Journeyman Philosopher

In my last post I concluded that a realist account to life wasn’t viable as it was incapable of making judgement calls. aebersole replied with the comment that all three options those being Optimism, Pessimism, and Realism shouldn’t be strived for, but rather instead people should remain objective.

This is an interesting point, however I believe being objective has similar problems as being realist. Being objective is looking at a situation without opinion or the influence of feelings. This, at least to me, doesn’t seem possible unless you are dealing with situations in which you are simply re-stating or reflecting on certain things or events. We can look at a building slowly falling on us and make the objective conclusion that it is falling on us, but in order to move away from it we need to have a reason. Perhaps this reason is ‘I want to live’ or ‘I have more work to do’ but both of these are reasons that stem from emotion.

However this does point towards a fundamental problem of siding with optimism or pessimism, you fundamentally are just manipulating yourself with emotion. Despite this my personal philosophy has always been ‘if you are in a situation in which all you have to base your decision on is an assumption, assume the positive’. This is a view I’ve adopted just in observance of other peoples use of the negative assumption and how it seems to affect them. In my view, then, it would be of use to have a positive outlook to certain things, as positive thoughts influence positive actions thereby making positive results.

Lets look at the different experiences one would have in various situations; one where change is possible, another where change isn’t possible, and another where change is an unknown variable.

First a situation where change is possible. Imagine a situation in which you step outside your house and see a piece of trash laying on the ground.

First lets say you assume the positive. As so you go up to the trash you think ‘Hey someone accidently dropped this.’, and thereafter pick it up and throw it away.

Now instead lets presume you assumed the negative. You go up to the trash think ‘The world’s falling apart. Bunch of anarchists and nihilists running around’, and then don’t bother picking up the trash.

In this regard it seems as if assuming the negative (ie being a pessimist) actually causes further harm by not fixing the problem. Not fixing the problem results in problems stacking. 

Let’s now look at an example where change is not possible. Let’s say you’re minding your own business walking down the street when a skyscraper in front of you begins to crumble. From where you’re standing you acknowledge that its going to fall right on you, and that it would be beyond physical capability to avoid the falling building.

The optomist pauses for a moment and looks at the building thinking ‘Come on Jesus.’, and then gets crushed.

The pessimist pauses for a moment and looks at the building and says ‘Of course it happens to me.’ and then gets crushed.

Both die, but at least one died with a little less despair in my opinion. 

Now lets think of an example where change is an unknown variable. Lets say you are walking down the street in the middle of the day. There is an individual in front of you walking on the same side of your street. Looking at them you can’t discern their intent and only have your assumptions to work with.

Lets say if you assume the positive you walk beside them. In this situation there are various possibile outcomes, one you walk by everythings ok and another as you walk by you get jumped.

Now we assume the negative and you cross the street to avoid them. Some of the possible outcomes would be you cross the street nothing happens, and the other you cross the street and the individual you avoid takes this as a form of racial discrimination.

I think this situation would require further consideration before we could give the goal to optimism or pessimism.

Overall being optimist seems more useful to me to the individual. First optimism allows change, without change we can’t take ourselves out of situations which could eventually become negative despite an optimist perspective. For example, in the trash situation you prevent (or contend against) the accumalation of more trash. Second I feel optimism is useful as it alleviates stress (or at least doesn’t accumalate it). In the example of the falling building, although both individuals died, seemingly one was more happy before death.

The difficulty comes when we take into consideration acts that we have no inherent knowledge if we can change or not (such as the ‘walking by the street’ example).  I think if one was to play the probabilities they would find that it would be much more beneficial to be an optimist rather than a pessimist. I’m guessing, hopefully educated, that there would be a wider range of consequences from darting across the street than there would be from staying on the same side and risking the possible mugging.

One issue this discussion has brought to mind is that although optimisim seems more useful to the individual it is only useful if that individual is willing to partake in change. If a pessimist as well was willing to partake in change, despite the inherent self-inflicted stresses, I believe it could also be a feasible belief.

However when we’re stressed out blatantly by so many external factors, it seems silly as well to let your self be influenced by inner ones as well.

Next time I hope to explain two tiers that were created by the previous distinction, that will be of necessary importance in truly understanding optimist and pessimist accounts.

Note: One thing I feel I should mention is that there are many different ways to respond positively and negatively in a situation. I chose to not express all of these just because the different amount of responses are vast (if not unlimited). As so I just tried to show a reaction that could be considered either positive or negative in the hope of giving an accurate account of the effects of negative or postive thought. I think, or rather hope this is fair, but if you have any objections please voice them!