What is our future? The fact is that things are not looking too good. Relentlessly, our main project seems not to be a better future but a future filled with the death of most species on the planet and a total eco-chemical-genetic transformation of the biosphere. We should not kid ourselves here, the situation is beyond crisis. It should be understood that the climate will change in our lifetime, that entire ecosystems have been destroyed, that the oceans are already oddly empty. We have used a variety of strategies to cope with, and even push back against, this sad process - but where are we now? The hippie project has failed. The punk project has failed. The techno project has failed. Primitivism has failed, techno-utopianism has failed, the class struggle has failed. Even the dream of repurposing the destroyed wastelands of post-industrialism has been reincorporated by the dominant economy. We can take stock of where we are in relation to the promises of our elders and firmly state: transformation has not taken place. Critical problems identified years ago have gone unsolved.
The dark future can be understood as the realization that things have been going very badly for a long, long time and that there is no way to go back in time to a less disastrous circumstance. Humanity's main contribution to the planet has been to eat it, piece by piece, and now much of what has been eaten is gone forever. A critical threshold has been crossed; it has begun to become apparent that the pattern of planetary destruction is now irreversible. The bottom line is that our entire concept of civilization, our way of life - something that you are a part of no matter how greatly radical your stance - is built on terrible ideas.
What has ensued is a double bind: on the one hand leading a life of false understanding is no option for a radical and better future, but on the other hand confronting the death of the planet is so harsh as to both predict its own conclusion and lead to our own emotional destruction. Our instincts don't want to accept the horror as real. We want to believe that our existence is worthwhile and that we have been making some sort of progress. We aren't left with many options. Completely disengage from an unacceptable world and marginalize our ability to actually get anything done? Engage critically and risk simply furthering the aims of those who care little for the species that inhabit this rock? Unable to confront a world that is annihilating itself, we cling to worn out strategies. As classical positions become increasingly compromised our fear to turns to panic: a frantic clamoring to find the solution before it's too late. Locked in this escalating freak out, our real power to step outside of the world and find pathways of resistance is disappearing.
The only way out of this mess is to make the leap: yes, it is too late. No, the world cannot be saved, the polar ice caps will melt, the forests will continue to die. But a difference can still be made. The dark future enables a kind of hope because it begins, rather than ends, by accepting the current state of affairs. This is where we are. Things are not looking so good, and they are going to get worse. The flipside is that by understanding this we can return to confrontation with basic elements of existence, namely the richness of life and death and urgency of the present moment. Because darkness is a valid response, it grounds itself in reality rather than fantasy; it enables the apprehension of what needs to be done, or what it makes sense to do. Acknowledging fear and incorporating the burden of a deeply disturbing future is an angry, destroying, and bleak experience. But after the breakdown of structures the fear is gone. What follows is something that seems almost completely lost from the classical perspective: possibility.
From the perspective of politics we might say that capitalism, which sells death, fears the acceptance of death because therein it looses its ability to incite fear and control. Through darkness and confrontation with death a romantic view is able to emerge again, a life lived for emotion, sensation, and connection. Letting go into the void: ironically the dark future which signifies the failure of all utopian ideology is the vantage point enough a part of reality to offer the space for new possibilities. It is in the moment when you know you will not win but choose to act anyway that the structures of control can no longer hold.