Realism, Pessimism, Optimism

When we try to be, we never will be until we stop trying. When we try to be positive, we never really are positive until we stop trying. It seems very fashionable to be positive, and to look at the bright side of every scenario. A person who seems "happy" to others, whether they truly are or not is often called "well adjusted", or a "good person", while a person who seems disappointed, or pessimistic is "negative". So, how can one be pragmatic, realistic and reactive to the reality of a situation when the majority of the people surrounding any one person are pressuring so heavily for that person not to disturb the phantasmal masturbation of the ones who are perpetuating the sacred gem of positivity? In reality, life is elusive enough without those who avoid inconvenient truths to perpetuate the sacred object of their group, and projecting their fantasy as the real. In this essay, I want to informally explore some reasons why optimism is extremely destructive and masturbatory. I would like to highlight and explain my favored and most important position, the realist. What is the problem with an optimistic masturbation? Is it not true that pessimism is an opportunistic and masturbatory position also? If being a realist makes me unhappy, it seems counter productive to not delude myself. What is the reasoning behind the drive to stick to realism? Let us start off with this:

Realism

1. Interest or concern in the actual or the real as distinguished from the abstract or the speculative.
2. The tendency to view or represent things as they really are.

Pessimism

1. The tendency to see, anticipate, or emphasize only bad or undesirable outcomes, results, conditions, problems, etc.

Optimism

1. The disposition or tendency to look on the more favorable side of events or conditions, and to expect the most favorable outcomes.

Opportunism

1. The policy or practice, as in one's business, politics or personal affairs of adapting actions, decisions, etc. to expediency, or effectiveness regardless of the sacrifice of ethical principles.

*Dictionary.com

In the world we live in today where 25,000 children a day die of poverty, where 2.6 billion people lack basic sanitation, where nearly a billion people cannot read or write I definitely understand the desire to be optimistic where one finds the opportunity. I also clearly understand why one would be pessimistic. We as a people have been slated with the most impossible task, of all things, controlling masses of people. We are making positive advances in healthcare, communications, ecology, and whether you want to believe it or not, the people are growing more productive ethically. These are reasons to be realistically positive. So let me paint a couple basic scenarios:

Two men are on the edge of a ledge, and one of them has slipped over and is hanging on to a branch over a one hundred foot drop. His friend is overcome by a sense of natural urgency to rein his friend back in, as his very life depends on the success of the task at hand. This urgency is created by the most simple of instinctual drives, a quantitative one for one loss of human life. We have an instinctual drive to save life, in this situation.

Let us imagine a similar scenario where the same two friends are walking close to the ledge, and one of them simply stumbles over an impression in the ground. The other friend reacts instinctively, but can tell his friend will not fall over the ledge, so the sense of urgency is lessened.

The urgency levels in both situations are completely real and natural. As I said before, this scenario is a simple quantitative one for one scenario where the urgency is easily defined as it is always better to have your friend alive, than not.

So, how about that begging begging begging question? What if you did not really consider the person a friend? Would you pull him back? Say you were play fighting, and you pushed a little too hard causing the other to fall to his death. Was that unconsciously intentional? When we start to move into the qualitative evaluations, personal value systems come into play, and answers start to vary into as many diverse positions as there are people to have them. This is where we start to see delusion, optimism, pessimism and opportunism emerge. But make no mistake, when alliances are formed (friends and family), and it is understood as productive support to ally for survival at the trivial and the urgent, reality will dictate the unconscious instinctual reactions one will have, and one will be in their natural state of realism.

I want to make a distinct ethical point, and I would like to point out that I am writing my own ethical doctrines, and I myself am definitely a humanist. I am not a humanist follower, but consider myself a humanist creator. I do not consider myself a humanist leader, as that would destroy the truth as it is in its own indirect essence. That being said, I would like to lay a fundamental crystalline truth down that I hope will eternally brand itself into your neural pathways:

We should not make distinctions between our family, our friends, and a stranger when it comes to human suffering.

Of course no one would expect you to help a stranger, while you let somebody in your own family suffer. This is based on the trust that help is guaranteed to you from family, where as, in our modern world there is no guarantee a friend or stranger will reciprocate. This is perfectly understandable, as the social systems of the past have rewarded greed and selfishness time and time again as they continue to do today. But, the social systems are growing better. Communications are getting better, and one can see the ground for a realistic optimism in this. So, if we are affected by a realistic optimism that social systems are moving in a more positive direction, then we can begin to imagine those changes taking place down to the individual's daily life. When people have taken care of themselves, and their necessities, they will think about giving to family, friends and strangers with no thought of return. The sense of urgency that one feels, in a one for one quantitative saving of the life of another, who one is in an alliance with will be carried over, in a natural urgency to every human being, and even to one's own enemies as Jesus Christ would have you do.

It was necessary for me to go off on a rather long tangent in order to bring significance to reality, and instinctual urgency in survival alliances, in order to explain clearly the destructive nature of an unconditional optimism. Positivity is in its real state of power when it is the bi-product of a positive situation. I would also like to carry this idea over to happiness. Happiness is in its real state of power when it is a bi-product of a situation that causes happiness. When a situation is realistically happy, or positive, the realist cannot help be happy or positive; the optimist was already happy and positive, and therefore makes no distinction between the real effect and the perpetuated delusion; the pessimist remains unmoved by the reality of the situation. When a situation is realistically destructively negative, the realist is negative; the pessimist was already negative therefore cannot distinguish between the real negative effects and the pessimistic delusion; and the optimist, if at all possible will use tactics to avoid the severity of the situation by outright negating it, or drowning the situation with similar scenarios to make it seem like an every day occurrence, all with the agenda of protecting their gem from disturbance. There is one scenario left, the scenario of indeterminate evaluation. The realist will remain undetermined, undecided and agnostic, as this is the actual position of the lack in reality; the optimist will try to use what they can to paint a positive outlook; the pessimist of course will paint a negative outlook.

Now, in two of the scenarios it is clearly better to be the realist, because when the situation is positive, then one is there in the right state of mind to feel the upsurge of positivity in its own natural state of power. When the situation is negative the realist has his instinctual state of urgency to turn to, without the addition of agenda to muddle, positive or negative. But the third scenario, where the situation is indeterminate, one should remain optimistic. If nature is not offering you a gift, or you are not in an urgent survival situation, it is better to be optimistic than agnostic. I think if you are an optimist you disagreed with me all the way to this point, if you are a pessimist than you disagreed with me on every point, and if you are a realist, then you agreed with me on every point.

We live in a world with daunting ideological divisions. These deviations that grew out of natural divisions and barriers are being torn down by modern communications, and, the modern desire for coexistence. Those who want war, whether it be unconscious or conscious are going to find themselves exposed before the rest of the world very soon. I find it astounding that those who live optimistic lives in their daily routines, in a lot of cases are the same people who support mass carnage to protect their gem as the particular universal. The only solid givens are the axioms of math and science, and that fundamental quantitative evaluation of one human life lived, is better than one human life killed. People often act in oppositions, so, that negative pessimist that annoys you at work all the time, may just be conspiring at high stress levels in his basement late at night to make some contribution to seemingly unattainable world peace.

Think about it.