Why being optimistic is a moral duty

Pritchard , ; Driver ; Hales , ; Latus , ; Hartman ; Zimmerman , , ; Coffman ; see also entry on moral luck. The modal account, as developed by Levy , defines luck by way of possible worlds without reference to indeterminism or determinism, and it classifies luck as either chancy or not chancy. An event or state of affairs occurring in the actual world is chancy lucky for an agent if i that event or state of affairs is significant for that agent; ii the agent lacks direct control over the event or state of affairs; and iii that event or state of affairs fails to occur in many nearby possible worlds; the proportion of nearby worlds that is large enough for the event to be chancy lucky is inverse to the significance of the event for the agent.

And we can say that an event is significant for an agent if she cares about the event and it can have either good or bad significance for her N.

Levy 13 —i. With regard to the second condition, we can say that an agent has direct control over an event if the agent is able with high probability to bring it about by intentionally performing a basic action and if the agent realizes that this is the case N.

Levy 19; cf. Coffman To help understand how the third condition differs in the two definitions—i. This is because i he lacks direct control over winning the lottery since there is no basic action that he can perform to bring it about, ii the event of his winning the lottery is also at least minimally significant, and iii —the modal condition—in most close possible worlds with a small divergence from the actual world, Louis does not win.

On the other hand, Elaini may be non-chancy lucky for being a genius with a high IQ in comparison with her peers Hartman 44— This is because i Elaini lacks direct control over being a genius, ii it is significant for her, and iii —the uncommon instantiation condition—being a genius is not commonly instantiated in that reference group assuming, of course, that most of her actual peers are not geniuses.

To these three conditions, we can now also add the distinction between present luck and constitutive luck. For instance:. Our mood may influence what occurs to us, and what weight we give to the considerations that do cross our mind…Our attention may wander at just the wrong moment or just the right one, or our deliberation may be primed by chance features of our environment.

Levy a: ; see also Finally, while present luck is limited to cases of chancy luck, constitutive luck can be a subspecies of both chancy and non-chancy luck since it can refer to a disposition that an agent possesses in either a chancy or a non-chancy way N.

With these definitions in place we can now return to the Luck Pincer and see how libertarian and compatibilist accounts fare against it. Libertarian accounts famously face the problem of explaining how a decision or action can be free, given the libertarian demand for indeterminacy immediately prior to directly free action.

Moral responsibility skeptics and compatibilists alike have long argued that such indeterminacy makes the action unacceptably chancy, in a way that is responsibility-undermining see, e.

Levy a, ; Mele a,b, ; Haji , , , ; van Inwagen ; Pereboom , a; for some replies see Kane ; Clarke b; Mele And it is argued that this applies to both event-causal and agent-causal versions of libertarianism see Mele ; Haji , ; N. Peter van Inwagen makes vivid the lack of control a libertarian agent has over genuinely undetermined events by considering what would happen if God rolled back the relevant stretch of history to some point prior to an undetermined event and then allowed it to unfold once more N.

Levy a: Such luck, skeptics argue, is responsibility-undermining. Compatibilist accounts of moral responsibility, on the other hand, are vulnerable to their own powerful luck objection N. Levy a, ; Haji , ; cf. Vargas b. We can divide compatibilist accounts into two main categories: historical and non-historical. If an agent, for instance, decides to donate a large sum of money to Oxfam, historical accounts of moral responsibility hold that it is important how the agent came to have such a generous nature and make the decision they did—for example, did the agent have a normal history and acquire the disposition to generosity naturally, or did a team of neuroscientists say engineer them to have a generous nature?

The main problem with historical accounts is that they cannot satisfactorily explain how agents can take responsibility for their constitutive luck. The problem here is analogous to the problem raised by manipulation arguments N. Levy a, Manipulated agents are the victims of very bad luck: the manipulation is significant for them, they lack control over its non- occurrence, and it is chancy, in as much as there are nearby possible worlds in which the manipulation does not occur N.

A historical compatibilist could respond, as they often do to manipulations cases, that as long as an agent takes responsibility for her endowments, dispositions, and values, over time she will become morally responsible for them.

Levy a: , If this argument is correct, present luck is not only a problem for libertarianism it is also a problem for historical compatibilism. And while present luck may be a bigger problem for libertarians, since they require the occurrence of undetermined events in the causal chain leading to free action, the problem it creates for historical compatibilists is nonetheless significant. With compatibilism, we need to assess the implications of present luck in conjunction with the implications of constitutive luck.

