Is that a saying, "Be skeptical, not cynical"?
I just heard it and like it a lot. The opposite of cynical is not gullible, but "inquiring".
Skeptic, from French sceptique, or via Latin from Greek skeptikos, from skepsis ‘inquiry, doubt’.
An unknown person left a comment that I suspect is one of those advertisements that are disguised as personalized comments.
(I deleted it.)
They commented that my post with Dante's lines about being lost at midlife was a message I should change my life, and went on to suggest a job site.
Dante advises me to change my life?
You mean, to go to hell?
Hey, it's a game!
Better, this, below, from Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark, (via Brain Pickings).
It's my mushroom analogy, applied to social change. Visible change is the fruiting body of a complex, often invisible life form (us!).
I keep thinking along those lines---that we are living in scary and dangerous times of great opportunity.
That doesn't mean we must rush out and DO something "great".
I sometimes burden myself with this expectation.
It comes from the Great Man theory--the idea that some exceptional individual makes the tides turn.
No.
Rather, through INQUIRING acts––thinking, writing, and speaking––I want to/we can keep the underground filaments humming, like telegraph wires.
This is important. It is the microcosm under so-called great acts.
Solnit writes:
I just heard it and like it a lot. The opposite of cynical is not gullible, but "inquiring".
Skeptic, from French sceptique, or via Latin from Greek skeptikos, from skepsis ‘inquiry, doubt’.
UPDATE: I was a little too skeptical! The "unknown person" I refer to below ––who I'd thought was a disguised advertiser–– is, in fact, a real person and not a bot, a troll, or Ivanka in disguise!
My apologies.
An unknown person left a comment that I suspect is one of those advertisements that are disguised as personalized comments.
(I deleted it.)
They commented that my post with Dante's lines about being lost at midlife was a message I should change my life, and went on to suggest a job site.
Dante advises me to change my life?
You mean, to go to hell?
Hey, it's a game!
Better, this, below, from Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark, (via Brain Pickings).
It's my mushroom analogy, applied to social change. Visible change is the fruiting body of a complex, often invisible life form (us!).
I keep thinking along those lines---that we are living in scary and dangerous times of great opportunity.
That doesn't mean we must rush out and DO something "great".
I sometimes burden myself with this expectation.
It comes from the Great Man theory--the idea that some exceptional individual makes the tides turn.
No.
Rather, through INQUIRING acts––thinking, writing, and speaking––I want to/we can keep the underground filaments humming, like telegraph wires.
This is important. It is the microcosm under so-called great acts.
Solnit writes:
"After a rain mushrooms appear on the surface of the earth as if from nowhere. Many do so from a sometimes vast underground fungus that remains invisible and largely unknown.And, more from Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark:
Uprisings and revolutions are often considered to be spontaneous, but less visible long-term organizing and groundwork — or underground work — often laid the foundation. Changes in ideas and values also result from work done by writers, scholars, public intellectuals, social activists, and participants in social media. "
“This is an extraordinary time full of vital, transformative movements that could not be foreseen.
It’s also a nightmarish time.
Full engagement requires the ability to perceive both.
. . .
"It’s important to say what hope is not: it is not the belief that everything was, is, or will be fine. The evidence is all around us of tremendous suffering and tremendous destruction.
The hope I’m interested in is about broad perspectives with specific possibilities, ones that invite or demand that we act. It’s also not a sunny everything-is-getting-better narrative, though it may be a counter to the everything-is-getting-worse narrative.
"You could call it an account of complexities and uncertainties, with openings."
