In this series I’ve touched on many factors that affect an individual’s happiness: health, age, gender, net worth, career choice, social media intake, religious belief or non-belief, and political ideology. But after having considered all of those, I find myself returning to the concepts of optimism and pessimism.
It seems almost insulting simplistic, to say it, but pessimists are more unhappy, and optimists are happier. I know: duh! Isn’t “pessimist” essentially a synonym for “sad,” and “optimist” for “happy?”
Sort of. But this might be a classic chicken-and-egg question. Does pessimism cause unhappiness, or does an unhappy person naturally become a pessimist? Though I can’t confidently answer that question, I am confident that the cynical take on these two mindsets – pessimists are just realists who accurately perceive the world, while optimists are delusional about reality – is wrong.
Because the quintessential illustration of the idea is the cliched question, “Is a glass of water half full, or half empty?” And both answers are objectively, equally true. It’s Schrodinger’s water glass.
To complicate things a bit, there is a kind of pessimism that is healthy – as when you consider all of the possible bad outcomes of a decision or course of action to prepare for them – and a kind of optimism that is unhealthy – as when one has unrealistically sunny assessments of possible outcomes, and thus doesn’t consider or prepare for reasonable risks.
Still, a considerable portion of one’s outcomes in life are the result of self-fulfilling prophecies, and those prophecies largely boil down to the question of optimism or pessimism.
An optimist believes that hard work and perseverance will eventually be rewarded, and that belief energizes and arms him against negative, contradictory (but real) feedback. He works hard for a dysfunctional employer who fires him anyway, and then for a dumb one whose business goes under. Then he starts his own business that quickly fails, then he starts a business that thrives for a while before stagnating. But he’s still in the game, and his third business succeeds.
A pessimist thinks that he’s not likely to succeed – because of his ethnicity, or lack of funds and connections, or his family’s dysfunctional history, or an economic downturn. So his first failure – the bad boss who fires him, or the failure of his first business – confirms his belief. He gives up, thus ensuring that he will never succeed.
These thoughts remind me of a psychological concept that I wrote about a year or two ago: the idea of an external vs internal locus of control. The terms refer to whether you see your fate as mostly determined by outside (external) factors, or your own (internal) actions. External factors could include the racism, sexism or ageism of your society; or macro-economic trends (we’re in a recession and interest rates are high, so nobody’s hiring and I can’t buy a house); or unpredictable events like a stock market crash.
Having an external locus of control is almost synonymous with being a pessimist, whereas a fundamentally optimistic outlook – I’m the master of my fate; if it is to be, then it’s up to me – presupposes an internal locus of control.
Which brings me back to John Nolte’s final secret to happiness: “being grateful for what you have.” This might be the essential distinction between optimists and pessimists. Pessimists by nature have great difficulty being grateful, because their field of vision prevents them from perceiving facts that should elicit gratitude.
Seeing a glass of water as half full entails regretting that the top half of the glass is empty, rather than appreciating the water in the bottom half of the glass. You might have been grateful if the 12-ounce glass had held 12 ounces of ice-cold water. But it only had six ounces in it, and those were lukewarm. So no bueno.
And this is a point where I see important connections to both religion and politics. My Christian beliefs obviously create a bias in me, but I think it’s much easier and more natural to feel gratitude to someone than to random chance — even in situations where randomness works to your advantage, as when dice or lottery balls fall in a way that accidentally makes you a winner.
I’m sure that atheists who gaze at the starry night sky, or a chain of mountains at dawn, or a thundering waterfall naturally feel awe and appreciation. And I’m sure that most atheists feel gratitude to the artists whose writing, art or music moves them. I feel that way too.
But my gratitude is deepened and enhanced by the sense that those artists are not just talented individuals, but that they are in some sense touched by God, and are expressing part of the nature of Him in whose image they were created. When I hear great music or read a great book or watch a great athlete, I always think of Hamlet’s lines in Act 2, Scene 2:
“What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties. In form and moving how express and admirable; in action how like an angel; in apprehension how like a god.” (Those first few words sneak in a crucial implication, since “a piece of work” implies a “Worker” who created him.)
