I.... assume that the world's a generally good place, that people are generally trying to do their best, and that things will, eventually, work out for the best. I also figure any deviation from those things is an aberration, rather than proof that I'm wrong.

That's, uh, pretty much it.

Yeah, I'm much the same way. I'm also one of those "expect the worst, so you're always plesantly surprised" types.

Actually, it's more that I think that any deviation from those things is do to a misunderstanding, miscommunication, or something else that I could probably fix had I the time and inclination (which I normally don't, so I just let it go). And I strongly agree with the humanistic pyschology belief that people are generally good and will naturally do those things which bring them the most growth and fulfillment, so I figure that people who are not acting in good ways are doing so because they faced nasty conditions in their pasts, so I try, to the best of my ability, neither to judge nor to blame.

(These are, of course, all ideals; day-to-day reality is not always so compassionate for me. But I'm working toward it.)

Yeah, occhiblu explained it well. That's how I think too.

I am an optimist. Or naive. Sometimes, it's hard to tell. I would just rather think about the positive parts of life and the sunnier possible outcomes. I am often thinking "well, it'll probably all be fine," rather than fussing over worrisome details.

I think the biggest impact this has had on my personal life is that I am well-liked. (The saying of which to people who don't know me personally does nothing to contribute to this fact, I'm sure.)

I do sometimes need help from people determining that someone is being a dick, or a threat, or whathaveyou. I don't have a head for office politics whatsoever and don't tend to suspect people of ulterior motives, even when I should. However, as I said before, I'm a very positive person myself, so I think it's helped me avoid being the target of any intentional meanness. I also don't apply boundaries to myself as much as is normal because I figure whatever I do, if it's genuine and not done maliciously, is okay. This makes me flirty, by some standards, or TMI-y.

I think I developed this optimism in order to destroy shame, actually. I decided that whatever I am is fine, and everything is going to be fine as long as I'm honest.

Is than an anwser?

Prepare for the worst, hope for the best. I guess the "hope" part is optimism, but that's just a crescent moon on the water for all the positivity it inspires.

it's easier to be optimistic if you're surrounded by optimists.

my .02, anyhows. speaking as a former cynic and reformed curmudgeon.

the really tough part is that it's so easy and validating to surround oneself with those who support / agree with one's viewpoints... so if your views are essentially pessimistic and negative, it's kind of natural to gravitate towards others of a, shall we say, somewhat misanthropic / cynical outlook. one of those self-fulfilling deals. in order to break this cycle requires cultivating the (sometimes, admittedly difficult) urge to throttle the chirpy ones. eventually you do get better at this (getting along with them, i mean... not throttling them).

ymmv.

The glass is completely empty.

Also, it is broken, and you may cut yourself on the shards, unless someone steals them first.

As you see, by not assuming that the glass shards were stolen, I show the virtues of optimism.

Plan for the worst, hope for the best. You don't have to be a grump to do that, the important thing is your ass is covered either way.

The very definitions of optimism and pessimism relate to preconceptions of future activities in this same way; outcomes, events yet to be achieved. Which is why goldfish feel no shame.

My view is a little less positive than occhiblu's. I believe that most people believe they are good, and are doing their best to make a positive impact on the world. I also believe that a good-sized portion of them are wrong. Particularly those who live in the suburbs, work near downtown, and drive 90 on the freeway in their SUVs on their way to work.

But I'm not bitter. Oh, no, not at all.

But seriously, I find it easier to be . . . I guess skeptical is the best word I can come up with. As I've related in other comments, I find "rah-rah" up-with-people join-the-team boosterism to be annoying, not so much because it's positive, but because it is almost certainly going to be wrong. I'd prefer to be pleasantly surprised down the road than to buy into whatever it is and then be sorely disappointed later.

Do you consider youself an optimist, deadcowdan?

I think any "general approach" to life that tends toward bias leads to imbalance. I believe that one's personal philosophy is useful only to the point in which it allows one to regard each new situation freshly with as little bias toward projected outcomes as possible. If you enter into situations with a firm expectation as to what is probable, you'll always err on the side of the rule, not the exception.

I consider myself to be a survivor of serious mental health and lifestyle problems. During the worst times, my optimism was rooted in completely unrealistic expectations, which served their purpose by letting me down, only bearing fruit just often enought to keep me hoping. As much as optimism saved my life, it also allowed me to avoid lots of issues I could have done well to examine. At the same time, I discovered most of my pessimism to be the product of insecurity and my concept of being poorly suited to the challenges of life. YMMV.

