Times may be tough, but opti­mism will win the day. Cul­ti­vat­ing opti­mism will help see us through cyn­i­cism and the threats of a loom­ing dark age.

Cyn­i­cism is easy. Spend five min­utes check­ing the day’s news and you may well con­clude that cyn­i­cism is the most appro­pri­ate response to glob­al instances of cor­rup­tion, pol­lu­tion, and cru­el­ty. Any­one who argues that human nature is innate­ly nasty has a pletho­ra of evi­dence to use in their favor. A defeatist atti­tude might be tempt­ing, espe­cial­ly when the alter­na­tive, opti­mism, can be frankly exhaust­ing to uphold.

It is extreme­ly tir­ing to hold high expec­ta­tions that are repeat­ed­ly beat­en down. The act of striv­ing for some­thing makes us vul­ner­a­ble to the pos­si­bil­i­ty of defeat. Yet, there is strength in vulnerability.

Despite the stren­u­ous path required by opti­mism, only through dif­fi­cult exer­tion can worth­while gains be made. The cyn­ic might appre­ci­ate the com­fort of often being proven right, but this kind of vic­to­ry leaves no last­ing mean­ing. Instead, we believe in build­ing a con­struc­tive lega­cy. To this effect, opti­mism remains the only viable atti­tude for build­ing a bet­ter future.

To do bet­ter in life, it is nec­es­sary to first believe that improve­ment is pos­si­ble. We must have the desire to cre­ate the con­di­tions in which joy may flour­ish, and this cir­cum­stance must be dri­ven by an uncon­di­tion­al love for human­i­ty. We may crit­i­cize our cur­rent states of mod­ern soci­ety, but only as a means for chal­leng­ing our­selves to do bet­ter. A mis­an­thrope might make some astute obser­va­tions, but has no real chance of mak­ing actu­al improve­ments in the world. Opti­mists must first accept real­i­ty, and then demand more from what is pos­si­ble. In fact, a rig­or­ous under­stand­ing of the more unpleas­ant real­i­ties of the world is required in order to devel­op an ana­lyt­i­cal frame­work that can seek to actu­al­ly address these issues.

Each phase of his­to­ry has its own unique con­text and speci­fici­ties. Com­par­isons can often con­fuse facts. For instance, we don’t need to fool our­selves into believ­ing a blan­ket state­ment about how glob­al eco­nom­ic con­di­tions are all around bet­ter than they once were. As anthro­pol­o­gist Dr. Jason Hick­el point­ed out dur­ing his dis­cus­sion with Nima Shi­razi and Adam John­son titled, “The Neolib­er­al Opti­mism Indus­try”, in Novem­ber of 2018, “the per capi­ta income gap between the Glob­al North and the Glob­al South has tripled since 1960.”⁵ While it’s impor­tant to be opti­mistic that unjust con­di­tions can improve with the right mix of activism and pol­i­cy, it’s cru­cial we all work to gain a clear­er under­stand­ing of why cer­tain con­di­tions exist as they do. Most of all, we must not be sat­is­fied with over­sim­pli­fied con­jec­tures from peo­ple at the top of the eco­nom­ic totem that allow self-con­grat­u­la­tions for phil­an­thropic efforts. Phil­an­thropy is impor­tant, but what’s even more impor­tant is rebuild­ing a glob­al eco­nom­ic sys­tem that sup­plies a fair dis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth through­out all stra­ta of society.

Rather than debate whether or not con­di­tions are bet­ter than they once were, we must exam­ine whether con­di­tions are as good as we can pos­si­bly make them. That ques­tion can form a guid­ing mantra for any project seek­ing col­lec­tive improve­ment: “Are things as good as they could be? And, more sig­nif­i­cant­ly, what do we need to do to ensure that con­di­tions are as ben­e­fi­cial as pos­si­ble?” These are the ques­tions we believe are essen­tial for craft­ing a pos­i­tive meta-par­a­digm for sys­temic change. We envi­sion a future in which areas like health­care and edu­ca­tion, are not mat­ters of indus­try with win­ners and losers, but rather birthrights in which every­one can participate.