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I love this piece, Antonia, probably because it centers around a phrase you don't understand but that you offer to us anyway, to make our own meanings of (or to make collective meaning, perhaps). I have phrases and images like this that have lived with me, sometimes for decades, before I get the epiphany you mention, and suddenly, their meaning is clear. Your deep ethics of optimism made me think about the phrase "deep time work," which keeps coming up for me lately. I know that I'm supposed to be (want to be) doing deep time work right now. What does that mean? I have some ideas, but I am also following what feels like a faint but still visible trail to see where those words lead.

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I read your "what does it mean? what does it mean?" in the voice of Jack Skellington. 'Tis the season, and all that.

I wondered, in this 837th rewatching of the film, at the allegories I'd missed in the previous 836 viewings. How Jack saw something and wanted it. How it thought it could just see it and recreate it based on surface observations. How he then claimed he do it even better on his first try. I'm sure this was all a lot more obvious a lot sooner to a lot of people, but it was definitely a "hey, wait..." moment for my brain this time.

And so I feel that with "the deep ethics of optimism", I am Jack who perhaps just went through the tree's door of a tree. Alice down the rabbit hole. And as much as I have my first thoughts from Brain 1 hollering in my mind about what I believe and think about it, I'm going to not. I'm going to look for the deep ethical optimism in the world and find ways to ask questions of those that are in it. Learn from the wells of others' wisdom.

I'm also going to wonder how much of this will make sense when this head cold clears and I come back to it...but until then, here we are.

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I will be thinking about the deep ethics of optimism all week. There’s something about an imperative in there, about strength and privilege and collaboration.

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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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founding

“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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Deep ethics/ exploring

we/ optimism

Thank you for sharing this line and while I don't have answers, I find an intrinsic need to respond. Because the phrase is calling me. Rather loudly, in fact. "we are exploring the deep ethics of optimism"

1st thought: what does optimism ask/require of us? Presence and positive future-orientation. Optimism asks us to be some kind of believers, to have faith; not in a religious sense, just in a human existence kind of way.

2nd thought: ethics of optimism is actually another ask: what must we sacrifice or prioritize to commit to a positive future-orientation? How might we need to wrangle our egos in that process? Against which impulses would we need to guard ourselves to tap into a collective wealth/wisdom?

3rd thought: "We are exploring" - this is not an individual undertaking which makes the prospect of shared optimism both more appealing (belonging, community) and also more complicated . The deep ethics relate to the collective and the individual's relation to the collective. to explore emphasizes open-endedness; space to seek, discover, encounter what's possible by and for the group as well as for the individual within the group.

I'm thinking too about dance as a shared human practice. Whenever I enter a room of people willing to dance, to move according to a facilitator's suggestions, I experience this sense of shared optimism. In that room, in that context, for those two hours, we take care of each other. We support and encourage each other. There is both challenge and also a lot of joy. We create something we didn't know of before. Considering the ethics that makes such an encounter possible among friendly strangers in a public space - all of it hinges on people bringing a willingness to engage with others - to see and be seen. Perhaps the depth refers to a possibility that resides in each of us, that only needs the right conditions to bloom and flourish.

Although I may be rambling, I've enjoyed thinking out loud here. Also, thank you for mentioning Care at the Core. It was a lovely surprise while reading.

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