We have become accustomed to confusing pessimism with lucidity. When was the last time a public debate left you wanting to do something, and not simply resigned? This question defines a paradox of our time: we have never had so much information, so many experts, and so much analytical capacity, and yet the feeling that the big problems are beyond our control has never been so widespread.Every day, public debate follows a known ritual. War, polarization, housing crisis, climate change, immigration, aging, artificial intelligence. Then come the analysts and commentators, who with solid arguments explain to us why institutions are weak, why politics is blocked, and why challenges are becoming increasingly difficult. Necessary analyses, but which leave an implicit conclusion: there is very little room to change things.Perhaps this is the great blind spot of our public debate. We have confused intelligence with the ability to diagnose problems. We give prestige to those who detect risks first and who construct the most convincing narrative about decline; on the other hand, we dedicate much less energy to exploring solutions, to comparing experiences that have worked, or to imagining institutions capable of responding to new challenges.It is as if we admire the doctor who brilliantly describes an illness more than the one who dedicates the same talent to finding a treatment for it. Diagnosis is essential, but it is not the end goal of medicine. Nor should it be the end goal of public debate. Democracy needs criticism, but above all civic imagination: the collective ability to imagine possible futures and mobilize wills to make them a reality. When this imagination weakens, we stop asking ourselves "what can we do?" and limit ourselves to asking "what will happen to us?" The first question creates citizens; the second creates spectators.History often reminds us that the future does not obey predictions. In the mid-1980s, almost no one foresaw the fall of the Berlin Wall; the European order seemed immutable. But millions of citizens demonstrated that what seemed unimaginable was only so until someone started to make it possible.

European societies are experiencing a profound malaise that is difficult to summarize. It is economic, but also cultural, generational, and territorial. It translates into a feeling that the promises of democracy are either late or never fulfilled. And it is this context that cynics and populists exploit to erode trust in institutions and portray migrants, feminists, or Brussels as the scapegoats.