If We Don't Choose Positivity, We All Sink

OM.2023.002 - Vittore Baroni - Italy - collage on panel - 8 x 8 inches - for Visual Poetry and Color

If We Don't Choose Positivity, We All Sink

By now, most Americans feel it - an uneasy undertow dragging us away from who we thought we were, from the basic decency that held us together. Something ugly and dangerous is rising in the void where our shared sense of purpose used to live. That void is being filled by thuggery, cruelty, and lawlessness masquerading as strength. It’s not strength. It’s collapse.

But here’s the truth: positivity is the only way forward or we all go under.

This isn’t about blind optimism or naive cheerfulness. It’s about deliberate moral clarity. It’s about deciding what kind of people we want to be, what kind of country we want to live in, and holding to that with everything we’ve got. If we let injustice fester - if we shrug at corruption, or normalize cruelty because “that’s just how things are now” - then we have already begun to abandon the idea of America.

Injustice done to any one of us threatens all of us. That was once a core American value. So was decency. And neighborliness. And fairness. And the idea that government exists to serve the people, not enrich or protect those in power. We must say these values aloud again. Often. Loudly. And write them down. Paint them. Publish them. Sing them. Argue for them at dinner tables and city council meetings. If we don’t tell the story of who we are, someone else will write it for us and that version may be unrecognizable.

We’re being tested - not just by the forces of greed, deceit, and authoritarian hunger, but by the danger of apathy. When civic engagement is ignored or mocked, when the people's voice is met with indifference or even contempt by those in power, we’re tempted to give up. That’s exactly what the worst actors hope for: your silence, your fatigue, your disillusionment. They don’t want you to believe your voice matters.

But here’s the thing: your voice is everything.

We need more voices - clear and grounded ones - writing not just about what's wrong, but about what’s right, what’s beautiful, what’s worth protecting. We need to describe the country we want, reinvigorate the dream. Not a fantasy, but a vision rooted in mutual respect, care, and shared dignity. A place where we don’t let each other fall through the cracks. Where service to the public good is honored, not ridiculed. Where cruelty is not seen as cleverness. Where we don’t treat politics like bloodsport but as the sacred duty of democracy and hold our representatives to that standard.

The people who would destroy democracy don’t represent the best of us. They feed on our despair. So our refusal to despair becomes an act of resistance. Our commitment to decency becomes radical. Our insistence on kindness becomes revolutionary.

We’ve been here before. We’ve stumbled. But we’ve also stood back up. Again and again. We need to stand up now. Not just in opposition to the darkness, but in service of the light.

So pick up your pen. Use your voice. Ask aloud: What kind of country do we want to be? What kind of neighbor, citizen, human do I want to be? Let that be the compass.

Because if we don’t choose the positive path - and walk it together - we’ll all sink together.

To the Creative Community

We find ourselves - artists, creatives, culture-makers - in a time of rupture. Not just political or social, but existential. And if we, the artists, do not fill it with meaning, beauty, and truth - who will? The creative community and its institutions and support are already under attack under the guise of rooting out Diversity, Equity and Inclusion policies just as ferociously as the immigrant community is being terrorized.

Still, positivity is not naiveté. It is a choice. A discipline. A defiant stance against cynicism, cruelty, and the slow corrosion of the human spirit. And in this time - these so-called “interesting times” - it may be the most radical tool we have.

The creative community must remember: we do not simply react to the world - we shape it. Everything human is first imagined. Culture is crafted, not inherited. That is what makes us dangerous. When we abandon that responsibility - or worse, when we mirror the ugliness - we feed the very decay we fear. That’s how civilizations lose their heart and soul.

Now is the time to reassert the values worth living for. What do we honor? What do we emulate? Do our works reflect generosity, mutual care, decency, courage? Or have we grown comfortable with irony and distance? Do we speak of justice? Of community? Do we hold one another with the respect due to fellow travelers in a time of peril?

The truth is: when injustice is done to any - whether in the streets, in the courts, in the quiet corners of our society - it threatens all of us. And artists must not be silent observers. We must be chroniclers, yes - but also builders. Builders of a different story, one rooted in dignity, imagination, and the stubborn refusal to abandon our humanity and our principles.

It’s easy to fall into despair, to believe that nothing we do matters - that our work is overlooked, our voices unheard, our efforts swallowed by indifference. That’s how the machinery of cruelty wins. It isolates. It mocks. It exhausts.

But creation is resistance. Joy is resistance. Beauty is resistance. Community is resistance.

So let us write, paint, film, compose, choreograph - not merely as reaction, but as invitation. Let us tell the stories of what it means to care, to stand for one another, to imagine a future not ruled by domination but shaped by compassion. Let us articulate the ideals we want this world to reflect - because if we don’t, someone else will write that script for us, and we may not recognize ourselves in it.

Now is the moment to reaffirm the creative life as a public service. Not performative entertainment, but essential to culture.

This is not about cheerfulness. It’s about refusing to conform to what we despise. It’s about putting the full weight of our art behind the kind of world we still believe is possible. That is a responsibility worth shouldering.

Because if we don’t choose positivity - not as a mood but as a creative ethic - we all go under.

And we, the artists, the makers, the seers, the meaning-bearers - we have far too much soul and heart to let that happen.

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Let’s Grow This Together

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