The Complex Balance Between Optimism and Pessimism

Are you an optimist or a pessimist? Maybe you're a hybrid who believes he or she is a realist.

While reading a long list of quotes on the theme of "Progress" I came upon this distinctive statement expressing Christopher Spranger's cynicism toward the notion:

"So much havoc has optimism wrought in this world that pessimism appears not only a legitimate way of looking at things but a moral duty."

Spranger was a German philosopher who thought a lot about pessimism and culture. He believed that blind optimism can deceive us into neglecting life's complexities and the struggles inherent in human existence. It's one of the biggest traps that politicians and voters fall into. Legislators push an idea and voters buy into it without understanding that the devil is in the details. 

This tendency toward blind optimism is so pervasive when it comes to most political projects that one wonders how our legislators can be so perpetually in the dark. 

When I first moved to Northern Minnesota there was a big push to promote the Iron Range as a tourist destination. Proponents for Iron World exclaimed that six million people a year would come visit this wonderful tribute to open pit mining. 

The funds came in abundance. The people did not. 

The problem isn't optimism, which breeds its own kind of hope. Rather, the problem is an optimism that has no foundation in reality. 

This is my problem with the EV crusade. Proponents envision a future powered by renewable energy. Fat chance, considering the way things are going now. The only way to get there will be by means of nuclear energy, but the Greens who insist we transition away from oil and coal ignore the science on this one. We are a very, very, very long ways off from an energy grid powered by renewables alone.  

Being optimistic doesn't change reality. Gamblers are frequently optimistic and feel it in their bones, but their optimism has no bearing upon the outcomes generated. 

On the other hand, portraying pessimism as an unequivocal moral duty oversimplifies these matters as well. Pessimism, while offering a cautious perspective, can sometimes lead to stagnation, a lack of innovation, and a defeatist attitude. Embracing pessimism as an absolute moral imperative may discourage necessary ventures and initiatives that drive progress. It's essential to remember that both optimism and pessimism have the potential to influence actions and shape outcomes.

No one starts a new business with the intention of ending in bankruptcy court. A tempered optimism is a fairly essential mindset for business leaders and job seekers. Even here, as former Intel chief Andy Grove asserted, Only the Paranoid Survive. 

Optimism, with its emphasis on hope, progress, and the potential for positive change, has indeed been associated with unintended consequences. History is replete with examples where unwavering optimism led to complacency, overlooking potential risks, and even causing harm. As such, Spranger's proposition highlights the necessity of tempering optimism with a healthy dose of critical evaluation and prudence.
 

Each outlook has its place, I suppose. The challenge is finding the equilibrium between them to navigate a world fraught with uncertainties.

A Visit with Optimistic Futurist Joe Tankersley, Author of Reimagining Our Tomorrows

Joe Tankersley

I've always been an amateur futurist it seems. Perhaps it was the 1964-65 World's Fair that set the wheels spinning. The Ford, GM and Disney Pavilions showed us fantastical visions of tomorrow. (Nothing quite so fantastical as Woody Allen's Sleeper, but close.)

In 1964, pictures of the future were all around us. I remember eating Cheerios and reading the back of the box over breakfast in which they showed a car of the future floating on a cushion of air so you could float from land onto lakes. That was supposed to happen the 80's. Back to the Future II showed skateboards that were like hovercraft as well. We apparently love the concept of hovering.

All this to say that I've routinely taken and interest in articles and books about the future. In the 80's I used to take Futurist magazine out of the library and we all read Toffler's Future Shock. Megatrends seemed to have a pretty hefty title and created a measure of buzz. And who among us has not read Brave New World or 1984?

A couple years ago a friend and I outlined a concept for a novel about a positive future, primarily as a response to the seeming multitude of dystopian futures being written about or portrayed in movies today. That exercise, of trying to solve all the world's problems in the 21st century, served as a good appetizer for Joe Tankersley's Reimagining Our Tomorrows which I acquired at the beginning of 2019.

According to his Amazon.com bio, the author is "a futurist, writer and advocate for better tomorrows. He combines his experience as a storyteller with the tools of strategic foresight to help others create compelling visions for our futures." (You read his full bio here.)

EN: What is your background and how did you come to be an optimist about the future?

Joe Tankersley: I’ve always been a storyteller and I’ve always been intrigued by the stories we tell about the future. About twenty years ago those two interests came together. At the time I was working as a writer for Walt Disney Imagineering and was assigned to a project on the life of Walt Disney. It was there that I discovered Walt’s vast body of work dedicated to imagining “Great Big Beautiful Tomorrows.” In fact, the first time I heard the term optimistic futurist was in an interview that Ray Bradbury did talking about the old Disney Tomorrowland episodes. It immediately clicked for me and I knew that this was the perfect way to combine my skills with my desire to contribute to better tomorrows.

EN: Over the course of a lifetime there have been many predictions about the end of life as we know it. The energy crisis, the population bomb and the threat of nuclear war were dark clouds during the past half century and global warming is the most recent iteration of this fearful end-of-the-world future. Is progress being made?

