Our emotional experience of a place is never the true, actual reality, but that doesn’t mean those feelings don’t matter.

I’m not out here to shame anybody who is more fatalistic, who feels the call to ring alarm bells, to shout the direness of this moment from the rooftops. That’s an important part of social change. Alarm bells don’t ring themselve... See more

At that point, we tend to fall back on one of three defense mechanisms, where we abandon our curiosity, our ambition, or both: Cynicism: Doomscrolling, passing up opportunities, poking fun at earnest people. Like the Beast before he meets Belle, we see transformation as a source of meaningless work, and we abandon any desire to build a good life. W

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