Optimism

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.

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.

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.”