Having randomly read "Pessimism Seems Like an Intellectually Serious Position", which I am not even sure I agree with enough, or feel is complete enough, to quote...
I'm most frequently accused of being a pessimist. I'm the one always doing the detailed planning that reveals everything will take longer than you hoped, will involve more difficult decisions, have more opportunity cost...
But emotionally I'm a hopeless optimist. I'm forever believing the best about others despite evidence to the contrary. I'm generous to a fault and quick to forgive, and nearly as quick to forget.
I'm not sure I want to trade these at this point. That would mean trading:
a tendency to protect for a dismissing wave
a careful choice of words for a quick cut
any focus for overcommitment (and I'm already so overcommitted)
This list could go on but my brain is a little muddled at the moment.
I'm trying to think of characters in the "tactically pessimistic, emotionally optimistic" vein, and vice-versa.
Charlie Brown vs Lucy comes to mind. He's known as the pessimist, but he's forever trying to kick that football when Lucy holds it.
The stern military leader who inspires a charge despite impossible odds, despite knowing those under his charge will die in vain, is who I see personifying the opposite. He will be remembered by history, statues erected. The leader who told his soldiers to flee, to live another day...forgotten, perhaps castigated by society...their actions attributed to fear, a lack of valor.
I'm most frequently accused of being a pessimist. I'm the one always doing the detailed planning that reveals everything will take longer than you hoped, will involve more difficult decisions, have more opportunity cost...
But emotionally I'm a hopeless optimist. I'm forever believing the best about others despite evidence to the contrary. I'm generous to a fault and quick to forgive, and nearly as quick to forget.
I'm not sure I want to trade these at this point. That would mean trading:
a tendency to protect for a dismissing wave
a careful choice of words for a quick cut
any focus for overcommitment (and I'm already so overcommitted)
This list could go on but my brain is a little muddled at the moment.
I'm trying to think of characters in the "tactically pessimistic, emotionally optimistic" vein, and vice-versa.
Charlie Brown vs Lucy comes to mind. He's known as the pessimist, but he's forever trying to kick that football when Lucy holds it.
The stern military leader who inspires a charge despite impossible odds, despite knowing those under his charge will die in vain, is who I see personifying the opposite. He will be remembered by history, statues erected. The leader who told his soldiers to flee, to live another day...forgotten, perhaps castigated by society...their actions attributed to fear, a lack of valor.
Wonder what this says about us.
I do think that the best way is to realize that the concepts we are being optimistic/pessimistic towards are in fact just manifestations of the people we are optimistic/pessimistic towards.