Hence, the Luck Pincer: actions are either the product of constitutive luck, present luck, or both. Non-historical accounts, on the other hand, run into serious difficulties of their own with the epistemic condition on control over action. The epistemic condition maintains that moral responsibility for an action requires that the agent understands that, and how, the action is sensitive to her behavior, as well as appreciation of the significance of that action or culpable ignorance of these facts N.

Levy ch. Rosen , , ; Zimmerman , ; Vargas a. Because the epistemic condition on control is so demanding and itself subject to the Luck Pincer, non-historical accounts of compatibilism as well as other accounts that may survive the above arguments face a serious challenge see N.

Levy , b. Consider cases of non-culpable ignorance. Imagine, for instance, that a 16 th century surgeon operates on a patient without washing his hands or sterilizing his equipment, and as a result his patient gets an infection and dies. The surgeon would not be blameworthy in this situation because he was non-culpably ignorant of the risks of non-sterilization, since germ theory was not established until much later.

In this and other cases of non-culpable ignorance, the fact that agents are ignorant of the relevant details is frequently a matter of luck—either present luck or constitutive luck or both. We can say that non-culpable ignorance is chancy lucky when an agent fails to know that p where p is significant for her , lacks direct control over whether she knows that p , and in a large proportion of nearby possible worlds does know that p.

She has a peanut allergy and I forget to inform the other parent, Dolores, at the time of drop-off. Not having received my text, Dolores proceeds to give the kids a snack with peanut butter in it, resulting in Maya having a near-fatal reaction. The 16 th century surgeon example, on the other hand, is better seen as an example of non-chancy luck, since his ignorance is the result of bad luck inasmuch as beliefs about germs vary across agents in different historical periods the relevant reference group here , rather than nearby possible worlds.

Since non-culpable ignorance is responsibility-undermining and much more common than philosophers typically think, it gives additional force to the Luck Pincer.

Thanks to luck, distant or present, agents who perform wrongful actions typically lack freedom-level control over their actions because they fail to satisfy the epistemic condition on such control N. Levy — In cases of unwitting wrongdoing, there often is no plausible candidate for a culpable benighting action that could ground blameworthiness N. Furthermore, it is often the case that we cannot reasonably demand of agents that they do not act in ways that express their epistemic vices N.

When an agent does not see that she is managing her moral views badly, it would be unfair to blame her for doing wrong if she had no internal reasons for omitting her bad behavior. This is because, when an agent is managing her moral views badly from the point of view of objective morality, it is often the case that her subjective moral values and beliefs—which ex hypothesi she does not know are wrong—are governing herself in a perfectly rational and consistent way. Since these internal moral values and beliefs are themselves a matter of luck—either present, constitutive, or both—we once again arrive at the Luck Pincer.

It would seem, then, that present luck, constitutive luck, or both, swallows all, and both libertarian and compatibilist accounts fail to preserve moral responsibility.

For a different argument based on luck for the conclusion that agents are far less morally blameworthy than we have hitherto presumed, see Haji In addition to these philosophical arguments, there have also been recent developments in the behavioral, cognitive, and neurosciences that have caused some to take moral responsibility skepticism seriously.

Chief among them have been findings in neuroscience that putatively indicate that unconscious brain activity causally initiates action prior to the conscious awareness of the intention to act see, e. Wilson ; Doris The neuroscientific threat to moral responsibility originates with the pioneering work of Benjamin Libet and his colleagues.

In their groundbreaking study on the neuroscience of movement, Libet et al. They found that the conscious intention to move which they labeled W came milliseconds before the motor act, but milliseconds after readiness potential RP —a ramp-like buildup of electrical activity that occurs in the brain and precedes actual movement.

These findings lead Libet and others to conclude that the conscious intention or decision to move cannot be the true cause of action because it comes too late in the neuropsychological sequence see Libet , ; Wegner ; Soon et al. For some scientific skeptics, these and other findings e. There are, however, powerful objections to this interpretation of the neuroscientific findings.

Some critics argue that there is no direct way to tell which conscious phenomena, if any, correspond to which neural events Mele In particular, it is difficult to determine what the readiness potential corresponds to—is it, for instance, an intention formation or decision , or is it merely an urge of some sort?

