Foolish Optimism or Wise Pessimism?
As the news from across the world gets more grim : shut
downs or their violations, predictions of looming economic depressions,
political standoffs, riots after yet another African American dies of excessive
police force, a student who asks to be
excused from an online class because her
aunt has just passed away from Covid.
All this against the backdrop of the abject poverty of some and the excessive
wealth of others, conflict refugees struggling to survive, the millions of
children without education or clean drinking water, the oppression of Kashmiris, Palestinians, Rohingya, and Uyghurs.
Some respond with
despair and pessimism, others look for signs of optimism. All human endeavor appears to swing between
these two approaches to life’s complexities. Nuances have evolved between these
two extremes, with wise pessimism being considered the most realistic approach,
especially since the 90s, when matters spiraled out of control with the first
Gulf war, and when climate change reached alarming proportions.
Wise pessimism accepts the bitter realities and aims to make
gradual improvements. The United
Nations, World Bank, IMF, intelligence agencies, diplomacy are some global
examples, and each country has its own mitigating policies. Foolish optimism,
that blithely believes the solution lies just round the corner, is scorned by
wise pessimists.
Yet a brilliant mind like Albert Einstein could say “ I had
rather be an optimist and a fool than a
pessimist and right”
The fact is that no invention, no music composition or art
work, no blockbuster film, or political revolution would have come about
without foolish optimism. Otis created the first safety elevator long before
skyscrapers were designed; Mauchly and Eckert created the first gigantic Eniac computer not knowing it would become an indispensable personal
device. The Pharaohs created monumental stone pyramids in the desert;
Beethoven composed the Moonlight Sonata
and six symphonies after losing his
hearing; Van Gogh continued painting
without gaining any recognition in his lifetime. Stephan Hawkings wrote
a book and made major discoveries about deep space while unable to speak
without a device, or move without a wheelchair.
The very nature of invention,
discovery or creativity has to be an act of optimism, as they are essentially a
step into the unknown, armed only with a blind faith in an idea. Traditional practices and methods are
upturned, reexamined or discarded. The sharing of these in the form of
exhibitions, academic papers or approaching manufacturers, is only possible
because there is an optimistic belief that like-minded believers and users are
out there. An artist may be conveying a dark reality, but the act of making and
sharing comes from a place of optimism . The artist Jules Breton said “If the
man in me is often a pessimist, the artist, on the contrary, is pre-eminently
an optimist.” The philosopher Šliogeris
reminds us that the beautiful flower emerges from the turbid depths of dark
soil.
The Fool in the Tarot pack is numbered 0 – the number of
unlimited potential and represents beginnings, innocence, spontaneity, a free
spirit. There are fewer naive or foolish
optimists than there are cynics, which is as it should be, since the role of
optimists is to reawaken faith, but they may not be equipped to take the arduous
journey to implement change.
Pangloss, a character in Voltaire's novel Candide, is a satire
of the philosopher Gottfried Leibniz, who believed that the world we live in is
the best of all possible worlds, and has come to represent baseless optimism,
contributing to the association of optimists with foolishness. Perhaps it is time we reversed the adjectives
and call the optimist wise and the pessimist foolish.
Durriya Kazi
June 1, 2020
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