"But I have to say there is a great feeling of despair arising among young people today".
It's hard to be motivated to violence against that which you see as beautiful, wondrous, amazing, and joyful; indeed, the greatest despair arising from wars comes from the destruction of innocence, beauty, and joy.
This widespread sense of despair arises from the disheartening chasm between climate science and political action, which cannot be bridged alone by switching off lights.
However, Kierkegaard's analysis of despair arose not simply from his interest in the human condition, but from his concern to respond to problems that he regarded as specific to the modern age.
The first of these claims might seem obvious, even when 'suffering' is understood to mean not mere pain but existential suffering, the sort of frustration, alienation and despair that arise out of our experience of transitoriness.
One only imagines the cycle of despair that could arise.
I was, however, focused on the deepening doubts arising out of Vietnam and despairing of Watergate.
Women rarely killed in a sudden blind rage; as the law required, more usually their loss of control arose from despair, like the final surrender of frayed elastic.
Often, despairing at a run of mediocre titles, a book would, "like to the lark at break of day arising," sing to me -- wake me up beyond the strongest cup of coffee.
The political elements of the story (which finds the judicial system in the pocket of a dissolute, corrupt businessman) connect with another, more pervasive, more universal, and, ultimately, more radical vision of generational battles that arise from existential despair: the struggle to reconcile oneself to a broken world that draws on the past to harness the virtuous to perpetuate the evil.
Johann Sebastian Bach wrote his last great choral composition the Mass in B minor (BWV 232) to express the alternating emotions of loneliness, despair, joy and rapture that arise as conscience reflects on a departed human life.
