Are you shaking in your shoes yet?

It will not come as a surprise to any of you that I'm not the world's convinced optimist. Oh sure, things for most of us generally work out, not because we did anything in particular and certainly not because we deserved it. Most of us live in a lucky part of the world and hence most of us are luckier than most others.

This does not mean that I'm therefore and invariably a pessimist. Sure, there are aspects of pessimism that agree with me, but I, like Ben Franklin, am more pessimist out of self-protection than conviction.

And, yes, there have been any number of people who have "accused" me of cynicism ... but I ask why cynicism should have anything crime-like about it. George Bernard Shaw noted, "The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it." After all, when I'm in cynical mode, it turns out I'm more often right than I would like.

Recently, I read two good essays (both of which are much longer than everyday, internet-attention spans) by Henry A. Giroux and the other by Peter Koenig, both authors for whom I have a lot of respect. They weren't happy essays. They were well-reasoned, insightful, and thought-provoking. Giroux's was more about America; Koenig's more about Europe, but they had something in common: hope.

Giroux ended his essay with the line, ""Dark times are not ahead, they are here but that does not mean they are here to stay." Koenig wrote, "Rather than fearfully shutting up – wake up! Dare stand up fellow citizen – against the white collar onslaught of fraud and exploitation, against corruption of our elitist neoliberal system! Get rid of those deceiving politicians – the scum of greed and power. Expose them. Neutralize them." In other words, they both think that we can turn this game around.

Naturally, I'm not so sure, but I would like to think they're right. The problem as I see it is that too many of us don't take the time to get truly informed, won't make the effort to sort through the issues and facts, will fall back on our innate fear of power and violence, and will jump upon any excuse we can find why it's "not our job" to do anything about anything.

You know, the only reason it appears to be getting dark out there is because we allow it to happen.