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Despair is Exhausting
And dangerously self-fulfilling
From MAGA on the right to some alarmists on the left, fears of imminent collapse seem to be everywhere. With increasing frequency, our problems are described as existential.
It’s not that many of the problems being described aren’t real and worthy of more attention than we are giving them. However, doom and gloom are not, as many seem to suppose, synonymous with realism.
Extreme pessimism, like all extremisms, suffers from tunnel vision. It simply can’t envision a reality beyond the narrow negative perspective it offers and ends up steering us into the very cul-de-sac it pretends to be attempting to avoid.
That humanity as a whole has never had it so good and that climate change poses a serious threat to the prosperity that we have achieved can both be true. Likewise, the claim that the world is experiencing less violence than at any known previous point in our history and that too many are still suffering from the consequences of war and other forms of violence can also both be equally valid statements.
Hope should not be blind, but neither should despair and resignation. Our individual and collective faith in our capacity to overcome problems must be grounded in an awareness of the challenges we have overcome in the past, and the lessons learned…
