meliorism

Some optimists think we live in the best of all possible worlds. Some pessimists fear they may be right. Subjectivists wallow in their interior dramas. The sensible alternative? Meliorism, "a better promise as to this world's outcome"...

golden age

Another fondly-recalled summer read: Edward Bellamy's 19th century utopian dream, Looking Backward, in which a Bostonian goes to sleep in 1887 and awakes in 2000 to a socialist paradise. I read this one on my iPod too, at the beach. (A free Stanza download.)

The author said it was "written in the belief that the Golden Age lies before us and not behind us."  A very pleasant summer dream indeed, and arguably a more "rational" optimism-- or at least, more flattering of human virtues-- than that portrayed in another of my beach reads, Matt Ridley's Rational Optimist...


Should we be optimists because the golden age awaits our species-evolution beyond commerce and acquisitiveness, as Bellamy proposed? Or because, as Ridley has it, self-interest places us all in the employ of one another and perpetually grows the pie-trough from which we all sup?


I know this : it's easier to be an optimist at the beach than at the Senate retreat. But this morning, I'm optimistic about school too.

shipwreck

Thinking about train-wrecks this morning, and the Great Train-Wreck at Dutchman's Curve in 1918-- a line of reflection oddly triggered by the comparatively-trivial derailment in France of Lance Armstrong, puts me in mind of a memorable James quote.

The world may be saved, on condition that its parts shall do their best. But shipwreck in detail, or even on the whole, is among the open possibilities.

Drive safely. Or fly. Or, you could walk.

hyperthymia, hypomania

They are real conditions, sometimes indistinguishable from the outside but experienced very differently within. Hyperthymia may be what William James had in mind when he discussed the "once-born" in Varieties of Religious Experience, with their child-like cheerful openness, acceptance, and affirmation of existence . Hypomania is symptomatic of bi-polar disorder. Happy forever after is storybook. Is real happiness something else? Guess it depends on what kind of an ogre your nature and nurture have made you.


Richard Powers draws the distinction in Generosity:

Don't Panic

Douglas Adams was not exactly a rational optimist, but Melvyn Bragg's interview with him makes me happy and hopeful.

Sail On

Neither an optimist nor a pessimist be, said William James. Meliorism is the way. Sail on, but beware. "Shipwreck in detail, or even on the whole, is among the open possibilities of life." But the delight of smooth sailing is worth a considerable risk.

believers

The "This I Believe" testimonial I was trying to recall in class yesterday, from the young woman whose environmental credo is all the more poignant in light of her own tragic fate: Michelle Gardner-Quinn's "Reverence for all Life." Another favorite: astronaut Dan Tani's orbital optimism. And, as noted: Unitarian Robert Fulghum's version of the trans-end-dance.


Here's the title I mentioned in class, The Secular Conscience by Austin Dacey. It argues that discussions of "private" religious belief belong in the public sphere. The Times reviewer applauded its  "confidence in John Stuart Mill’s principle that every idea should be 'fully, frequently and fearlessly discussed,' lest it “be held as a dead dogma, not a living truth.”


And here's the one I confused it with, also written in the spirit of J.S. Mill: Science and Nonbelief, by Taner Edis, who says "God is not a purely philosophical problem, and supernatural concepts are not insulated from scientific criticism."

Half-full

“A lot of science-fiction is nihilistic and dark and dreadful about the future, and ‘Star Trek’ is the opposite,” Mr. Nimoy said. “We need that kind of hope, we need that kind of confidence in the future. I think that’s what ‘Star Trek’ offers. I have to believe that — I’m the glass-half-full kind of guy.”

Optimism

NPR's reprised series is too earnest and self-important for some people, but not for me. I just caught up this morning with this stirring segment that aired originally last year:

An Optimistic View of the World

As heard on NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday, February 17, 2008. Watch Dan Tani recording his essay in space Like many people, I have a job that requires me to take a business trip every now and then. I'm on one right now. As I write this, I'm flying over New Zealand; it looks so beautiful out the window. Unlike most people, however, I'm traveling over 200 miles above the Earth, and I'm going 17,500 miles an hour. When I look down, I am stunned by the intense colors of the Earth, the intricate patterns and textures, and sheer beauty of our home planet. When I watch the Earth roll by, I realize I believe in optimism. It would be hard to believe that there is no hope for Earth from up here. The International Space Station is a collaboration of 16 nations—and one of our primary partners was our sworn enemy only a few decades ago. The space station itself is the embodiment of where we can go as a global society. My own optimism is rooted in two very different ideas: statistical probability and trust. First, I accept the statistical probability that I am not likely to be killed by a terrorist or contract some horrible disease. It's not that I think that everything will work out okay; it's that I think that everything will probably work out okay. And second, trust. I learned trust from my mother, and in a way this essay is for her. Two months ago, while I was up here, she died in an accident and of course I have been unable to return to honor her. I have been thinking about her life, which was not an easy one. She was born into poverty, forcibly relocated during World War II, survived the premature deaths of her husband and a son—and yet, her outlook was so life-affirming. She felt that people were good and well-meaning. Sometimes I felt that she trusted too easily, and I was afraid that that stranger she talked to on the street or the airplane might not be as nice as she thought. But I was almost always proven wrong, and I'm so grateful for her example. I came to believe, like her, that most people want to live their lives without conflict. They care about the other people in their house, their neighborhood, their country, and their planet. I am an astronaut, and I cannot imagine doing what I'm doing, seeing what I'm seeing, and not being an optimist. We climb aboard extremely complex machines which hurl us into space, and we have to trust that every engineer, every technician, and every manager has done their job, and that we have a high statistical probability of success. And once we are here, we get to look back and see the Earth as a thing of stunning beauty. Of course, I know there are awful things going on down there, that people are in pain, wars are raging, poverty and hunger are taking far too many lives—but from here, I can only see the whole. I wish that everyone could see the world from my perspective; I believe that more people would be optimistic about our future. Dan Tani served as flight engineer on the International Space Station where he conducted four space walks. He joined NASA as an astronaut candidate in 1996. Tani was raised in Lombard, Ill., by his mother, and now lives with his wife and children in Houston. See a slide show of Dan Tani's photographs of the Earth from space.