Al Mele , for instance, has forcefully argued that the readiness potential RP that precedes action by a half-second or more need not be construed as the cause of the action but rather is best interpreted as the beginning of forming an intention to act. On this reading, conscious intentions can still be causes. Levy , or the unusual nature of its experimental design Nahmias , , or to its irrelevance to moral responsibility N.

Levy a , or to alternative explanations that are less threatening Rosenthal ; Dennett These objections have led many contemporary philosophers including many skeptics to reject the neuroscientific argument for moral responsibility see, e. Levy , a; Morris There are, however, other scientific threats to moral responsibility besides those posed by neuroscience.

These findings reveal just how wide open our internal psychological processes are to the influence of external stimuli and events in our immediate environment, without knowledge or awareness of such influence.

They also reveal the extent to which our decisions and behaviors are driven by implicit biases see, e. Wilson ; Kahneman While these findings may not be enough on their own to establish global skepticism about moral responsibility, they represent a potential threat to our everyday folk understanding of ourselves as conscious, rational, responsible agents, since they indicate that the conscious mind exercises less control over our behavior than we have traditionally assumed.

This is an important concession because it acknowledges that the threat of shrinking agency Nadelhoffer remains a serious one independent of the neuroscientific concerns discussed above. The deflationary view of consciousness which emerges from these empirical findings, including the fact that we often lack transparent awareness of our true motivational states, is potentially agency undermining and could shrink the realm of morally responsible action see N.

Vargas ; K. A major point of disagreement, however, is over whether consciousness is necessary for moral responsibility, and, if so, what role or function it must serve cf. Levy a; Shepherd , a,b,c; Searle , ; Hodgson , ; Sher ; Doris , ; Nahmias ; Smith , ; Sifferd Naturalists about the mind argue that there is no longer any reason to believe in a non-physical self which controls action and is liberated from the deterministic laws of nature; a little uncaused causer capable of exercising counter-causal free will.

While most contemporary philosophers, including most compatibilists, have long given up on the idea of soul control, eliminating such thinking from our folk psychological attitudes may not be so easy and may come at a cost for some.

To whatever extent, then, such dualistic thinking is present in our folk psychological attitudes about free will and moral responsibility cf.

Nadelhoffer ; Mele , it is likely to come under pressure and require some revision as the brain sciences advance and this information reaches the general public see, e.

Of course, how and in what direction this revision will occur is an open empirical question—e. See, for example, the arguments of Shaun Nichols , ; Nichols et al. Turning now to the practical implications of moral responsibility skepticism, we can ask, what would happen if we came to accept this view? In recent years a small industry has grown up around precisely this question. Moral responsibility skeptics, on the other hand, offer up a number of different views—including illusionism Smilansky , , disillusionism Nadelhoffer , and optimistic skepticism e.

Levy ; Vilhauer a,b, , a,b; Milam , ; Smuts ; Morris, forthcoming. In recent years, empirical attempts have been made to test the practical implications of moral responsibility skepticism. Such findings seem to suggest that diminished belief in free will and moral responsibility would indeed have negative consequences. Yet such a sweeping conclusion may be too hasty.

First, some have criticized these studies on philosophical and methodological grounds see, e. There is also the question of whether the negative effects tested in these studies indicate anything about the long-term consequences of moral responsibility skepticism.

Most of these effects are short-lived and temporary. But as people become more acquainted with the skeptical perspective, and as they come to understand what it does and does not maintain, it remains possible that these effects would fade over time. A recent study by Shariff et al. The same connection between belief in free will and increased punitiveness has also been found in a number of other studies see, e.

The belief in a just world, for instance, is the belief that we live in a world where people generally get what they deserve. Given the mixed results of these empirical studies and the fact that they tell us very little about any long-term consequences of adopting the skeptical perspective, the real-life practical implications of moral responsibility skepticism remain an open question.

Perhaps, as these studies indicate, it would have both good and bad consequences. In which case, the practical question would shift to the overall balance—i. Or perhaps adopting the skeptical perspective would over time reduce or eliminate any initial negative reactions—i. An illustrative analogy might be made here with similar concerns voiced in the past about disbelief in God.

It was long argued and perhaps still is argued in certain quarters of society that if people were to come to disbelieve in God, the moral fiber of society would disintegrate and we would see a marked increase in anti-social behavior. These fears, however, have not materialized, as society has grown more secular over time. The debate over the philosophical and practical implications of moral responsibility skepticism nevertheless continues, and there is even some debate among skeptics themselves.

