I absolutely love this article, and I’ve found myself revisiting it in my head over the last few weeks every time I encounter every new thinkpiece about god knows what.
There are many very real, very terrible, and very important things in the world that need to be addressed. At the same time, there are very lovely, and very beautiful, and even very novel things as well. If we’re unable to celebrate those good (and even benign) things, we’re setting ourselves up for nothing but misery.
The fantastic book The Happiness Hypothesis touches on the topic of “how can anyone be happy when there is so much suffering in the world?” It’s a great, valid question, and the author does a fantastic job at addressing it. I won’t do it justice trying to explain it here, so I’d highly recommend you read the book. The whole thing is fantastic.
I believe that progressive-leaning people are coming from a good place and want what’s best for their fellow humans. But I also think progressives run the risk of coming across as Perpetually Upset, which can make it hard to win more moderate people over to their side. We need everyone who believes in human decency to band together in order to make progress happen.