Candid Conversations: Hope on Empty

When Party Lines Start to Fade

I have been thinking a lot about what happens when hope runs out. When faith in leaders turns into shrugging indifference, and indifference slips into despair. That is usually when nihilism finds a home.

I had a quick conversation with my father recently. We have always been able to talk politics, local and international. By my next entry, the country where my story began will have held its 15th general election since gaining its independence in 1962. Sixty-three constituencies, two main parties, and 32 seats needed for a clear majority.

In the last election, the Jamaica Labour Party won a landslide victory with 49 seats in the 63-member House of Representatives. The People’s National Party took the remaining 14. Now the PNP is trying to block the JLP from winning a third term, pushing the line “Time Come.” The JLP, on the other hand, is asking people to stick with “prosperity.”

Trading Places, Missing the Point ™️

My dad was once pretty active in one of the parties, the one that called itself for the people, by the people. The other leaned more fiscally conservative, closer to the business class.

Like many other nations, Jamaica is marked by episodes of violence and unrest. Still, I notice something very different now: supporters from opposing sides campaigning together, in streets echoing with cheers of ‘unity.  I did not grow up seeing that. Which, if you ask me, already feels like a small kind of victory.

I was telling him about campaigning, how politicians play on voters’ emotions, tugging at insecurities just to collect votes. I told him how I once wanted to be a politician, a voice of the people. That desire has faded. But I understand that if you want change, you cannot just stand outside it. You have to be part of it. So I remain open, if the moment aligns in a way that feels right.

I told him what I really believe. Die-hard partisan politics is the worst thing for a nation. Nobody can see the greater good unless they are in charge. Too many representatives are wired to think all good ideas must come from themselves.

History shows us enough. Failures, missed chances, and the rare successes. But we miss the lesson. Instead, we campaign in a way that only feeds division. And what happens when a nation stops believing in its leaders. Hope drains out. Despair creeps in. And from despair, nihilism follows.

My Whaleminded friend once told me: never be so desperate that you will drink poison. That line stuck. Times are shifting. Desperation is no longer the fuel that drives people. They are asking for transparency. They want the full picture, the raw truths, so they can decide for themselves.

Up the Down Escalator ⬆️⬇️

I have written about Nietzsche before. How I used to doubt his philosophy, and how over time  I have grown more curious. In Thus Spoke Zarathustra he wrote simply: God is dead. And we have killed him.

He was not writing to shock. He was describing a rupture. The collapse of shared belief in a higher order, whether divine, moral, or institutional. If there is no transcendent reference point, no agreed-upon moral compass, then what guides us.

He feared the void. That in killing God, society would also kill the values, the order, the meaning that flowed from belief. What would be left but an abyss where nothing feels sacred. Where every truth is treated as relative, negotiable, or meaningless.

When Nothing Matters 🚫

That is nihilism. Not just the idea that life has no inherent meaning. The slow erosion of trust, purpose, values. It shows up in everyday life. In leaders who lie without consequence. In institutions that no longer inspire confidence. In people who shrug at corruption and say that is just the way it is.

To a nihilist, the glass is not half full or half empty. It does not matter, because the glass itself has no meaning. Fate is fatal. Hope is a trick we play on ourselves before the end.

But Nietzsche was not only despairing. He left an opening. If old foundations crumble, we are challenged to build new ones. Not by retreating into illusions, but by creating values that are life-affirming, resilient, and true. Nihilism is the danger. But it is also the doorway.

At the end of it, we all desire the same thing. The right simply to be. Bob Marley once put it plainly: every man was once a baby.

And maybe that is where we begin again. Not with power. With presence. Not with ruling. With recognizing that we are all born into the same fragility, the same need for meaning, the same hope that life can be more than despair.

Picking Up the Pieces 🧩

Maybe the beginning is not with grand slogans or rallies. Maybe it is in the smallest acts of repair. A conversation where listening matters more than winning. A dialogue where the goal is clarity, not conquest.

Nihilism whispers that nothing matters. The challenge is to prove it wrong in stubborn ways. To pick up what is broken, even when no one is watching. To claim the scraps nobody else will claim. Every nation is built from the floor up, not the podium down.

I am not proposing utopia. I am not offering a blueprint. Just this. That we take responsibility for our own garbage, literal and otherwise.

Meaning is not handed down from a pulpit or a parliament. It is made. Piece by piece. Conversation by conversation. But meaning does not erase the darkness. It only gives us a reason to face it.

And the darkness does not leave.

It shows up in the empty promises that never materialize.

It clings to the scandals that fade without consequence.

It waits in the potholes nobody fixes.

It lives in the silence of people too tired to demand better, both in our personal lives and in society. 

If we choose to rebuild, we must do it knowing collapse can come again. That tension, between despair and the work of repair, might be the closest thing to honest hope we have left. If not for us, then it must be for those who follow our footsteps.