Is Optimism Possible?
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[Merry Christmas. Slava Ukraini!]
Lev Parnas:
Most people are spending Christmas today wrapped up in family, food, warmth, and a little peace you deserve every bit of that.
But while we're doing that, Oleksandr is doing something that should stop all of us in our tracks.
On Christmas Day, he filled his truck with generators and humanitarian aid and headed straight into the hardest-hit areas - Kharkiv and Donetsk - where families are living through darkness, cold, and constant fear.
That's what a real hero looks like. Not someone who talks about courage someone who drives it into the danger zone, one generator at a time, so children can sleep with heat, so parents can charge a phone and call loved ones, so elderly people can make it through another night.
Watch this video. Share it. And if you can, please help us back Oleksandr up - because heroes like him shouldn't have to carry this alone. Any dollar helps. We keep Ukraine alive by showing up for the people who refuse to give up.
gofund.me/162fd35d8
From my family to yours: Merry Christmas. And from our community to Oleksandr thank you for reminding the world what humanity looks like.
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The Prophetic Dissent of Colonel General Leonid Ivashov: A Chronicle of Warning Against Russia’s War in Ukraine
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Ambulances for Kids
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Is Optimism Possible?
by R. Ray Scott, Ph.D. [Associate Professor of Adult Education, University of Hawaii]
Students have sought to explain the pessimism of Schopenhauer by the frustration he suffered in failing to win the recognition of his intellectual contemporaries. The pessimism of Voltaire has been attributed to the great Lisbon earthquake, the Seven Years War, and even the greediness of the poet’s niece, Madame Denis.
Doubtless these efforts can be justified on the grounds that they enforce an assumption, amply supported by psychology, that an individual’s emotional balance and intellectual viewpoint are shaped by his personal experiences.
On this assumption it is easy to understand why some persons habitually see the bright side of things in times of great public misfortune while others are gloomy in periods of relative good fortune. Each individual is influenced by the prevailing tone of his time, by his own personal pattern of experience, and to some unknown extent by heredity, which determines his basic reaction pattern.
In times characterized by more than the usual amount of trouble, persons whose experience inclines them to pessimism have this tendency supported and strengthened. Those basically sanguine find less to abet this feeling, while the great majority, who normally display an emotional balance, are pulled to the darker side. Of course too, there are the young whose developing personalities, during such times, are apt to be warped toward pessimism, or its associate, cynicism, largely because their personal experiences are more likely to be affected by public misfortune.
It is generally felt that the times in which we live are more troubled than should be the normal state of human society. The struggle for power between political and economic groups, postwar disillusionment, racism, the high cost of living, crime, unemployment, family instability, and the threat of a third world war all tend to create a feeling of insecurity and even hopelessness. Surely the pessimist has come into his own. In such a time what is there for a “strong” man to do except to extract from evil times the greatest amount of selfish benefit possible? As for the weak man, he can but become the tool of the rapacious, hoping for crumbs, or surrender to black despair, thus becoming the pawn of fate.
We must, however, recognize that every analysis of a problem of human behavior tends to err on the side of oversimplification. In classifying people on a pessimism-optimism scale, we have already implied that the great mass of persons would fall toward the middle of the scale. This does not mean they are neither one thing nor the other. Their balance can be overcome by a course of events weighted either on the side of fortune or misfortune.
I have thus far presented pessimism and optimism as though they were pure states of feeling. But in many cases, the individual’s feeling fluctuates on a short-arc basis, and his acts show a corresponding inconsistency. A man may see no importance in the position occupied by Man in the cosmic scheme, and no happy future for him, and yet exhibit a sanguine attitude in his personal affairs. Another man may view the human race as the choice creation of God designed for a glorious future, and at the same time take a gloomy view of his own personal opportunities.
What can be done with a creature so vascillating, so inconsistent, so complex as man? If one man can ask the question there is certainly hope: and many men have concerned themselves with this question throughout the ages. Even Schopenhauer and Voltaire offered roads of escape, though many would prefer an endurable amount of unhappiness to the former’s road, which led to a sort of Nirvana. The French savant offered a more positive program which is captured in the phrase “Let us cultivate our garden”. He worshipped God, he says, by establishing schools, hospital, home industries on his Ferney estate to help artisans, and by publicly defending victims of religious intolerance.
Possibly Voltaire’s antidote for pessimism falls somewhat short of social reform. He was a rich man of brilliant intellect who was quite capable of cultivating his own garden. Certainly his humanism carried the seeds of social reform.
We must recognize pessimism as a necessary part of human experience. It is a part of the rhythm of life life and death, growth and decay, good and bad pessimism and optimism. Life would have no significance if there were no death. All positive things are understood only in relation to their negations. Even Heaven appears as good because it represents a triumph over evil.
