In this way, More is a near-perfect time capsule of the banal pleasure-seeking of wealthy, elite culture in the 2020s, and a neat encapsulation of its flaws. This culture would have us believe that interminable self-improvement projects, navel-gazing, and sexual peccadilloes are the new face of progress. The climate warms, wars rage, and our country lurches toward a perilous election—all problems that require real action, real progress. And somehow “you do you” has become the American ruling class’s three-word bible. The philosopher Charles Taylor has argued that, since at least the late 20th century, Western societies have been defined by “a generalized culture of ‘authenticity,’ or expressive individualism, in which people are encouraged to find their own way, discover their own fulfillment, ‘do their own thing.’” Taylor describes a phenomenon that’s all too easy to recognize in today’s pop psychology and the maundering of wellness influencers, but his concept doesn’t quite capture the extent to which this relentless quest for self-optimizing authenticity has infused our social and even political sensibilities.

“Part of our challenge as peoples in cities is to learn how to live with the strength of the earth and draw this in a counselling fashion. Go talk to the trees and talk to the plants and understand the language, understand the stories, understand the science, understand the treaties of nature. And because it’s living, it also means that it is not contained to a once upon a time in 1701. It means what is happening today and what can happen off in the future. With Section 35 being part of Canadian Law, this is a way to help us start to make law not just in parliaments or legislatures or courts, but seeing law as being us. And lawing together. It’s not just lawyers and judges who practice law. We can all practice law. And we can do that by reconnecting people to their places. This is us. We don’t have to wait for it. It’s there. It’s around us.” ― John Borrows, excerpts from his teaching by the pond, Toronto, 2019

In Scandinavia, the government takes care of many of life’s essential services, such as childcare, education, and health care. The principles of hygge emerged throughout the region in part because its residents do not have to shoulder the burden of responsibility for many of life’s expensive necessities — or bear the insecurity, uncertainty, and anxiety that accompany that burden.

“there are too many people talking about the future without considering the future of African Americans and other people of color. By not considering us, is the majority implicitly suggesting that we don’t matter? Do they think that as America ages, we will continue to play the traditional service and support roles for their communities? When I hear estimates from the U.S. Department of Labor that we’ll need nearly a million home health aides in the next decade, and I know that most home health aides now are Black and Brown women, I conclude that unless the wage structure changes, the future implications for those women and their families are frightening. But the futurists mainly seem to be predicting what an aging society will need without predicting who will provide it.”2