Pollyanna or Chicken Little?
As a columnist for this paper, I welcome honest debate. I recognize that I am as prone to error as anyone. However, it’s incredibly frustrating when other writers seek to refute my arguments by first completely misconstruing them. Columnist Terence Day (Jan. 4) states: “Ryan Urie’s pollyannaish claim that crises always result in better lives is simply fantasy.”
Agreed. Naturally, I was surprised to hear that I’d said something so outlandish … except what I actually said was: “from this societal wreckage we have the opportunity — if we choose to take it — to build something new and perhaps more wonderful.”
He goes on to share the profound insight that preserving democracy is a good thing and offers precisely zero suggestions on how we might go about that.
I’ve written about the dangers to representative democracy many times myself, but spreading fear is not a solution.
What have cynicism and pessimism ever gotten us? All they do is leave people too demoralized to engage in the struggles necessary to solve our nation’s problems. All positive change begins with hope for a better future.
By Terence’s own reckoning (which I did not fact-check), in the past century democracies have fallen into dictatorship nine times — roughly once per decade. All but two of these have reverted back to democracy, in less than two decades on average. But, yes, by all means let’s panic. As though we haven’t been doing exactly that for most of the past decade.
Fault me for being hopeful if you must, Terence, but given the choice I’d rather be a Pollyanna than a Chicken Little.