Positive action by man offers the only real tool with which man can fight pessimism—the only assurance that the scales will tip on the side of man’s aspirations. This assurance grows out of experience. Those who have been “disillusioned” by unsuccessful attempts at reform may think otherwise. George Curtis, a student in the school at the old Brook Farm, wrote in a letter to his father: “No wise man is long a reformer, for wisdom sees plainly that growth is steady, sure, and neither condemns nor rejects what is or has been. Reform is organized distrust.” This is equivalent to saying we should let nature take her course, that improvement will take place without our intervention. Few will be found to agree with this mechanistic point of view, though the pessimist will readily accept the idea that conditions will naturally deteriorate if left to themselves.
Our reasoning has brought us to the position that the chief problem for man is not whether his lot can be improved but rather how to go about it. He can choose between the Voltairean policy of cultivating his own garden and joining forces with others in organized social reforms. Of course he can try both, in which case he will need to exercise good judgment in apportioning his energies.
The task of social reform is possible to every man in a democratic community. We do not have to conclude from the distribution of I.Q.’s and socioeconomic status that bettering human life is merely a matter of noblesse oblige for those above the median point of the curve. We can, however, realistically recognize that the degree and effectiveness of participation will vary tremendously because of those conditioning factors.
The recognized modes of participation are: formal and informal talking and writing, voting, organizing, and contributing money or labor.
Considerable hazards are confronted by the reformer. Some of these are:
1. Wasting time and energy on conditions which are already yielding adequately to constructive forces.
2. Being led by selfish interests into working for wrong ends.
3. Being exploited by false leaders through ignorance.
4. Being honestly mistaken in the worthiness of the causes supported.
All of these obstacles can be surmounted by education. It should be the constant objective of all educational agencies to cultivate intelligence, knowledge, social responsibility and good will. Intelligence means skill in actually analyzing and solving social problems. Knowledge must include data about human behavior and social institutions and processes. Social responsibility is an attitudinal orientation which brings the individual the satisfaction which always comes from working for the common welfare. Good will is a requisite motivating force.
All proposed solutions for social problems presuppose an ability to recognize what is desirable. In arriving at these judgments, standards or criteria which are philosophical values are brought into use. It is a notable fact that values vary tremendously from society to society, class to class, and even from time to time. Appreciation of this fact and its important significances is an indispensable part of education. Thus the man who would justify optimism in our day must put forth an effort to shape life to more nearly conform to certain values which he prefers.
What is the proper origin of such values? Someone has said that a fine afflatus is the essence of an ethical philosophy. Many persons may regard this as somewhat hazy. Philosophical values rightfully originate in reflection upon the experience of a people. Scientific research in western civilization has ministered to many of man’s physical needs, in addition to his intellectual hunger. So we place freedom of the pursuit of knowledge high among the values we cherish. Our ancestors have thrown off the shackles of tyrranical governments and we have found political freedom to be good.
Many thinkers looking over the history of the United States have seen individualism to be the basic expression of the people. We find no objection to this, provided allowance is made for the gradual change of interpretation which has been going on. Only the individual man can be free, since he is the psychological unit of society. However, the individual finds his fullest expression only in interaction with his fellows. Thus interpreted, the concepts of individualism and freedom are identical.
We have now assembled a great deal that is needed to banish pessimism in these tense days. Only the man whose efforts are absorbed in promoting selfish interests has grounds for taking a gloomy view of things. The intelligent social reformer, by his action, recognizes there is need for improvement. His positive action is based on a faith that human life can be bettered, a faith which is not only founded on historical experience, but which finds powerful implementation in science, and is a proper inference from the nature of intelligence.
“You cannot believe in honor until you have achieved it. Better keep yourself clean and bright: you are the window through which you must see the world.”—G. B. S.
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THE TRUE JOY
This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. And also the only real tragedy in life is the being used by personally minded men for purposes which you recognize to be base. All the rest is mere misfortune or mortality: this alone is misery, slavery, hell on earth; and the revolt against it is the only force that offers a man's work to the poor artist, whom our personally minded rich people would so willingly employ as pandar, buffoon, beauty monger, sentamentalizer and the like.-George Bernard Shaw, “Man and Superman".
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Adaptation Processes and Peaceful Change
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Two Visions for Ukraine: Why the World Must Support Zelenskyy’s Peace Formula Over Concessionary Frameworks
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$71 Trillion can help us/Ukraine now. SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS [Thus to Tyrants]- Stand/Unite Behind the Clean New Deal, TNU, F.I.G.H.T.,.
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A single whisper is faint, but millions banding together can roar loudly enough to topple a kakistocracy and demand The Clean New Deal, as the Dalia Lama says, “If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito.”
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Some text visible on the blackboard behind Alfred Korzybski