This essay by Jag Bhalla, on "The Dark Origins of Optimism and its Current Cheerful Evils", is one of the best pieces I've ever read on this. Maybe the best (also many links). Enjoy.
"As Voltaire knew, optimism is often an elite-serving demon in disguise"
Rebecca Solnit: "Hope is an embrace of the unknown and the unknowable, an alternative to the certainty of both optimists and pessimists. Optimists think it will all be fine without our involvement; pessimists take the opposite position; both excuse themselves from acting. It’s the belief that what we do matters even though how and when it may matter, who and what it may impact, are not things we can know beforehand." @bookstodon#hope#socialJustice
"The #consciousness of the majority has to enlarge or that discord will be #TheEnd of us. You can’t have only personal and up close morality on a planet that now has technological capabilities to murder so many from afar…if you don’t care about others far away, eventually this will come to your doorstep.
This is why the #young who are protesting give off such #hope."
"Hard times are coming, when we’ll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope. We’ll need writers who can remember freedom — poets, visionaries — realists of a larger reality."
🇺🇦🚨 Never Forget: Russia invaded Ukraine, and the war continues. The invaders and their allies, including elected leaders in the US, are relentless in their propaganda efforts. Their objective? To promote disinformation and dehumanize Ukrainians.
But we won’t be silent. To supporters of Ukraine, let’s use social media as our shield. 🛡️