We like optimistic people. they are fun, often funny, and very often capable of doing amazing things otherwise thought to be impossible. Were I stranded on a life raft in the middle of the ocean with the choice of an optimist or a pessimist for a companion, I’d want the optimist, providing he did not have a liking for human flesh. Optimism, however, is often rather like a Yankee fan believing that the team can win the game when it’s the bottom of the ninth and they’re up by a run with two outs, a two-strike count against a .200 hitter, and Mariano Rivera in his prime on the mound. That fan is optimistic for good reason. Cleveland Indian fans (I am one), on the other hand, believe in salvation by small percentages (if at all) and hope for a hit to get the runner home from second base and tie the game. Optimists know that the odds are in their favor; hope is the faith that things will work out whatever the odds. Hope is a verb with its sleeves rolled up. Hopeful people are actively engaged in defying the odds or changing the odds. Optimism, on the other hand, leans back, puts its feet up, and wears a confident look, knowing that the deck is stacked. “Hope,” in Vaclav Havel’s words, “is not prognostication. It is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart; it transcends the world that is immediately experienced, and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons . . . Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, . . . but, rather, an ability to work for something because it is good” (1991, p. 181). I know of no purely rational reason for anyone to be optimistic about the human future. How can one be optimistic, for example, about global warming? First, as noted above, it isn’t a “warming,” but rather a total destabilization of the planet brought on by the behavior of one species: us.
Thought Experiments and Novels
