that I've heard before almost word for word in workplace contexts, this complete confidence in failure I've seen over and over when organising for a union and even in people who support the union it cripples their ability to take action.

One of the earliest things I really organised was when I tried organising for the School Strike for Climate aged about 17, what I was really struck by was that the people I spoke to didn't disagree with me almost universally everyone agreed enthusiastically with my points but they felt that overall, nothing can be done, we've already lost because we've already lost.

I expect these attitudes from normal people, depression and cynicism is the status quo (I swear I'm not gonna reference Mark Fisher in this article) but to hear the same sentiments constantly in radical spaces just grinds you down, it's so difficult constantly feeling like one of the only positive people in the room, you feel like eventually you'll just give in, join them and accept defeat. And we're the ones trying to convince others to join us!

I think about how confident I was back then and now although I still have a shred of that confidence and positivity towards anarchy I feel like I'd almost be laughed at if I spoke like I did then.

I'm not sure of anything, I don't know which way things will go, but what I'm absolutely sure of is that we have agency and can be very effective at achieving our goals, I'm tired of conversations saying "The People will never do..." We are the people too! We don't exist in a box, we're a part of the active element of society that has the ability to change things.

Fuck it I'm putting a Mark Fisher quote in anyway.

“The long, dark night of the end of history has to be grasped as an enormous opportunity. The very oppressive pervasiveness of capitalist realism means that even glimmers of alternative political and economic possibilities can have a disproportionately great effect. The tiniest event can tear a hole in the grey curtain of reaction which has marked the horizons of possibility under capitalist realism. From a situation in which nothing can happen, suddenly anything is possible again.”