Similarly, staring at a night sky hits me hard, and always elicits in me an instinct – as I’m feeling unbidden awe – to thank the Creator of all this. And though I’ve had temporarily agnostic periods in my life, I can’t imagine feeling deeply grateful at the thought, “What an amazing confluence of blind, unreasoning natural forces must have resulted in this purposeless confluence of astral bodies that will one day burn out, leaving an eternal void of cold, airless darkness.”
(Can I get an amen, brothers and sisters?)
My understanding is that most religions contain the expectation that humans will rightly be grateful to their Maker. In Christianity that feeling seems even stronger, since it posits a personal God who sacrifices Himself for each of us. How could that idea, if you believe it, not bring you to your knees with gratitude?
I mean, I literally owe that Guy my life. And my next one, too!
Speaking of which, a religious world view that promises a paradisiacal ending – in Valhalla, nirvana, or heaven – logically imbues one with a more optimistic outlook. (“These crises/troubles too shall pass.”) Especially when compared with the view that, “we’re alive for a moment and then dead forever.” (Or, as some wise guy put it, “Life’s a b*tch, and then you die.”)
And now that I’ve gone off on a religious tangent – sorry about that, my atheist or agnostic friends! – this column has gotten too long to complete my thoughts on the intersection of optimism, gratitude and politics.
So if you don’t mind, I’ll preview a bit of my take on how all of these factors interact in America.
On average, leftists are more pessimistic and unhappy than conservatives, and as a group, the Left has a much darker and more pessimistic view of America than does the Right. When they look at our history, they focus on and exaggerate the negative – slavery, racism, sexism, the treatment of Indians – and downplay or deny our accomplishments and contributions to the world. They compare us to non-existent utopian societies rather than other actual nations, because we inevitably fall short of the former, and kick arse when compared to the latter.
They deploy double standards to condemn us over actions for which they routinely excuse other nations. (“We imprison too many of our citizens because we are cruel racists, but the Soviets and Chicoms shouldn’t be blamed for murdering millions of their citizens, because they had to break a few eggs to create a beautiful socialist omelet.”) If there are multiple ways to interpret social statistics – amount of foreign aid given, infant mortality, racial unrest, etc. – they will ALWAYS choose the way that makes us look the worst.
Given all of that, it would make sense if American leftists were much less patriotic than are conservatives. And they are. Bill Maher discussed that uncomfortable reality in a “Real Time” episode from early last year.
Maher is a frustrating character. He’s a partisan leftist, but he’s also clear-eyed and honest about the faults of the left, even though when it comes to following his thoughts to the logical conclusion and leaving the left, he always falls at the last hurdle.
In a segment on racism and the disconnect between the worldview of white leftists and that of the minorities for whom they purport to speak, he reported the results of three questions in a nationwide poll.
When asked who agrees with the statement, “America is the greatest country in the world,”
75% of Hispanic and 58% of blacks agreed, but only 31% of white progressives did.
When asked whether, “Racism is built into our society,” 38% of Hispanics and 62% of blacks agreed, but 75% of white progressives did.
When asked who agrees that, “Government should increase border security and enforcement,”
49% of Hispanics and 61% of blacks did, but only 15% of white progressives did!
Maher’s immediate reaction focused on the disconnect between self-righteous white liberals and their black and brown counterparts, noting that “[Minorities] don’t want your pity. And blacks can’t afford to indulge rich white people’s need to endlessly flagellate themselves. They just want prices to go down, and good jobs, and the police to come when you call them…just like [the rest of] us!”
But I’m more interested in how those three poll answers relate to our discussion in this column. If leftists believe that America is racist and that other countries are better, why would they NOT want an open border that would allow foreigners to come in illegally, thus changing America to be more like their home countries? Policy is downstream from pessimism.
Pessimism and lack of gratitude not only explain a lot of unhappiness. They also explain a lot of our current political divide.
Que Mala/Crockett, 2028!
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Martin Simpson 