Believe it or not, I have actually found that, paradoxically, cultivating hopelessness even helps me concentrate on studying material that might otherwise be quite boring.
"Have you eaten yet?"
Really, this is what is important.
"Have you got a place to lay your head?"
The demands we make become less the more hopelessness we cultivate.
I don't expect to be filled with enthusiasm about ANYTHING. I don't expect anyone to be thrilled, excited, or amazed with anything I tell them.
Some might say, with an attitude like yours, why not just kill yourself?
Uhm ... because my body wants to breathe and stay alive. It's what it does. It (the Will) has a mind of its own.
To the point: How does deliberately cultivating hopelessness help me stay focused on difficult knowledge that I am interested in learning? Well, first of all, sensing I don't stand a chance of mastering something, I am content with the mere process of exploration and investigation.
So, yes, hopelessness does make adversity easier to deal with. It feels liberating to say and write things that are just so counter to the mantras of polite ther-ape-utic society.
Without hope of ever doing anything productive with what I am studying, it really comes down to raw will-less interest as a purely cerebral activity.
And yet ... I don't want to appear as though I am an ingrate. Just because I am not enthusiastic does not mean I am not impressed. I am impressed with what the Industrial World produces when it comes to computer technology. No, I certainly don't want to sound as though I don't appreciate having a full stomach, access to textbooks to study if I am motivated to do so, and even the general education I received growing up.
How does one go about expressing inner frustration or general dissatisfaction without sounding like a "whiner". Do I need to quote Thomas Ligotti for my own sake, since he expressed it so well?
Hearken well: “None of us wants to hear spoken the exact anxieties we keep locked up inside ourselves. Smother that urge to go spreading news of your pain and nightmares around town. Be sure to get on with things or we will get on without you.” (Ligotti)
Disillusionment can be a very desirable and empowering state of mind: Ligotti says, “At this time I’ve run out of other people that I want to be. My ideal persona these days is that of an inmate in a minimum security prison. That really seems like the good life to me.”
In Thomas Ligotti’s “My Case For Retributive Action,” the protagonist reflects, “I’ve even come to believe that the world itself, by its very nature, is unendurable.”
Thomas Ligotti wrote:
And if we do not feel good, we should act as if we do. If you act happy, then you will become happy—everybody in the workaday world knows that. If you do not improve, then someone must assume the blame. And that someone will be you. We are on our way to the future, and no introverted melancholic is going to impede our progress. You have two choices: start thinking the way God and your society want you to think or be forsaken by all. The decision is yours, since you are a free agent who can choose to rejoin the world of fabricated reality—civilization, that is—or stubbornly insist on … what? That we should rethink how the whole world transacts its business? That we should start over from scratch, questioning all the ways and means that delivered us to a lofty prominence over the amusement park of creation? Try to be realistic. We made our world just the way nature and the Lord wanted us to make it. There is no starting over and no going back. No major readjustments are up for a vote. And no nihilistic head case is going to get a bad word in edgewise. The universe was created by the Creator, goddamn it. We live in a country we love and that loves us back. We have families and friends and jobs that make it all worthwhile. We are somebodies, as we spin upon this good earth, not a bunch of nobodies without names or numbers or retirement plans. None of this is going to become unraveled by a thought criminal who contends that the world is not double plus good and never will be and who believes that anyone is better off dead than alive. Our lives may not be unflawed—that would deny us a future to work toward—but if this charade is good enough for us, then it should be good enough for you. So if you cannot get your mind right, try walking away. You will find no place to go and no one who will have you. You will find only the same old trap the world over. It is the trap of tomorrow. Love it or leave it—choose which and choose fast. You will never get us to give up our hopes, demented as they may seem. You will never get us to wake up from our dreams. Your opinions are not certified by institutions of authority or by the middling run of humanity, and therefore whatever thoughts may enter your chemically imbalanced brain are invalid, inauthentic, or whatever dismissive term we care to assign to you who are only “one of those people.” So get the hell out if you can. But we are betting that when you start hurting badly enough, you will come running back. If you are not as strong as Samson — that no-good suicide and slaughterer of Philistines — then you will return to the trap. Do you think we are morons? We have already thought everything that you have thought. The only difference is that we have the proper and dignified sense of futility not to spread that nasty news. Our shibboleth: “Up the Conspiracy and down with Consciousness.”Its funny when you think that depression is actually not an aberration but the removal of all defense mechanisms and the stripping of consciousness to nakedness… how it flies in the face of all these mental institutions who want to to talk us into thinking “positive” or medicate us to correct the chemical “imbalance”.
Again, don't get me wrong. I appreciate food, clothing, shelter, the computers, the access to text-books and other literature, tobacco, coffee, the presence of a mother who accepts me and even respects me ... It's just that I can't bring myself to be too enthusiastic about anything. How instantaneously these comforts can be taken from us!
I think I am afraid to become too attached to anything. Look, can't you imagine?
I guess I am fortunate to be comfortable with being who I am, so comfortable that I am not ashamed to admit that deciding to dedicate myself to studying C++ STL and seeing how generic programming could become a mathematical discipline is the focus of my existence with no major goals in mind. I am fortunate that I do not internalize the labels dished out by the System. They presume to treat me like a child carted off to detention or coached into a dead-end job.
Cultivating hopelessness may make one stronger.