Hopelessness in the present can liberate leaders for foolhardy millenarian ventures

Evidence

In an extreme situation a determined (self-deluded—who can tell?) young leader, unconstrained by the gritty realities of “real-life” politics, may find the courage for the most foolhardy of enterprises precisely because he and his community have nothing to hope for in the here and now. — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 556

Categorization

• APHORISMS: A compact statement about how desperation paradoxically frees people from the constraint of worldly consequences.
• XREF: connects to: Utopic certainty derives from millenarian traditions of ordained futures. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 690; Open communications plus weakened authority favor improvisational millenarian entrepreneurs — Michael Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic…, 151