Optimist or Pessimist?
Do you consider yourself to be an optimist or a pessimist?
One litmus test question I’ve heard at different points is about whether you think “we,” “the world,” fill in your own blank, are better off now that in the past. Among other things, the question implicitly also gets at our attitudes about the future: do we think things will get better or worse?
For many these days, the Trump presidency alone is cause for pessimism. If that’s not enough, then the apparently rampant abuse go power and unjustified and unnecessary violence of police might or the state of “race relations” or misogyny or prejudice against queers. Any of these things, let alone the weight of all of them, are depressing (literally) in their implications.
I recently had an exchange with a friend about Trump.
I said: “Confident that we are gonna survive Trump, but can’t get to the post-Trump era fast nuff for my liking”
He said: “I am not so confident, but I do think the odds are in our favorThe Republic will be dealing with the aftermath for the rest of our lives”
I said: “Other option is drug addiction. No way I let the bastards win.”
What I meant was that I see the very real possibility of a doom loop in falling under the sway of the pessimistic view that we are moving backwards and the everything in the world is getting worse not better.
One of the things that I know about addiction, from both direct and indirect experience, is that, whatever underlies an addiction it is just such a doom loop that drags people under. Some manage to tread water, sometimes indefinitely. Others get dragged under, some even die.
The only way to begin to break free of an addiction is to be able and actively shaping an alternate and hopeful vision of your future. You have to believe that things can get better. Otherwise any effort to change is futile and if you don’t believe that the things that are bad can ever get better, then your addiction starts to seem like a perfectly rational response to doom.
Peter Thiel has an idea which arises from a distinction he makes between optimism and pessimism and how we think about the future, whether or attitudes about the future are shaped by a definite or indefinite picture of what we expect it to be like. (Here’s a quick take on the core ideas, https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140924171143-103827-zero-to-one-peter-thiel-s-view-on-the-importance-of-definite-optimism)
The definite future that gives rise to optimism is the only way to break free from an addiction. And I’ve started to think that its the only way to break out of the nightmare vision of a polarized democracy that’s headed for a new civil war. If we can’t even imagine plausible and optimistic visions of our future, I fear we will end up making our worst nightmares real.
If you are having trouble, let me share something that helped me, long ago shared by Nelson Gonzalez, it’s part of the “It gets better campaign.” It’s a very moving, honest and frank video about what it’s like to be gay at the country’s most important Mormon university, Brigham Young: https://youtu.be/Ym0jXg-hKCI
It’s about 10 min long, but I think it’s powerful, hopeful message is well worth the time. The entire point of the campaign is to make credible a vision of a future in which things get better.
What do you think? Are things going to get better or worse?
Do you have an optimistic vision of a definite future to share?
