Bright-Sided-25

This book was particularly amusing to me, after so many years of my mom trying to convert my pessimism to optimism (often to my chagrin), this book that explains all the negative aspects of an optimistic view on things was quite entertaining.

The book provided a detailed history of optimism and it's roots. It appears this philosophy stemmed from religion. It started in Calvinism, a religion that believed that humans were predestined to go to heaven or hell, and that our entire lives should be spent working or reflecting on our flaws. The religion encouraged self-loathing and reportedly caused sickness among its practitioners. This eventually led to other views that eventually led to optimism.

The book also shows how optimism has infected every aspect of our society on a very basic level. Scientists  promote positive thinking as a key to longevity, health, success, social affluence, and just about everything else. Business owners subject their employees to constant pep-talks, and apparently "not being positive enough" is an acceptable reason to fire someone. The words "positive" and "good" are now interchangeable, and negativity has seemingly replaced sin in many churches.

When looking at this from a third person perspective these things seem so obvious that you wonder how you never noticed it before. The answer is simply that you haven't noticed it because you;re caught up in it too. How often do you connect pessimism with anything good? Have you ever thought that a negative outlook on something might work better than a positive one? If so, when was this? More importantly, how did the other members of society treat your negativity?

An example of how bad things have gotten that struck me as significant was an example where a worker for a company who was supposed to decide which stock options to buy, hold, or sell was fired for putting something in the "sell" category. He put it there because the stock was losing money and showed very little promise for a future comeback, meaning that it would, from a realistic standpoint, be a good idea to sell it. Apparently optimism disagrees, and so good decisions are rewarded with punishment.

I have never fully converted to optimism, despite my mom's best efforts. However, I did manage to shake my constant pessimism, something that the book also says is bad. I take the stance that is encouraged by this book, realism. I consider both positive and negative and make my decisions with common sense and logic. It's disturbing to see that I am part of a dying species. I have met very few realists, a couple of pessimists, a few pessimists who claim to be realists, but very few actual realists. The difference between realists and pessimists who claim to be realists is slight, but important. Pessimists focus on the negative parts of a situation, realists focus on the situation as a whole. The reason the words have become interchangeable for most people is that the state of the world doesn't leave many positive things to be considered by realists. That, and the fact that anybody who dares to consider a negative thing is arbitrarily labeled as a pessimist by the majority of optimists.

If any of the things said here strike anywhere close to home for you, read this book and see if you should reconsider your worldview to be more realistic. For now I take my leave, food for thought should not be force-fed, otherwise it soils the flavor and gives one indigestion. Also metaphors should not be created by teenage scholars, otherwise the sound corny like the one above.

Joking aside, give these things some thought. See you next time! Farewell!