Optimism

Awash in a bleak mediascape, I had simply assumed that optimism had been long exiled to the realm of corny naivete, gone the way of “Live, Laugh, Loving” and #Girlbossing. So it came as a shock when my TikTok feed started filling up with posts about the “Indomitable Human Spirit.”

If you find yourself in a culture of Tension, the best way to move that culture forward is to create a sense of clarity and opportunity. Show people what’s possible. Even better, show people what they could be capable of.

This is a time to inspire and allow people to see themselves in a new world. Give them something to dream about. Turn them into e

Different as it sounds, this kind of triumphalism had something in common with paralysed heartbreak. One rested in arrogant assurance, while the other rested in despair. Both saw the future as something offstage, rather than as the thing we were always creating in every moment, whether we acknowledged it or not. And both forgot that essential truth

Metamodernism is thus also more optimistic than modernism as it strives to go beyond its shortcomings, and thus inherently more optimistic than postmodernism, which lacks faith in modernity and its metanarrative of progress.

We should be optimistic not because our problems are smaller than we thought, but because our capacity to solve them is larger than we thought.

Optimism is the meta that defines the rate of progress, and progress translates into longer, healthier, wealthier, and happier lives for more people.

Optimists move the world forward. There’s something deeply optimistic about entrepreneurship, the idea that it’s possible to create things that have never existed, and find a market for them.

No proven resources or technologies can sustain economic growth. The status quo will plateau. To expect growth is to believe in future technologies. To expect very long-term growth is to believe in science fiction.