I’ve been thinking about this image.

It’s older, from circa 2013, and shockingly difficult to find concrete information on–including the photographer, where I list the only attribution I could find. This is Tiananmen Square in Beijing. It may well no longer be an accurate picture of Beijing; I’ve found mixed reports online. But best I can tell it is a moment in time that existed. (I recall seeing it years back, before generative AI, although we seem to have collectively forgotten in the pre-genAI age we just used Photoshop to gin up fake photos.)

This photo came up in communities or publications dedicated to the idea of dystopia, or cyberpunk, or climate, etc, either as a focus on the concrete reality of pollution itself, or as a focus on the sort of government that would demand that you pretend 2+2=5,* or as an example of the desperate self-placation humans perform in despair. Something sinister, in other words, something unsettling. Something desperate. The profound beauty the prisoner finds in the one star he can see from his cell, the ability to fixate on hope and optimism even in the most desperate conditions.

One of these perceptions sees humans as acting out of despair, the other sees humans as adaptive, relentlessly optimistic creatures. Ultimately it is the same thing — placing a simulation of beauty where it is not — but one interpretation focuses on futility, the other on resilience and hope. “Someday we can have this sky; we just have to hang on,” that sort of thing.

There is the discomfort with the fact that we need such desperate hope in the first place, and then there is the heart taken in realizing humans can find hope when it is needed. The question being — is it artificial hope ‘forced’ upon the people by a government trying to placate them?

I do not know if it matters. Not when it comes to contemplating a possible future.

By all means, criticize the governments and global systems responsible for getting us here in the first place. Burn it down. Demand accountability and restitution. But the fact that humans look for hope and beauty, itself, I do not see as damning. It is what will keep us moving forward through the ashes, through the dark reckoning times.

Take refuge, but never stop moving forward.

Or, as that one viral video says, “Take it easy! But, take it!”

*I also wanted to add “a government that would demand you say you see five lights”, but something about the TNG comparison did not seem ‘true’ in the way the Orwell comparison did, even in the sense that it is a criticism somebody would make. I am thinking about why this is.