Practical Optimism
Sep. 19th, 2001 10:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jcfialaHello there.
I like to think of myself as a practical optimist. How does that work, you may wonder?
Well, we start off with the world. (Imagine here a nice hologram of the globe springing up. :) It's not a fair place. One of my favorite quotes from The Princess Bride is "Life is Pain, highness. Anyone telling you different is selling you something." Life is inherantly unfair. People steal your lunch. Someone close to you dies. Someone smashes a few jet planes into the world trade center.
Not a great foundation for optimism, is it?
But I think people, as a whole, work to make the world better. I do. And I think people will work together to help. We've seen that recently after the attacks, with just about everyone trying to do their part or more in helping out with the aftermath of the attacks, whether for helping people who have lost their jobs, their homes, their loved ones, or are simply unable to cope with life after such a large tragedy.
We've had nuclear bombs for over fifty years. Fifty years! And so far, no one has set any off in a war other than the first two at the end of WWII. If you read some of the science fiction of the 50's and 60's, they tend to assume that we would nuke ourselves, ruin the planet, and have to crawl through the wreckage.
But we haven't yet. For fifty years, things haven't been too bad. The planet isn't in the best shape, no. There are poor people, yes. And there are people out there who hurt other people.
But we're still working on it. We'll fix the problems, improve poor people's lives, and learn better how to deal with the hurters. Things will improve. We just have to keep on trying.
I like to think of myself as a practical optimist. How does that work, you may wonder?
Well, we start off with the world. (Imagine here a nice hologram of the globe springing up. :) It's not a fair place. One of my favorite quotes from The Princess Bride is "Life is Pain, highness. Anyone telling you different is selling you something." Life is inherantly unfair. People steal your lunch. Someone close to you dies. Someone smashes a few jet planes into the world trade center.
Not a great foundation for optimism, is it?
But I think people, as a whole, work to make the world better. I do. And I think people will work together to help. We've seen that recently after the attacks, with just about everyone trying to do their part or more in helping out with the aftermath of the attacks, whether for helping people who have lost their jobs, their homes, their loved ones, or are simply unable to cope with life after such a large tragedy.
We've had nuclear bombs for over fifty years. Fifty years! And so far, no one has set any off in a war other than the first two at the end of WWII. If you read some of the science fiction of the 50's and 60's, they tend to assume that we would nuke ourselves, ruin the planet, and have to crawl through the wreckage.
But we haven't yet. For fifty years, things haven't been too bad. The planet isn't in the best shape, no. There are poor people, yes. And there are people out there who hurt other people.
But we're still working on it. We'll fix the problems, improve poor people's lives, and learn better how to deal with the hurters. Things will improve. We just have to keep on trying.
Optimism vs Pessimism
Date: 2002-07-16 07:17 pm (UTC)In the short term, I'm a pessimist: Keeps me from being unpleasantly surprised.
In the long term, I'm an optimist: Gives me a reason not to blow my brains out. (well, that and the guilt I'd inflict on everyone)