It is difficult not to feel despondent when thinking of the unfathomable power that presently blooms across the world in thinking, inventing, making, striving for dignity, giving meaning, while living in the leading capitalist, repressive, greedy, most militarized nation in the world. Sadness is part of the trick one needs to be aware of, as Deleuze says in his course on Spinoza (1978) on the use of that affect:

How is it that people who have power, in any field, need to affect us in a sad way? Sad passions would be necessary. To inspire sad passions is necessary for the exercise of power. And Spinoza says, in the theological-political treatise, that this is the deep connection between the despot and the priest, they need the sadness of their subjects. There, you understand that he does not take sadness in a vague sense, he takes sadness in the rigorous sense that he was able to give it […] According to Spinoza, we are manufactured into spiritual automats.