In Defence of Giving Up

As dead as progressive politics may be, its spectres continue to force upon us an ethically loaded form of hope. Hope that change is around the corner, that it is not too late to keep resisting, and that in our steadfast unity we can counter the haunting vision of a catastrophic and desolate future. I would instead give a counter-suggestion: today is the time to give up. Hope is a broken category, it is a vague optimism which only further entrenches us in passive anticipation. Hope inversely justifies the same situation that we hope to get out of.

The disgraced film director Roman Polanski might be the perfect guide in this ‘call to renunciation’, not only for being yet another great artist with a depraved personal character (which there is no dearth of examples). In his 1974 film Chinatown, Jack Nicholson recounts an odd joke about the qualitatively unique forms of failure which one’s sex life is prone to. A middle-aged man visits his friend, and asks the latter for advice on how to rediscover some sexual excitement with his wife: as much as he is focused on trying to create a genuine erotic encounter, it seems he has become incapable of enjoying himself anymore. ‘You’re too invested in the problem’, his friend replies. ‘You should do it like the Chinese do. Instead of hyper-fixating on the sexual act itself, they blend it with the more important, spiritual questions: during sex they may frequently pause to read some Confucius, to meditate, or to attend to other important tasks.’

The husband decides to follow this advice, and when in bed with his wife that evening, he pauses and starts reading a book. A few minutes after resuming sleeping with his wife, he goes outside to have a cigarette. After a series of such interruption, his wife eventually exclaims, “What’s wrong with you? You’re doing it like the Chinese!” The ‘solution’ offered by the friend is the same as our optimistic solutions today: they are pre-programmed, they are easily anticipated, and ultimately act simply as a more indirect form of failure. Sex, like politics, comprises this dimension: it presupposes the very thing which would ‘correct’ it – success is converted into another, even more disappointing, instance of failure. This has been the great lie of progressivism: that it truly is progressive, and not a solution that perpetuates the very regime it