laudable Practice

#NoBadDays #GoodVibesOnly #ChooseHappy In a recent interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's ' The Philosopher's Zone ', US philosopher Mariana Alessandri - author of Night Vision: Seeing Ourselves Through Dark Moods (2023) - provided a critique of "the tyranny of toxic positivity", the omnipresent platitudes of the self-help industry summarised in the above hashtags. While Alessandri seeks to encourage an understanding of darker moods and experiences through Existentialism, the interview did make me think about how the Book of Common Prayer also rejects "the tyranny of toxic positivity", taking up into prayer and devotion, thought and meditation, the darker moods and experiences. As Alessandri notes, toxic positivity is an attempt to deny that the darker moods and experiences are inherent to the human condition, thus rendering us "emotionally illiterate" when confronted with them: hence the need for a view of the human cond...