An optimist is someone who looks at
the bright side of life and expects good things to happen. A ‘cock-eyed’
optimist is one who believes, against all the odds, that everything will turn
out all right in the end. Against this, the pessimist looks at the dark side of
life and expects bad things to happen. A ‘dyed in the wool’ pessimist is one
who believes that everything will turn out badly in the end.
On the face of it, pessimists seems to have sober reason
on their side. For the pessimist, we have to be realistic, and the fact is that
everything will eventually come crashing down. Entropy takes care of the end of
things, and that end is increasingly chaotic. All systems move from a more to a
less ordered state, until finally, they cease to exist. Our lives are like
this. We are little anti-entropy machines, and our living bodies try to keep
back the encroaching disintegration. In this they are successful for awhile,
but, in the end, our bodies succumb to the forces of decay and finally move to
the disordered state we call death. For the pessimist, the world is a disaster
waiting to happen, and the optimist is simply living in an illusion.
Some systematic differences have been pointed out between
the two approaches to life. First is the old saw about whether the bottle of
wine is half full or half empty. The truth is that the bottle is both half full
and half empty, and it is entirely up to the person whether to be happy or sad
about this. It is the individual’s choice to be happy having half a bottle
left, or sad that it is half gone.
Another difference between them is that the pessimist
sees negative outcomes as the norm, while the optimist sees positive outcomes as
the norm. The result is that when an obstacle arises, the optimist sees it as a
temporary and local problem that can be overcome. The pessimist sees a problem
or obstacle as what is to be expected, and getting a good result as the
exception. It might be argued that the pessimist has the right in this,
because, if one predicts a bad result that does not materialize, one is
pleasantly surprised, whereas, if the bad result occurs, one takes it as only
what is to be expected and is therefore not so affected by it as an optimist
would be.
Despite this, there is currently much discussion about
the value of optimism as an operational principle. It is claimed that the
optimistic person is happier than the pessimist, travels more hopefully, is
healthier and lives longer. In addition, the optimist is said to be more
resilient and better able to cope with life’s setbacks.
It is true that bad things can happen and often do, but
the opposite is also true. The optimist does not have to be ‘cock-eyed’. It is
possible to be a realist and a moderate optimist at the same time. Optimism is
more about maintaining a positive attitude than anything else. Pessimists do
not pursue difficult projects because they are sure that they will fail before
starting. It is hard to get moving on a project when what is before one’s mind
are all the things that might, and probably will, go wrong. An optimist has a
‘can do’ approach that concentrates more on success than failure, while
recognizing the problems more as opportunities to make progress than as
crippling setbacks.
The sort of optimism that pessimists decry is really a
silly kind of unjustified belief that the future will bring whatever one hopes
will come to pass. However, another kind of optimism is not a matter of belief
but of attitude. It is really more about having faith in one’s own competence
than a matter of belief. It is the feeling that one will be able to cope with
whatever happens as it comes along.
Of course, there will come a time when one will not be
able to cope with some disaster or another. However, the optimist does not let
that stop him or her from acting to prevent it or to pursue some other course
of action, even while knowing that eventually everything comes to nothing.
My conclusion, therefore, is that the rational choice is
for optimism, despite the fact that nothing lasts and all accomplishments
eventually come to nothing. I would summarize my position as long term
pessimism combined with short term optimism. And since our lives are short, it
is best, from a practical point of view, to cultivate optimism as a modus
operandi for our lives. To expect disaster and failure as the norm may protect
one from being too disappointed when things go wrong, but that is no way to
live. It is always possible to look at the world pessimistically or
optimistically. The choice is ours.
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