Reprinted from The Christian Science Monitor: To anyone feeling cynical

Curt Wahlberg

I know the feeling. I also get the impression that there are plenty of us who have felt cynical about the problems society is facing and about the efforts being made toward progress.

There may be several factors behind cynicism—today’s tough economy, public officials’ wrongdoing, and other issues. It seems there’s a growing loss of idealism, a lowering of expectations that the future holds what we’ve hoped for. And so we find caustic criticism on talk shows, extreme partisanship in government, and so on.

The positives we do hear about are often based merely on the point that one person or group could do better than another. Some believe that society would function better with different leadership. But this mind-set doesn’t offer any real hope and just goes along with the negativity.

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