Some days the glass is overflowing, other days there's not a drop can be drained from it.

I'm generally optimistic, but at the same time, I put in a measure of self-protection by making plans, having a contingency and not making a big deal over little things, especially if there's nothing I can do to influence or change them. Life today is infinitely better than it was when I was drinking, so I have a large measure of gratitude for that.

In the UK it seems that most people are looking out for themselves and that their own selfishness will in most cases overcome any altruistic feelings towards their fellows. I find that attitude depressing. Perhaps it's a by-product of my job, where people lie through their teeth to me day in, day out.

I don't think optimism even implies an unerring expectation that everything will be perfect or you'll never be disappointed, though. I *know* I'll be disappointed, and face hard times, and that things will not always go the way I want them to go. But I'm also convinced that things will go ok regardless, and that I'll get over any disappointments I face.

That, I guess, is how I'd differentiate optimism from naivete. It's not an assumption that everything will always go right, just an assumption that life will be ok anyway.

Do you consider youself an optimist

Not very often. I am more prone to see how things are going to fail than to see the ways they will succeed. This is definitely not true all the time for me, but it's true often enough.

(Apparently, optimism also means posting multiple times because one is unable to get all of one's thoughts out the first time....)

Another angle: It's a belief in my own problem-solving skills and coping mechanisms; I believe that even if things go badly, I have the skills and resources I would need in order to deal with the badness and make things better.

So it's not an abdication of responsibility or agency for me. It just requires faith in myself, and in other people.

I believe the best in others. Stupidly so at times. That's the optimistic part. If I'm out there doing my darned best, surely others are too... and others, like me, have the good of others in their hearts. No?

But, I see the worst as far as the world and my place in it and how it's working out. That's the pessimistic part.

I put myself in the pessimistic camp. I think you have to have a feeling that things are going to turn out for the best to be optimistic.

Glass? What glass? Oh I get it, there was a party and I wasn't invited. Again.

people are generally good and will naturally do those things which bring them the most growth and fulfillment

History (and current events) suggests otherwise. The world as we know it is impossible from this premise. People are generally self-serving, I would say. Good when circumstances allow, maybe. But slipping into evil with surprising ease. Is there a word for reverse Godwining? Noteably leaving out the worst case as opposed to hyperbolically touting it? Godwin-in-absentia, maybe?

My view of what constitutes "natural" behavior may be considerably bleaker than others here, but that's actually where my own strange brand of optimism comes in: I do believe that with proper will and care, people can be taught to be good, despite our more self-serving natural tendencies. Or, in my more optimistic moments I might say it as "encouraged and/or allowed to grow up good."

I actually do tend to believe that good will win the day, though. Not sure why, really. So I guess for me: the glass is half full, but it's half full of poison. But the good guy spent the last few years building up an immunity to iocane powder.

I'm optimistic about situations but pessimistic about people. People are right bastards, and every single one of them will fuck you over if you give them a chance, but any situation can be corrected if you put enough effort into improving it.

Yeah, in retrospect I concur with kind of a combo of what cmonkey and occhiblu said. Which is basically thus:

I can't control people. I can, however, control my reactions to them. I have also learned (through trial and error) to spend my time around people whose company I enjoy, and whose general outlook both supports, and (this is the key) improves mine.

The rest, I'm sorry to say, can go hang. I no longer have the time, inclination, or energy to devote to worrying about them.

This, by the way, includes all those plastic Ken-and-Barbie 'optimists' and their driving-90-on-the-freeway-in-gas-guzzling-SUVs habits.

There is no glass. Or maybe there is. We'll never know for sure, but it doesn't matter anyway.

Sorry, I guess that's not very optimistic. But really, it doesn't matter, because everything is meaningless and one day the red king will wake up and his dream will be over and so will we.

Hmm. Bad day. Ask again later.

Now that I've been introduced to Savage Chickens, I'm optimistic that I will find the answers to all of life's big questions somewhere in the archives. Like this one, for example.

≡ Click to see image ≡

the world's a generally good place, that people are generally trying to do their best, and that things will, eventually, work out for the best. I also figure any deviation from those things is an aberration

Wow, I just can't imagine thinking that way. It doesn't correspond with my experience at all. Can I buy your brain?

