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01/13/2008: ""Progress" requires we be neurotic, depressed"

Since my own nature hovers between neurotic and paranoid, I've developed the habit of mentally listing things that make me optimistic about the future. I do it every day, while I'm driving, making the bed, pretending to write.

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Even so, there has never been a time or place where it was easier to be female than in today's developed world. Women have gained more freedom in the past 50 years than in all of recorded history. That's especially good because as society empowers women, women are empowering society. The fact that the weaker sex is growing stronger may just save the world.

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That people can clash at the level of basic values but tolerate one another's differences gives me enormous hope for the future. For centuries, tolerance has slowly been gaining ground, absolutism losing it. To me that makes even these frightening times a bit less forbidding.

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At one point, I heard a limo driver unleash a stream of such vicious racism that I felt physically ill with shame, until I started discussing this experience with other South Africans of all races. Astonishingly, they met horrific prejudice with neither fear nor hatred but with deep, improbable, battle-scarred love and optimism. They refused to relinquish hope.

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Asian philosophical concepts have been filtering across the Pacific so long that they no longer sound nonsensical. Jews, Christians, Muslims, and atheists are learning yoga and meditation, dabbling in tai chi and feng shui. This blend of East and West is bringing out the best of both cultures, and I'm delighted to be watching it.

[ The psychology of the modern liberal, in a nutshell: life is awful, but at least we have these uplifting destructions of our differences, so we can suffer together. She also mentions her favorite donuts. ]

http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/personal/01/09/o.wonderful.future/index.html