The last two years have sucked. The time stretching from November of 2016 up to now has been a constant cavalcade of depressing headlines, crushing disappointments, and a lingering miasma of disgust for various reasons that I really don't want to get into right now. It's frankly no surprise that in this era of bleakness, people aren't exactly feeling too hopeful about the future, immediate or otherwise.
What really brought this gloomy mood home for me was watching an episode of Real Time with Bill Maherthe other night and a conversation I saw take place there. The conversation in question was Bill's first guest for the evening, the historian Doris Kearns Goodwin. Their conversation started off talking about the recent distressing news about the Supreme Court and more broadly how it matches up with history. They quickly fell into an interesting dichotomy as there discussion ranged over the current president and his past predecessors but the most interesting thing that stood out to me was roles they seemed to adopt, Bill the world-weary pessimist and Doris the weathered but resolute optimist.
What struck me most about the conversation was how familiar it all sounded; one said saying we've survived worse and we'll make it through it all ok and the other saying this is all really bad and things are looking very grim. It's a conversation I have heard some variation of dozens of times or more from peers, family, and even myself at some darker moments. It is also a conversation I have grown wear of hearing over and over again and I've decided to do something about it. I'm going to make the case for optimism once and for all.
To start with I believe its necessary to examine what it is that makes up a pessimist. At the hear of every pessimist is a disappointed optimist who has decided to hide their pain at being disappointed by refusing to believe things will get better. This phenomenon I also believe is not done consciously or at least is not admitted to as such, it very often masquerades under the guise of realism and accuses its opponents of naiveté. But there is a key difference between the two and that is realism is taking situations as they are and reacting accordingly whereas pessimism is just giving up without a fight. It is at its heart a coping mechanism that fails in its mission because it accomplishes nothing, what real point is there in carrying on if everything is hopeless.
Focusing on optimism presents the trickier challenge, as I believe it can be divided into two types. The first type is the naïve type that pessimists are so fond of accusing people of being. They characterized mostly by their near total faith that things will turn out well for them and that all is right with the world small children, the less intelligent, and the overly sheltered are usually counted among their number until thy are cured of their delusions. The second type is trickier to pin down but I will call it resolute optimism. It is an optimism that acknowledges less than ideal circumstances and their possible continuation but at its heart believes that things will get better someday, even if that day may be far in the future it will come.
In our current political moment when everything is so tense and every new headline seems to bring more bad news it would be well to remember resolute optimism as well as the empty promise of pessimism. One path leads you to the possibility of things getting better and the other only leads to you feeling a whole lot worse. It should be a very easy decision about which path to take.
