The Unbearable Lightness and Progressive Politics

Milan Kundera's Unbearable Lightness of Being is hauntingly beautiful and rings true on so many levels. I love this book and feel lucky to have read it. But its politics, while I can see where it's coming from, I cannot abide. I can understand how Soviet socialism rendered people unwilling or unable to believe in the possibility of human progress, but it's a political stance I cannot take. For one thing, I have not suffered the demoralizing effects of anything as cynical and brutal as the Sovietization of Prague in 1968. I've been lucky. The challenge for progressives: How best to keep the luck going, how to spread it around and make it grow.