Carrie Quinlan prova a combattere il cliché per cui la “gente vera” sarebbe solo quella che soffre, e per cui chi non vede tragedie e catastrofi ovunque “non capisce il paese reale”

I can be as grumpy as the next man, as long as the next man’s not Christopher Hitchens. I can be pessimistic and misanthropic, often on the Guardian’s own website, but the point is that I never get shouted down on those occasions nearly as volubly as I do when I’m being sunny and optimistic. At the risk of being called unworldly, isn’t that the wrong way round? Shouldn’t we be promoting ­happiness as a norm, rather than an aberration? You see, the implication in the term “real life” is that it’s life as it’s cosmically or evolutionarily meant to be, and when that’s used to describe only lives of poverty and pain, it legitimises them as somehow reasonable and only to be expected. That’s not right! Knife crime isn’t more “real” than cocktail parties, it’s just more dangerous and grim.