In earlier posts I’ve alluded to life as a process which most of us—along with most other living beings—under most circumstances aim to sustain. Beyond mere survival, we’ve a host of wants that we seek to fulfill. Since we can live and thrive only if we meet specific future conditions, we’ve an interest in discerning those conditions and satisfying them.
As I write in 2024, humans are casting increasingly long and dark shadows (e.g., climate debasement, bioannihilation, resource exhaustion, hazardous material proliferation and dispersal, pandemic chronic disease, social disintegration, technological complexity and brittleness, etc.) onto our future. Growing numbers of thoughtful people feel mounting concern that we, those around us, and those who may follow find ever greater difficulty in satisfying conditions for humans to persist and flourish.
Looking from a volatile present into a future becoming less clearly discernible, we may find appeal in optimism or hope. I suggest caution warranted with respect to the first, and I wonder if we may be wise in altogether eschewing the second.
Optimism
Here I define “optimism” as do the experts at Oxford Languages: “confidence in the successful outcome of something.” We’re to varying degrees warranted in such confidence. Gamblers entering a casino optimistic that they’ll win more than they’ll lose are less justified than are casino owners optimistic that the house will prevail.
While we may perceive optimism to be comfortable reassurance, we court danger when we pretend that we know the future better than we do. When we’re excessively optimistic—confident of desired results to a degree greater than we can support with sound reasoning from available evidence—and act upon such optimism, we invite disappointment, even catastrophe.
To the extent that they lie outside realism, we can accurately characterize both optimism and its opposite, pessimism, as fantasy. We’re more likely to adapt successfully if we limit both to what we support with accurate prediction.
Hope
To define “hope,” I turn again to the experts at Oxford Languages: “want something to happen or be the case.” Such want in itself may be empty of effect. Absent supportive action, what other than self-deception can we attribute to it?
If we imagine that we’re influencing outcomes by hoping, we may settle for it and stop short of asking, “How might I act beyond hoping or wishing to make more likely what I want?” If we do this, are we pretending to impotence to escape responsibility? If we eliminate hope, are we more likely to discern more clearly what, if anything, we can be or do to fulfill want, and to be or do it?
Positivity
If we limit optimism to what we’ve evidence and reason to support and we abandon hope, what other comfort may we find? Consider positivity, by which I mean: acceptance of selves and world as we are and it is, combined with grateful attention to what we appreciate in the moment and sciencing towards what we want in the future.
We can choose positivity in myriad circumstances. We can be positive without demanding or expecting that the world change. We generate positivity in the moment and reap its benefits now. By sustaining it, we may secure satisfaction in a succession of “nows” until, having lived fully and well, we may die with grace.
