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Voltaire. Painting by Nicolas de Largillière, |
I don’t know whether young people debate this question
these days or not. However, the dualism behind the question seems to pervade
our cultural beliefs and attitudes.
Optimism is the attitude and/or belief that future
events will turn out to be beneficial or favourable. Pessimism, on the other
hand, is the attitude and/or belief that future events will have undesirable
outcomes.
In our world today, having an attitude of eternal
optimism is becoming increasingly harder to maintain. The mutually reinforcing
predicaments of environmental, social, emotional, intellectual, and cultural
forms are all easily seen by those capable of seeing and reading.
Leibniz and Voltaire
The question of optimism versus pessimism has been
with us (in the western tradition) for at least 300 years, and may even have
earlier precedents.
In 1710 the German polymath, Gottfried Leibniz wrote
that we live in ‘the best of all possible worlds,’ succinctly depicting
his philosophical optimism.
Forty-nine years later (in 1759) Voltaire published
his classic novel Candide. In it, Voltaire drew on the recent (1755)
experience of the Lisbon earthquake, tsunami, and city fires, to lampoon
Leibniz’ optimism. The series of damaging events left between 40,000 and 50,000
dead in Portugal, Spain, and Morocco. Voltaire saw nothing to be optimistic
about in these, and other, tragedies.
Although Voltaire was labelled a pessimist by his
Jesuit detractors, he perhaps should be better thought of as a practical
realist. For instance, in Candide, he writes that ‘we must cultivate
our garden.’ Gardens were a popular motif for Voltaire, and here we read of
him suggesting that we cultivate today what we expect tomorrow from the garden.
Rolland and Gramsci
Following Leibniz and Voltaire the anti-fascist
Italian thinker and activist, Antonio Gramsci, was imprisoned by the Italian
fascist government in 1926. During his time in prison Gramsci wrote (and had
smuggled out) 3,000 pages of notes about his thinking and his analysis of the
situation in Italy and throughout the world. Now known as The Prison
Notebooks, one of the most famous lines is: ‘Pessimism of the intellect,
optimism of the will.’
The Notebooks were not the first time Gramsci
had used the phrase, nor were they his original thoughts. However, it was his
famous Notebooks that brought the statement into the public light.
The French life-long pacifist, dramatist, novelist,
and essayist, Romain Rolland had coined the phrase in 1920 when reviewing a
novel. Interestingly, Rolland later became one of the most ardent campaigners
for the release of Gramsci from prison.
The phrase clearly shows that Rolland and Gramsci
understood intellectually the bleak situations the world was in. Yet, both
maintained an optimism of the will. They both understood that it was possible
to look at the world around them and see its many faults and problems, yet
maintain an inner sense of contentment.
Opti-pessimism Today
This same discernment is possible today. We can be
both pessimistic and optimistic, at the same time. We can hold both attitudes
in our minds and hearts. Indeed, holding two apparently contradictory views at
the same time is the quintessential meaning of the word ambivalent.
In fact, another philosopher and social activist has
written of this capability. Vaclav Havel was the last President of Czechoslovakia
and the first President of Czech Republic (Czechia) and wrote, in 1990,
“Hope, in
the deep and meaningful sense … is an ability to work for something because it
is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed.”
Here, Havel is clearly stating that it is possible to act from an
optimistic attitude (because it is good) yet recognising that the outcome may
be a pessimistic one (it may not succeed.)
Recall the definitions that began this blog. Optimism and pessimism
are both attitudes and beliefs about what the outcome of future events may be.
There is a future orientation in the minds of those who are optimistic and
those who are pessimistic.
Vaclav Havel, in the quote above, brings the conversation back to the
present; to the here and now. To ‘work for something because it is good’
implies a present-moment attitude. It is good now, and hence is worth
doing now. It is not attached to any outcome in the future.
Should the question of: ‘Are you a pessimist or an optimist?’ arise
in conversation today, I think I will quote Vaclav Havel, and suggest both
opti-pessimism, and pessi-optimism.
Addendum
Today we face what has been termed a Metacrisis, in which discreet
problems do not exist, instead there are inter-dependent and inter-linked
predicaments. Problems may have solutions, predicaments do not, only outcomes.
In a situation like this, an attachment to optimism may end up being of
more harm than a pessimistic attitude. This is particularly so with
techno-optimism. Techno-optimism quickly leads to techno-opportunism, whereby
technological “solutions’ get applied with little, or any, consideration for
the risks that the technology may create.
Our continuing belief in technology (including that technology will
“save us”) is an optimism bias we must dispense with.
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