The Ignorance of Optimism

[peacewithoutgod]

CINDY (edit)

You've been here for how long? By now, you should have come to understand that the difference between the wooful Pollyennas and the science which you still make your pointless point of disparaging is not blind faith vs. throwing shit at every idea anybody may have! It's plain to see that you are in dire need of intense mental health treatment.

[Mermaid]

In my immediate family both sets of grandparents were addicts and so was my mother and father. My brother to this day is dealing with addiction. So yes I have a history.

So tell me how can one be true to oneself when you refuse to acknowledge the negative?

I consider myself an optimist. I think this is a fallacy here, that an optimist must be out of touch with reality.

[Baruch]

You've been here for how long? By now, you should have come to understand that the difference between the wooful Pollyennas and the science which you still make your pointless point of disparaging is not blind faith vs. throwing shit at every idea anybody may have! It's plain to see that you are in dire need of intense mental health treatment.

You talkin' to me, punk? ;-)

[peacewithoutgod]

You talkin' to me, punk? ;-)

Does it look like something I would address you on? My intention was to respond to Cindy's asinine rant.

[Deidre32]

Hope is a very good thing. It is why the species has continued. It is why we have cures for diseases. It is why we are able to talk as we are right now. It is why there are so many inventions, theories, and why mankind has explored space to the extent it has. Because someone...many someones...had hope for a better tomorrow. Hope and optimism are  very good things.

[peacewithoutgod]

When I see a glass which is half full, what matters to me is whether it still has enough water to drown the grating twat who invoked that tired old cliche, and is it good and solid enough glass to knock out sociopathic trolls such as Cindy so that they stay down.

[median]

When you look at the picture above, what do you see?

It is obvious that in fact the glass is half empty and those who say it is half full are fooling themselves. To say that the glass is half full is to erroneously believe that at some point in the future more water will be pour into the glass filling it up. There is nothing absolutely no evidence not a shred that this possibility will happen. It is something optimists take on faith, they refuse to see the reality right before their eyes, they refuse to live in the present reality were the glass is half empty and choose to live in some sort of imaginary future where the glass is full. This is why optimism is so dangerous and probably responsible for much of the evil in society. Optimists are people who refuse to live in the here and now and accept the reality of the situation but choose to live in some sort of future utopia. The problem is not everyone has the same optimistic vision of what utopia should look like and they often end up fighting over which of their fantasy lands is the best. I am telling you my friends we need to renounce optimism before it is too late. I believe our only hope if we are to survive as a species is to give up the unreality of optimism.

Your thoughts please.

When you say, "It is obvious..." in a philosophy forum on this subject I am automatically suspicious and I hear the word assumption ringing loud and clear (forgive me for that). I actually think that saying "It's obviously half empty" (basically assuming) is to fool one's self, of sorts. First, I do not "take on faith" anything (since faith is believing something without sound reason or justification). I look at the picture and I see a glass with some water in it which has the potential of having more water in it. Now so far as I can tell, optimism has nothing to do with some "future utopia". Optimism is:

• hopefulness and confidence about the future or the successful outcome of something.

This is the classic general definition and I see nothing wrong with that approach. As others have mentioned, that approach is very useful. It reminds me of the old saying, "If at first you do not succeed, try try again." For most of my life I considered myself a pessimist, always expecting the bad to happen and easily giving up when things got tough. But that is also b/c my family has a history of clinical depression. With treatment I have actually made many positive strides in changing those thinking patterns. And it has had a very beneficial effect (of which I'm thankful and happy for). But optimism does not mean living in some mental fantasyland that everything is peachy (not even close). It does not even mean that one cannot plan for hard times. It just means being confident that most things are temporary and that they are likely to get better as time progresses. And in fact statistically (for most people) this is in fact the case. So I think you have misrepresented what optimism is about, getting off on the wrong foot from the start as it were, and that is the problem I see.

[Baruch]

Unfortunately, CrucifyCindy hasn't been around for 2 months ;-(

Word definition difficulties ... optimism vs self confidence.  Synonyms?