I'm optimistic about situations but pessimistic about people. People are right bastards, and every single one of them will fuck you over if you give them a chance, but any situation can be corrected if you put enough effort into improving it.

That's more like the way I see it (well, OK, not everyone will fuck you over, but half of them will, and that's plenty enough), except that someone or other's greed will usually prevent the situation from getting fixed right.

But ikkyu2's got it. Black humor is the only way to survive.

Y'all are just jealous that I can drive so fast in my SUV. Out of my way, suckers!

There is a fairly strong genetic influence on these traits, isn't there?

I'm a pessimist, but love and cherish the optimists in my life, who get me out of the house. I, in turn, keep them from getting mugged while out of the house because they stop to talk to strangers clearly out to get them.

I was fairly pessimistic when I was younger (teens into late thirties, say), basically expecting all manner of catastrophe and apocalypse and failure. With time, as none of the disasters I anticipated came to pass (or at least not at all in the ways I expected) I've become much more balanced: skeptical about most doomsayers, or at least the more hysterical ones; anticipating that most things are going to chug along with some mix of wonderfulness and awfulness, each of which will likely come in unanticipated ways; and (like occhiblu), convinced that people are by and large trying to do their best (though their conception of such may be really whacked). I think the accepted wisdom is that people are supposed to become more depressed and more pessimistic as they age and lose their youthful optimism, but for me it's gone in reverse, and thank heaven for it--getting old presents enough enough challenges even to those of us who attain positive mental attitude.

I just thought of an example of my general optimism: a few months ago, trains on my line were suspended because a passenger at a station further down the line had tripped on the platform as the train was coming in, fallen under the wheels and had to have his legs amputated before they could move him to hospital.

People around me on the platform were bitching and moaning about their interrupted journeys. I said to the whingeing woman next to me "I expect we're all having a better day than the poor bloke who's under the train."

If a situation's bad, I see if there's something I can do to improve it. If there's nothing I can do, I make the best of it for as long as I have to endure it.

Brina's right - there is no glass. Only water. And all we must do is learn to surf.


surf the waves of vomit I just helped create with those last 3 sentences, if you will.

IRFH, I think for what I said to make sense, you just have to back it up to look at human nature rather than human behavior.

I believe, when raised with as much love, compassion, freedom, connection, intelligence, and silliness as a child can bear, that child will grow up to be good. If that love, compassion, freedom, connection, intelligence, and silliness continues throughout his or her life, he or she will continue to act in ways that affirm his or her self-development and compassion toward others. And I think human beings are pretty much wired to behave this way -- to seek out connections, to give and receive love, to do good.

I also believe that such a perfect state is, for the most part, impossible, especially in this current disconnected all-or-nothing society; we're all carrying baggage and that baggage warps our interactions with others, and with ourselves, and twists us in ways we might not otherwise twist.

But I do believe, twisted as all of us are, that most of us (with notable exceptions) are trying to do right in the world. Other people may have different priorities about what's important to accomplish, and I may disagree (violently) with that prioritizing, but I still don't believe that the majority of the people in the world are acting out of malice or ill intent. They may not have the knowledge or experience I have, just as I have neither the knowledge or experience they have, so we're making different choices, but I think that most people are working to be happy and to make others around them happy, and when they're not doing so, it's because their circumstances are warped, rather than because their natures are warped.

(I'm not claiming I'm biologically/psychologically correct with any of that, but it is how I approach and explain the world.)

Well, my basic philosophy about people is that "people are no damned good", by which I really mean that they will act in their own best interests most of the time. I do think, though, that this is largely unconscious and that most people generally have the intention of doing good most of the time. I tend to act like a pessimist because I often make dire predictions that things will not end well (people at work don't call me Oscar for nothing), but I figure that, even if most things in life don't work out for the best, life still goes on and it is better to have realistic expectations and accept the outcomes than be constantly disappointed. Besides, when you have low expectations, you are generally happier with the way things turn out. I have found that, by accepting whatever outcomes life throws at you with equanimity, you can achieve a certain contentment, if not what naive young people expect their level of happiness to be.

Even though I make predictions that things are about to turn bad, it doesn't stop me working hard to achieve the best possible outcome, so I guess I am a kind of warped optimist or something.


