Author: Polly Mackenzie / Source: Positive News
Brits are known for enjoying a good moan, but what are we optimistic about? Polly Mackenzie and the team at thinktank Demos decided they were done with despairing about what divides us, and asked: what can bring us back together?
Democracy, when it thrives in an open society, is noisy.
Opinions and ideas jostle for precedence. Winners crow and losers bristle. But something darker than dissent and disagreement is brewing in our society. There’s a growing sense of anger and intolerance.Much of this anger is driven by gloom about Britain’s prospects. We have undergone a crisis of legitimacy of all our institutions – government, media, charity, business. We have a wave of populists on both sides stoking and exploiting people’s fear and anger.
At Demos, we asked ourselves the question: what would it take to restore a sense of national optimism and end the age of outrage so Britain can face these challenges with confidence? Our Optimism Project seeks to start a new national conversation on what’s best about Britain, what our assets and opportunities are, and where we can succeed.
Discover the good news that matters.
We partnered with Opinium to conduct our first wave of research exploring where optimism is strongest in British society. We wanted to find the hope and positivity that remains, and to build on it. This wasn’t about glossing over our difficulties but acknowledging them and finding a way of coming together in common cause.
Polling more than 2,000 UK adults, we explored optimism across eight domains of personal life: health, living standards, career, political division, the impact of technology both as ‘consumers’ and in the workplace, prospects for the younger generation and prospects for the older generation.
People were asked to separate how they felt about each for themselves and their family, their neighbourhood or community, and for the country as a whole.
Generally, we found, people are more optimistic when it comes to themselves and their family compared to the future of the UK in general – with optimism stronger on a local than national level. This may give us all cause to think more positively about the UK’s prospects. Our general sense of gloom seems to be about the future not of ourselves…
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