ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how people sustain their resilience and are able not just to cope, but to prosper in situations where things appear stressful, unrewarding, tough, and unfulfilling. It focuses on work and employment, where people spend so much of their adult lives, and presents report on my findings from a small survey of 78 people working in public and private sector occupations in Kabul, Afghanistan, in some of the most testing situations in the world. The chapter presents the survey from Kabul, who testifies to the ability to be positive even when the reality of brutality is all too present. Positive psychology seeks to understand what it is that gives people – maybe people like – the determination and inner strength to go on in the face of the overwhelmingly negative evidence which is daily presented to Kabul people. The German-Jewish philosopher mulled over the "banality of evil" in relation to the Second World War of the Nazis.
