I want to talk about something that has been brought to the fore of my mind by something that Cory Doctorow has recently published ; happiness, optimism and hope. In particular optimism because it made me step back and consider his proposition in order to reassess my own understanding of a word I’ve often used in the past to describe one of the characteristics of my persona.
‘Optimism […] is a toxin to be avoided. Optimism is a subgenre of fatalism, the belief that things will get better no matter what we do. It’s just the obverse of pessimism. Both are ways of denying human agency. To be an optimist is to be a passenger of history, along for the ride, with no hope of changing course.’
It is the words ‘human agency’ which first spiked my interest of course. And all of a sudden an answer to a one question that has been on my mind for some time was delivered to me. The world is turning to shit because it has to in order to deliver a better world. In a world where I despair for want of a politically active electorate willing – because we all can – to sort the hay from the chaff on a routine basis and inured to propaganda, all I see around me are angry people, too busy to make ends meet (a relative as well as a subjective reconciliation of financial and social dues and rights) all the while gobbling up whatever mis/dis-information is force-fed onto them; nothing is going to change without some major upheavals. People are not going to wake up from the nightmare until they are scared out of their wits. Shocked awake and gasping for breath, heart thumping in the chest and all senses primed for fight or flight responses. Only then will people sit up and take note of what is happening. In other words, human agency being what it is, if a better world is to be built, the old one must writhe in pain and lash out in frustration as it burns itself out of existence. That is the explanation for what I see around the world today. It is both a sad and painful sight and a harbinger of better things to be, therein lies hope.
‘Hope […] That’s the stuff. Hope is the belief that if we change the world for the better, even by just a little, that we will ascend a new gradient towards a better future, and as we rise up to that curve, new terrain will be revealed to us that we couldn’t see from our lower vantage-point. It’s not necessary -- nor even possible – to see a course from here to the world you want to live in. You can get there is a stepwise fashion, one beneficial change at a time.’
Tying up loose ends… Upon reflection, it is not true that I am an optimist, or ever was one. What I can say now with some confidence is that I am full of hope, have always been. Thank you
@pluralistic