Illusionism is the view that while we lack free will and moral responsibility, we should nonetheless promote belief in these notions since to disbelieve in moral responsibility would have dire consequences for society and ourselves see Smilansky , , , According to Saul Smilansky, one of the lead proponents of illusionism, most people not only believe in actual possibilities and the ability to transcend circumstances, but have.

Smilansky and other proponents of illusionism go on to argue that while our commonplace beliefs in free will and desert-entailing moral responsibility are illusions, if people were to accept this truth there would be wide-reaching negative intrapersonal and interpersonal consequences. To avoid such deleterious social and personal consequences, and to prevent the unraveling of our moral fabric, illusionism contends that people should be allowed their positive illusion of free will and moral responsibility—i.

In direct contrast to illusionism, is disillusionism : the view that to the extent that folk intuitions and beliefs about the nature of human cognition and moral responsibility are mistaken, philosophers and psychologists ought to do their part to educate the public—especially when their mistaken beliefs arguably fuel a number of unhealthy emotions and attitudes such as revenge, hatred, intolerance, lack of empathy, etc.

Nadelhoffer Proponents of disillusionism typically point to the benefits of a world without moral responsibility. They cite the many instances in which moral responsibility practices are counterproductive from a practical and humanitarian standpoint—notably in how they stifle personal development, encourage punitive excess in criminal justice, and perpetuate social and economic inequalities see Waller ; N.

Levy , ; Morris, forthcoming. A policy of disillusionism is present in the optimistic skepticisms of several leading moral responsibility skeptics e.

These optimistic skeptics maintain that life without basic desert moral responsibility is not only possible, but also preferable. Prospects of finding meaning in life or sustaining good interpersonal relationships, for instance, would not be threatened see Pereboom , a; Waller ; Sommers a; Milam , They further maintain that morality and moral judgments would remain intact see Pereboom , a; Waller , And although retributivism and severe punishment, such as the death penalty, would be ruled out, they argue that the imposition of sanctions could serves purposes other than the punishment of the guilty—e.

One concern people have with moral responsibility skepticism is that it would threaten our personal relationships and the fulfillment in life that they provide. Strawson famously argued that our justification for claims of blameworthiness and praiseworthiness is grounded in the system of human reactive attitudes , such as moral resentment , indignation , guilt , and gratitude. Strawson contends that because our moral responsibility practices are grounded in this way, the truth or falsity of causal determinism is not relevant to whether we justifiably hold each other and ourselves morally responsible.

Moreover, if causal determinism were true and did threaten these attitudes, as some moral responsibility skeptics are apt to maintain, we would face instead the prospect of the cold and calculating objective attitude , a stance that relinquishes the reactive attitudes and treats individuals as objects to be manipulated and fixed for consequentialist ends.

Strawson argues that adopting the objective attitude would rule out the possibility of the meaningful sorts of personal relationships we value see also Wolf , Summarizing the Strawsonian concern, then, we can say that adopting global skepticism about moral responsibility, assuming it was psychologically possible, would undermine expressions of our inter-personal reactive attitudes essential to good personal relationships, and would jeopardize our intra-personal reactive attitudes such as guilt and repentance , which are crucial to personal moral development.

Moral responsibility skeptics generally respond to this Strawsonian concern in two ways. One response argues that, contra Strawson, it is possible to adopt the objective attitude in a way that respects persons and does not hinder our personal relationships Sommers a.

The second and more common response acknowledges that Strawson may be right about the objective attitude, but denies that skepticism about moral responsibility requires us to reject all the reactive attitudes Pereboom , , a; Waller , , ; Milam This latter approach maintains that the attitudes we most want to retain either are not undermined by moral responsibility skepticism because they do not have presuppositions that conflict with this view, or else they have alternatives that are not under threat.

Perhaps no one has done more to develop this second line of reply than Derk Pereboom see , , a,b, , , a, a. He argues, for instance, that while certain kinds of moral anger, such as resentment and indignation , would be undercut if moral responsibility skepticism is true, these attitudes are suboptimal relative to alternative attitudes available to us, such as moral concern , disappointment , sorrow , and resolve.

