Since September 11th, and perhaps before, conventional wisdom says the world is going to hell in a hand-basket. But it is? Not necessarily. The data shows that in the case of violent conflicts things are actually getting better. According to the Human Security Report,
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The study, funded by five governments and led by Professor Andrew Mack at the Liu Institute for Global Issues at the University of British Columbia (my alma mater), concludes that global institutions have made a difference. . . . .
. . . . . Deborah Jones reports in the Global and Mail (November 15, 2005), "Reaction to his report ranges from disbelief to relief to scornful dismissal. Those on the political right and left each accuse him of siding with the other."
The Trouble with Positive News
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. . . good news is hard for us to absorb . . . cultural mindsets and cognitive biases . . . . Compare to base politics and the structure of global media (obvious places to point fingers) these "mental map" factors are harder to pin down.
Taking a long view helps. For instance, the idea of decline and pessimism is part of an enduring tradition in Western thought, a historical legacy most people don't know about. Fortunately, Arthur Herman's excellent book, The Idea of Decline in Western History, educates us about this meme and its consequences for today. As Stewart Brand summarizes in his review:
Big pessimism has a sordid lineage. . . . .
Far from some distant force in the past, this meme is still framing our public discourse and habits of thought. . . . .
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To make matters even more complicated, our trouble with internalizing good news is also rooted in our cognitive apparatus. . . . .
The psychology of risk literature . . . . Turns out we are more concerned about risks that may lead to losses than risks that lead to gains. In other words, we feel the pain of losing far more than the benefits of winning something, all other things being equal, a strange asymmetry first noticed by prospect theory, a descriptive theory developed by Nobel prize winner Daniel Kahneman and his colleague Tversky.
. . . . An argument can also be made for negative thinking which has been championed by some psychologists like Julie Noreum. Her book, The Positive Power of Negative Thinking . . . . promotes the practice of "defensive pessimism", a strategy of imagining the worst-case scenario of any situation.
In a similar vein, Joshua Wolf Shenk's article in The Atlantic Monthly, Lincoln's Great Depression, argues that the President's clinical depression enabled him to transcend conventional wisdom . . . .
. . . a recent exhibition at the Grand Palais in Paris, "Melancholy: Genius and Insanity in the West" . . . . Art Lovers' Paris says,
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. . . . The word "optimism" or phrase "positive thinking" is problematic with too much baggage. It's also culturally relative. The definition of optimism, for instance, is "a tendency to expect the best possible outcome or dwell on the most hopeful aspects of a situation." Attributed to Leibnitz (1646-1716) , it's a belief that the universe is improving and that good will ultimately triumph over evil. This definition clearly doesn't work for our moment in time, not that it worked for the Enlightenment period either, clearly deserving Voltaire's satire in Candide -- the story where we get the cultural icon of Dr. Pangloss from.
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Studies on what makes individuals "resilient" confirms the merit of the second Chinese definition of optimism. Resilient people tend to have three things in common: they have a strong value system and ability to make meaning out of life; they are excellent improvisors and adaptors given life's events; and they are good are perceiving the reality accurately, for better or worse, in any given situation. As Diane Coutou tells in How Resilience Works (Harvard Business Review, May 2002), the so-called optimists are the least resilient if their view of reality is out of step with their context. In studying the histories of the American prisoners during the Vietnam War, the hopeful ones who thought they would be home by Christmas were the first to crash and burn. They didn't make it. In the wake of 9/11 I've noticed similar pattern . . . .
The science of decision-making is also helping us distinguish between adaptive and generative strategic thinking. . . . .
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The biggest obstacle, however, is to find a way out of this current policy climate of doom-and-gloom. A tall order, I know. But just like how a depressed mindset affects the quality of our decision-making, we simply can't afford the consequences of undue negativity: the apathy, the fatalism, and a very narrow interpretation of the alternatives we have for improving our situation. No wonder we find it tough crafting systemic solutions that get to the causes-of-the-causes of political conflict!
As responsible change-makers in the 21st century, I think we need to forget this simple negative-positive, optimism-pessimism divide. We to recapture some of the pre-modern "duality" that drove the insight of our most cherished artists. We need to borrow that Chinese definition of optimism, a concept that lets us live in the shadow of the lightness and darkness of our situation, the ambiguity within us and around us, even though this is discomforting -- a posture described in Zaid Hassan's eloquent essay The Embrace of Unhappiness. While I have not read fellow contributor, Alan AtKisson's book, Believing Cassandra: An Optimist Looks at a Pessimist's World I suspect he might also have some wise things to say about this mindset dilemma.
But who says it best? One of American's most prolific and staunchest critics, Noam Chomsky, not exactly a poster child for rosy interpretations of the world:
Optimism is a strategy for making a better future. Because unless you believe that the future can be better you are unlikely to step up and take responsibility for making it so. If you assume there is no hope, you guarantee there will be no hope. If you assume there is an instinct for freedom, there are opportunities to change things, there’s a chance you may contribute to making a better world. The choice is yours.
It's a choice I make everyday. How about you?
(Posted by Nicole-Anne Boyer in WorldChanging Essays at 01:56 PM)
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