JT: Being an optimistic futurist is not always easy. The threat of climate change is a perfect example of the kind of challenge that can make it difficult to imagine a positive future. Being optimistic means putting end of the world scenarios into perspective. I always tell people, the past was messy, the present is messy and so there is no reason to imagine that the future won’t be messy, too. But, I do believe we have the capacity to nudge our future in positive directions. History supports this idea. Less people live in poverty today than ever before, fewer die from wars, more children and women survive childbirth. The list of our positive accomplishments is long. Humans have a fascinating ability to often wait to the very last minute to address the biggest problems but when we get mobilized we tend to be very good at imagining our way out of these predicaments.

EN: We pretty much know that bad news sells, that wars have been invented to sell newspapers. Is the media at fault for the widespread dystopian views of the future? How will this be fixed?

JT: I believe the media does have a powerful impact on our current lack of optimism about the future. While bad news has always sold there was a time when optimistic visions of the future were popular. There may be many reasons for the shift. One is the overwhelming flood of media outlets. The competition for attention has the effect of driving sensationalism. There is also the Future Shock factor that Alvin Toffler described 50 years ago. We are living in a time when change is happening so fast that our imaginations have a hard time keeping up. The result is that we retreat to darker stories.

This lack of optimistic imagination is, in my mind, the biggest threat to our future. Far greater than killer robots, or surveillance societies or out of control AI. Fixing it will not be easy. I am hopeful because I see a growing thirst from the public for positive stories. There are a handful of media outlets that are starting to try and serve this desire. If they can survive and grow, then we might see a slow shift back toward more optimistic storytelling.

We can support this movement by teaching children the value of critical imagination. Foresight should be taught in schools just like we teach history.

Photo by Drew Beamer on Unsplash

EN: Have there been any new studies (neuroscience or psychology) that show how what we imagine (or tell ourselves) will create what happens?

JT: I’m not aware of any large-scale studies that look at this question at the community or nation level. There has been research done that suggests corporations with a positive vision of their future tend to outperform others. A great deal of research has also been done on the individual level- everything from the power of visualization to help athletes perform to the role of hope in a person’s health, academic achievement, and happiness. Most of those studies find a positive correlation.

EN: Social media was purportedly going to bring people together. Have you been surprised by the polarization and rise of hatred caused by social media?

JT: I’m not sure that I would agree social media has caused these problems. It has certainly been a platform for ugly views that have long been widespread. By bringing these views out of the darkness it certainly has helped to embolden some fringe players and has contributed to specific acts of violence. Long term, though, I actually believe that by exposing these views to a much wider audience we will see a greater effort to silence the hatred being spread. Transparency will turn out to be one of the most powerful weapons for protecting democracy and promoting equality in the future.

EN: What kinds of things have you learned by writing this book?

JT: The hardest thing for me in writing Reimagining Our Tomorrows was figuring out how to create positive future visions that were still filled with some sense of conflict and excitement. It is much easier to write exciting stories about the end of the world than to write stories that reflect a positive outlook without becoming fantasy.

EN: What was the most surprising feedback you’ve received from readers?

JT: I’m surprised by the diversity of readers who have responded favorably to the book. I really imagined that it would appeal to audiences between the ages of 18-35, but I’ve had people of all ages tell me that it changed the way they thought about the future. That is always humbling.

Related Links
Find it here on Amazon:
Reimagining Our Tomorrows
My review of Reimagining Our Tomorrows:
Feeling Blue about the Future? Not All Futurists Are Dystopian

Worried about the Future? It Might Be Better Than You Think

Scene from Intergalactica.

To listen to some people you'd think it was the end of the world. Today's polarized politics, the threats from pollution, social breakdown, ongoing presence of nuclear weapons and other concerns hover over us like a cloud and nag us from the back of our collective minds.

Less than two weeks ago I overheard a couple say they were planning to not have children because the world is such a mess and the future grim. I'd heard this another time not that long ago as well, and it made me sad.

Yes, the are plenty of ways the future can play out with grim outcomes. A variety of dark futures have been written in the past including 1984 (Orwell), Brave New World (Huxley), Anthem (Ayn Rand), Fahrenheit 451 (Bradbury) and Neuromancer (Gibson) are just a few of the classics with bleak tomorrows.

When I was in high school I read Nevil Shute's On the Beach, which left many young people fearful of a nuclear winter. Cold war fears led many ordinary people to build bomb shelters and stockpile food and water.  (I don't recall seeing any books in my cousin's bomb shelter.)

Which leads to the power of Hollywood in reproducing many of these stories, and profiting from generating more such grim tales. Dystopian futures is now a cottage industry. So much so that we fail to recognize the progress that the human race has made over the past 500 years, which is the point of Steven Pinker's book Enlightenment Now.

Other books also point to a better tomorrow, including this one that I just read by futurist Joe Tankersley, a former Disney "imagineer" who has now published Reimagining Our Tomorrows: Making Sure Your Future Doesn't SUCK.

Here's my Summary of Joe Tankersley's book. Check it out.
Since we're talking about futures, here is a steampunk-era fantasy story that evolved from an art project I was part of a few years ago called Intergalactica.

Meantime, life goes on. Let's work together today for a brighter world tomorrow.