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Chad O's avatar

“The deep ethics of optimism“. I love this phrase. Have I sent you my post from 2017, Accepting Hopelessness, before? I think maybe I was exploring the same idea, but didn’t have this potent phrase. https://blog.entire.life/accepting-hopelessness-a3abd225eae9

I think maybe there’s two basic paths: 1) giving up / nihilism / not trying to improve anything except your own situation, or 2) acting like there’s some possibility of the world getting better, no matter how improbable it seems. Action despite hopelessness. The latter is the deeper ethic. To choose optimism.

(Which, as it turns out, has become the unofficial motto of my hometown, in recent years. “Choose optimism.“ You know shit is bad if that’s your town motto 😅)

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Emily Kaminsky's avatar

In supporting young Congolese refugee artists who have lived in refugee settlement camps for more than half their young lives, I've come up close and personal to the conundrum of optimism. How does one maintain any sense of optimism when due to lack of clean water, health care and food people around you are dying and there is now way out? I never have an answer for the big questions my sweet informally adopted brother of 22, the leader of this artist collective, asks... Why me? How do I continue? How is this life so hard and injust for some of us? Recently after one of these conversations, he and the artists decided to travel 2 hours to the local mountain where they played games, danced,.and sang. Just a few weeks later they visited new refugees from DRC and played games and painted hands and faces. The deep ethics of optimism also eludes me and I don't suggest that any optimism is what's at play when the artists trek to the mountain, regroup and paint at an open market, or bring joy through art to new refugee children. I think it's a deep ethic of "when you have nothing left to do, always love". Optimism is derived from the Latin "best". Maybe it's about being out best selves even in the absolute worst circumstances?

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