The expression of these replacement attitudes can convey the same relevant information as moral anger but in a way that is less harmful and consistent with the denial of basic desert moral responsibility. As a result it has the potential to damage or destroy relationships. Guilt also appears to be one of the reactive attitudes imperiled by moral responsibility skepticism since it involves the supposition that one is blameworthy in the basic desert sense for an immoral action one has performed.

Strawsonians fear that absent guilt we would not be motivated to moral improvement after acting badly, and we would be kept from reconciliation in impaired relationships. Furthermore, because guilt is undermined by the skeptical view, repentance is also ruled out, because feeling guilty is a prerequisite for a repentant attitude. It is unclear, though, whether guilt is really needed to perform the functions mentioned above.

Suppose instead of guilt an agent acknowledges that she has acted immorally and she feels deep sorrow for what she has done, and as a result she is motivated to eradicate her disposition to behave in this bad way see Waller — Such a reaction, skeptics contend, can secure the good that guilt can also secure, and it is wholly compatible with the skeptical perspective see Pereboom , a; Waller ; cf.

Bok Furthermore, since self-guilt can often be crippling and counterproductive for moral development, an approach that avoids guilt may actually be more successful in bring about the desired change in agents Sommers a.

Another reactive attitude that some think would be threatened by moral responsibility skepticism is gratitude. Gratitude arguably presupposes that the person to whom one is grateful is praiseworthy in the basic desert sense for a beneficial act cf.

Honderich — But even if this is so, certain aspects of gratitude would not be undercut, and these aspects would seem to provide what is required for the personal relationships we value Pereboom , a; Sommers a.

Gratitude involves being thankful toward the person who has acted beneficially. This aspect of gratitude is in the clear—e. And while gratitude also often involves joy as a response to what someone has done, skepticism about moral responsibility does not yield a challenge to being joyful and expressing joy when others act beneficially, so this too is in the clear.

Of course, some of the recommended transformations in emotional attitudes may not be possible for us. In certain situations refraining from resentment or moral anger may be beyond our power, and thus even the committed skeptic might not be able to make the change the skeptical view suggests. Yet, a committed skeptic need not eliminate these attitudes completely to accept the conclusion that agents are never deserving of praise and blame, she must attempt instead not to engage or entertain them Sommers a: ; Russell Shaun Nichols , for example, invokes the distinction between narrow-profile emotional responses, e.

We might expect to be unable to appreciably reduce narrow-profile moral anger as an immediate reaction upon being deeply hurt in an intimate personal relationship. In wide-profile cases, however, diminishing or even eliminating moral anger is open—or, at least, we can disavow it in the sense of rejecting any force it may be assumed to have in justifying a harmful response to wrongdoing.

This modification of moral anger, skeptics contend, might well be advantageous for our valuable personal relationships, and it has the potential to bring about the equanimity that Spinoza [] thought skepticism about free will and moral responsibility, more generally, would secure see Pereboom , a; cf. For instance, now in our ministry, we are working on an evidence-based policy as to the integration of immigrants within the labour markets.

We do not know a lot about the effectiveness of this kind of policy, so we have started eight pilots, together with scientists, in which we monitor what works and what does not. It is also important to get scientists into the ministry in order to help us find better policies. With this aim, we have a scientific coordinator in the ministry here, we have links with universities across the Netherlands, and once a year we invite PhD students to present their new findings to our policy makers. Also, there are three independent scientific agencies who advise my cabinet on policy.

I am very happy with those. The coalition system in the Netherlands — as opposed to the winner takes all -system — is also relevant.

It means that we have to compromise on things — and so evidence, figures and statistics are helping us to arrive at a compromise among the various parties. You can have all these experts in the ministry, links with academia, and all the rest of it. But the danger is that experts think they know best for people and will aggravate people. So, I am wondering how you keep that under control, Mr. Otherwise, you are going to lose legitimacy.

What are your ideas as to this? We now have thirteen parties in parliament, while we came from a situation in which we had just three big parties: Christian Democrats, Labour and Liberals. And among the thirteen now, there are also the new, up-and-coming populist parties.

And since we have coalition governments, we also need some external referees. That is a role academia can play, and it is a role the CPB does play. Because, clearly, we are in a situation where economists are not being listened to much.

Instead of picking economists to tell one what the evidence says, they are picking the evidence they want to hear and then search for the economist who will say just that. So, you get policy-based evidence, instead of evidence-based policy. It used to be different. People like Larry Summers, who is a great economist, were advising the Obama administration. I hope it will come back, as at the moment the only home for technical policy advice within the government is the Federal Reserve System.

