Want to change the world? Then you'd better give up on self-defeating pessimism | Kenan Malik

A fatalistic worldview was once the preserve of conservatives. Now, from racism to the climate crisis, it has come to colonise much of the leftHe quickly apologised for his crassness but the archbishop of Canterbury's comparison of politicians who fail to tackle climate change with those in the 1930s who appeased the Nazis was not simply crass. It illustrated how many imagine that the best means of arousing political concern is by painting as dark a picture as possible of social problems. And few things today speak more of evil than the Holocaust.The kind of facile optimism that a figure such as Boris Johnson exudes is deeply obnoxious. It's a way of avoiding the issues, of pretending that we can resolve our problems by not thinking deeply about them, but by simply asserting "we can do it". Continue reading...