But is "Patriotism" the right word for it?

I, too, want to understand the "complexities of America" and I enjoy reading McCullough (et al) and watching Ken Burns. I want to affirm America's stated (but too-often neglected) ideals of liberty and justice for all. But we need a word safe from misappropriation by scoundrels and MAGAts. How about Humanism (with an American pedigree)?

The Necessity of Patriotism (Even in Times Like These)

America is rebounding, but will cynicism stop the renewal?

...Sure, there was some of the resentful, rotten patriotism you now see at MAGA rallies, but there was also a more mature kind of patriotism, the love you have for your country when you know its flaws. It was a curious kind of patriotism, one that wanted to understand the full complexities of America, that wanted to read David McCullough, John Hope Franklin and Doris Kearns Goodwin, and watch those Ken Burns documentaries.

Personally, that kind of patriotism gave me a sense of identity and belonging. It ripped me from the prison of the present and placed me in a long procession of Americans — the dead, the living and the unborn. It broke through the walls that separate one person from another and gave me a sense of membership in a community so varied and so much to be treasured that I have never been able to hate Americans who differ from me politically... David Brooks

A pluralistic direction

Tomorrow afternoon's Lyceum speaker John Stuhr:

"Near the very end of “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life,” James wrote that every day we each face choices between good and evil, between life and death. In a tone I take to be both egalitarian and humble, he added: “From this unsparing practical ordeal no professor’s lectures and no array of books can save us” (WB, 162).

James was right: By themselves, lectures and books and their authors will not save your life. They won’t win you friends. Reading a book—even this one!—will not get you a promotion or make you wealthy. They won’t make someone else love you, understand you, or even treat you kindly—or ensure that you treat others with love, understanding, and kindness. They will not take away all your fears or longings. They won’t bring you recognition, physical health, or personal well-being. No one has flourished merely by reading a book or simply by taking in a lecture.

Realization of purposes requires living, not just a theory of life. It requires living reflectively and not just a life of reflection. Above all, it requires action—and the hope, faith, or melioristic temperament to take up action in the face of possibilities without guarantees. And this requires the attention and hard work of staying at it, keeping up the action. I hope that this book on, across, with, and through James, at times without (and even against) James, and always from my own fallible angle of vision and selective purposes, can contribute for its readers—for you—to this larger pragmatic, radically empirical, and pluralistic endeavor.

James’s writings, when taken both in full and critically, constitute an invaluable resource for the future and its new problems, new possibilities, and new forms of personal and social life. In this sense, all persons who enter into and take up James’s vision and worldview share a journey with no end other than itself, a pluralistic admission—ever not quite!—and a pluralistic direction: TOWARD."

"No Professor's Lectures Can Save Us: William James's Pragmatism, Radical Empiricism, and Pluralism" by John J. Stuhr: https://a.co/1kQOPFk

Meliori-, not multi-, is the better 'verse

I Fantasized About Multiple Timelines, and It Nearly Ruined My Life

The multiverse has become a favorite pop cosmology. But there's a danger in getting fixated on the fantasy that there are other, better versions of our world.

...It's easy to see the appeal of the multiverse, even as metaphor: the notion that we're surrounded by a multitude of parallel selves, one of which might be living in a better timeline than the one we're stuck in. It's probably no coincidence that the idea has become so popular during an era of pandemic, climate change and political turmoil, when so many of us have felt helpless and trapped. Who doesn't want to imagine a different world?

But it can also be a dangerous way of imagining the cosmos. Like the Capgras patient, we risk becoming detached from the world we can see and touch. Regardless of whether we can prove that the multiverse exists, the idea of it can distract us from doing the work we need to do to make this world better. This timeline is the only one we have access to, and it's got to be enough... S.I. Rosenbaum