Against “the tyranny of the ameliorative”

Ameliorate… AND be happy too. In praise of "the little human things":

"…[Adorno] was right to resist what we might call "the tyranny of the ameliorative": the feeling that, in times of crisis, all that is worth doing is to fight injustice, so as to make things less bad than they are. How can we listen to music, or work on the more speculative questions of philosophy and science, while the planet burns? But while political action is urgent, it's not the only thing that matters.

In fact, it couldn't be. If the best we could do was to minimize injustice and human suffering, so that life was not positively bad, there would be no point in living life at all. If human life is not a mistake, there must be things that matter not because they solve a problem or address a need that we would rather do without but because they make life positively good. They would have what I've called "existential value." Art, pure science, theoretical philosophy: they have value of this kind. But so do mundane activities like telling funny stories, amateur painting, swimming or sailing, carpentry or cooking, playing games with family and friends—what the philosopher Zena Hitz has called "the little human things." It's not just that we need them in order to recharge so that we can get back to work, but that they are the point of being alive. A future without art or science or philosophy, or the little human things, would be utterly bleak. Since they will not survive unless we nurture them, that is our responsibility, too."

— Life Is Hard: How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our Way by Kieran Setiya
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