The glass is neither half-empty nor half-full - it is merely twice as large as it needs to be.

Yep, occhiblu, you are an optimist. What's the correlation, I wonder, between optimism and extroversion and pessimism and introversion? It seems like a natural connection. A majority of people are extroverts, and society rewards that. Expects it. Does anyone here identify as an optimistic introvert? Curious.

rainbaby; I don't personally ID as an optimistic introvert, but I can identify two that I know of: mr. lfr (he's exceedingly shy and introverted, and yet wonderfully, realistically optimistic) and Richard Feynman.

Feynman basically studied social situations to figure out how to meet women. I've read some other stuff on him that points to him being strongly introverted. Yet you can't help but see his essential optimism shining through pretty much every interview and paper he wrote.

I think there are quite a few out there. You can DECIDE to be optimistic, it's not hard-wired. Introvert/extrovert is more basic nature. I know a lot of shy people who've worked to become non-shy, but they're still exhausted by the process of dealing with society.

I get you, occhiblu. I don't agree with you, but I get you.

Does anyone here identify as an optimistic introvert? Curious.

I do. I agree with what occhiblu wrote in her last comment. And I'm definitely an introvert.

I don't agree with you, but I get you.

Good. :-)

rainbaby, I test waaaaaaay over on every single introversion scale I've ever taken. I tend to like the concept of "people" and to believe they're a force for good, but I'm often a bit hit or miss on liking individual persons, let alone wanting to spend large periods of time with them.

In fact, I'd argue the other way -- introverts seem like natural optimists, because they don't spend enough time around others to be disappointed. ;-)

I'm optimistic, but my version is "well, at least it's not empty."

I truly have no idea. I tend to come off as pessimistic, but I'm really just kind of ornery and neurotic. I'm pessimistic about small things (this party is going to suck!), but optimistic about the big ones (you are going to beat that cancer!). I don't know.

My version is that the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

Glass? What glass? Oh I get it, there was a party and I wasn't invited. Again.

Exactly.

I'm optomistic, in part due to a spirit that struggles to be bouyant, but largely based on evidence.

It's easy to get down on human beings, because every single day we hear about lousy things people do. And yet, when I think about history and performance over time, this seems obvious:

On the one hand, take all the wars, acts of cruelty, holocausts, oppressive regimes, misery, unwarranted pain, illness, suffering, and pain that have ever existed through time. It's a lot and it's fucking miserable.

Then compare that, on the other hand, with all the infants cared for and fed, day in day out, until they reached adulthood. All the songs sung for children and all the loving gestures done by caregivers for the very ill. Think of memorial services and acts of self-sacrifice that were never known. Think of all the meals cooked, paintings painted, gifts selected, rehab exercises given, surprises planned, letters written, times "I respect you," "I love you," and "Thank you" were said, scholarships given, hands held, houses kept clean, sign languages taught, confessions heard and forgiven, safety inspections dutifully performed, accidents avoided, walelts returned, admiring thoughts thunk...

You get the idea.

There has been a lot of evil come to pass in this world, yes there has. And yet, I think when the overall effect humans have on one another is counted up, the good far outweighs the bad. The good is less spectacular and less shocking, so we don't accord it enough worth. But I can think of a dozen acts of good I saw today; maybe a half a dozen unthinking acts; and really, maybe one mean, self-centered, or evil act that actually had any consequence of note, and that wasn't even that serious.

And most days, in reality, are like that.

The best reason I see to be optimistic is quite utilitarian: it feels better. I've got to have some hope that there are good things in the future, that I will enjoy many moments of my remaining life, and that I will make progress on some of my goals and in some of my relationships. When I've made the mistake of believing otherwise in the past, I've found that expecting the negative quickly creates self-fulfilling prophecies; and even if it didn't, the general sullen sadness of believing only shit was going to happen did not assist me in making friends, meeting my obligations, or wanting to stay alive. Optimism is wanting to stay alive, being willing to be surprised and pleased by what may lie ahead, being willing to give the kid your handful of tickets every day to take one more ride.

For me, the glass is half empty, but the contents taste horrible.
I don't know what that means either.


(*actually, I'm an optimist. I know people are bad and they do bad things. I know the world is a cruel and terrible place. But Damn. I see the things we do as people, and I'm constantly amazed.*)

Not only is the glass half-full, but the waiter hasn't finished pouring it.