Yet in the Reagan administration there was also very little in the way of economists helping the government.

Koolmees, it is interesting that you were trained as an institutional economist. Does institutional economics play a role in policy matters? Before I became a politician, I was employed at the Ministry of Finance, which has a neoclassical way of thinking. And this thinking also helps me in my policy proposals.

When you look at the economic debate in the Netherlands over the last twenty years, I see the rise of institutional economics. This is obvious in how the labour markets function, and the housing market or the health-care system. You are not going to do very well if you do not have enough levers to pull, but over the years the role of the rule in policy making and academia has changed.

When I first came into economics in the late sixties, early seventies, we all assumed that the central bank was responsible for inflation, and that the finance minister, perhaps Parliament, was responsible for unemployment. Those were the two objectives we were concerned with most. And when we considered whether it should perhaps be the other way around — the central bank managing unemployment and the treasury inflation — we organised discussions about this with people in academia and in government, and we built large-scale models in the tradition of Tinbergen.

Now, however, this has been swept away to a large extent. Of course, you always need to keep in mind that you cannot reach two goals with one instrument, but it is a less technocratic world than when we used to have these discussions. We have a good social security system, for instance, but it has been made very complex.

But the way in which the system is organised sometimes gets people in debt. The problem is clearly that we want to achieve several goals with one instrument.

But maybe it does not matter so much how many instruments you have, it is just who controls them. In the US we have many, many policy objectives, yet fiscal policy is not going to solve them, especially given the polarization and paralysis in Congress.

At least, that is not the way we think about it. In Europe, there are so many players — the Germans, the French, the British — and they have all got their fiscal stance. It is not so much the levers that have changed, but who controls them. Is this the end of capitalism in the United States?

You might imagine some crisis coming along, which then would mean the end of capitalism — and there are a lot of people thinking that way. They would like to see capitalism replaced by something else.

That is not my view though. We have to fix capitalism and make it work better for everybody. We should no attempt to do away with it and replace it by something like governments owning the means of production, which — as we know from a lot of experience — is not going to work.

We used to have a discussion as to the haves and the have nots, which is actually a discussion about the distribution of income or wealth.

Now we more and more tend to have a debate about the cans and the cannots. That is a good discussion to have, because it is about education, about having opportunities. And then you see that, in the Netherlands, people at the lower end of the labour market, who depend on flexible contracts, tend to be more negative about their situation, more insecure.

Eighty percent of the people who are dependent on flexible contracts say they are not happy. They downplay progress, whether past or prospective, and rub our faces in worst-case scenarios. I disagree with this stance. Fear and despair are more counterproductive than hope--as long as that hope has a basis in reality. And that brings me to our current crisis. As with climate change, the debate over the coronavirus has become politicized.

Trump and his Republican allies, early on, downplayed the threat posed by the coronavirus, in a manner reminiscent of their stance toward climate change. The job of a leader during a crisis like this is to assure people, to keep them from panicking. I do blame Trump and conservative pundits for being unrealistic or simply wrong about many details of the pandemic. It has been based on crass political calculation and willful ignorance.

Optimism in a time like this is crucial. As with climate change and war, we need to be realistic, to face the problem squarely, while resisting fear and fatalism. We need to retain our faith that human intelligence and decency will prevail.

Trump, for all his missteps, at least has the sense to rely for advice on Anthony Fauci , who since the dawn of the AIDS pandemic in the s has been a leading authority on infectious disease. Now let me spell out, in this dark time, some of my hopes:. In November, voters appalled by the incompetence and mendacity of the Trump administration will vote for Joe Biden, who will win in a landslide.

The decline in emissions will give the U. World leaders will recognize the impracticality, and immorality, of military spending. Led by the U. Chastened by the pandemic and subsequent economic depression, freed of the need to appease his right-wing base, yearning to go down in history as a savior, this narcissistic, amoral bully will turn out to be just the leader we need to guide humanity toward a green, just, peaceful future.

Stay safe, and hopeful. Comment from my friend and colleague Lindsey Swindall, an authority on African American history:. I've seen a similar trajectory in myself regarding optimism. Especially in grad school, it seemed that being optimistic demonstrated that you were not thinking critically enough and were, therefore, not very smart.