The Glass is Half Full

I met a man recently. We were chatting amiably, the way two people do who are testing to see if there’s common ground for deeper connection. Asking what the other person does, where they live, where they’ve been, all the usual things. Somehow the question of optimism came up.

I told him I am an optimist by nature. I believe in the inherent goodness of human beings – that evil acts and evil people are aberrations of the human spirit.

He said he, on the other hand, was very much a pessimist.

I asked him why. I’ve never had anyone tell me that before. Of course, I’ve met people I would consider pessimistic, but never someone who so consciously declared it, with no inkling of regret or sadness.

“I’m Jewish,” he said, “and European. I’m inherently pessimistic.”

As a child, he grew up in a city that had been bombed by the Germans to almost nothing. He experienced the travesty of the Holocaust. Also, he explained, Jews do not believe in an afterlife, so what’s the point of hope?

It’s an interesting perspective, one I confess confounded me.

I was raised Catholic. I grew up believing that something wonderful awaited me, if only I hewed to the values and expectations of Christianity. I would be rewarded with Heaven. While I haven’t considered myself a Catholic in many, many years, hope remains strong with me.

As an American, I hold in my cells the call to independence, to adventure, to seeking a better life and believing it’s there, just around the corner. There’s always something glorious waiting – “the shining city on the hill” – my friend said, quoting Ronald Reagan.
Reagan took that phrase from Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony John Winthrop’s exhortation as he sailed toward the colony aboard a ship in 1630. He wrote: “For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause him to withdraw his present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword through the world.” (From Life and Letters of John Winthrop, by Robert Winthrop, 1867.)

There have been many references to Winthrop’s “city on a hill” over the years, notably in a speech by Walter Mondale in 1984, and John F. Kennedy cited it in 1961. But it was Reagan’s reference to a “shining city on a hill” in his farewell speech upon leaving office in 1989 that is most remembered today.

Yes, I think my new friend is right: Americans are perhaps ridiculously optimistic. And I agree as well that a Christian influence is at play here. Aren’t we all hoping for some version of the Pearly Gates? But there is something more, a more basic belief system at work.

I couldn’t live without hope. Without knowing that in the end, the basic goodness of humanity will out. Will triumph over evil. Else why would we get up every morning? I have to believe that all will work out in the end. That the good guys will win. It’s not Pollyanna-ish (though I’m sure many would call it that). It’s the only way I could move through the day, could face the hard stuff, accept the disappointments and devastations. I have to believe it will all be okay in the end. It’s how I choose to live. I can’t imagine any other way.

Smart Women; Deaf Men

Today's guest post is by Lois Phillips, Ph.D., who writes that things really haven't changed much for women when it comes to being heard by men in power.

Women's Brainpower vs. Men's Power

By Lois Phillips, Ph.D., Educational Consultant

How far have women advanced really, and should we remain optimistic that women will continue to advance into top leadership roles? In "Sonic Boom: Globalization at Match Speed" Gregg Easterbrook is optimistic, predicting five future trends so enormous in scale that the author equates them to "sonic booms." Easterbrook postulates that one trend is that women will contribute to the world's supply of big ideas:

In Western nations, women's education levels and personal freedom already are on track to equal men's; in much of the developing world, this could happen in the next two generations. Throughout history, most women have been denied a fair shot at contributing to research, engineering, business-management, and leadership roles. As this changes, there will be twice as many people applying their brainpower to the world's problems.

While this is an admirable and progressive point of view, I'm disappointed by three recent examples that demonstrate the push-back that can occur when well-educated, competent, and experienced professional women attempt to apply their brainpower to solving the world's problems. Look what happened to Brooksley Born, Elizabeth Warren, and Sheila Bair when they asserted big ideas and attempted to speak truth to power. (read more)

The Social Compact Destroyed

Sunday launches National Library Week. As I write this, the Republicans, held hostage by a bunch of well-intentioned but wrong-headed folks known as the Tea Party, seem bent on forcing a shutdown of the United States government. And while that is extreme enough, the assault on publicly funded services that used to be considered necessary – like libraries, schools and health care for the poor – has been under way for some time.

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about the dispute between libraries and HarperCollins, a publisher that wants to curtail the number of times someone can download an e-book from a library, which would force the library to re-purchase the e-book more frequently than is required now. Understandably, libraries are balking at this proposal. Library budgets have been under siege ever since the beginning of the recession, when local governments started to feel the squeeze of lost revenues. They are an easy mark, unfortunately. And they may be the canary in the mine.

Libraries provide a societal service that in some ways is unquantifiable. The benefits to a community are obvious to those of us who recognize the value of reading and literacy. Schools are part of this equation. If we educate all of our children, the community as a whole benefits: educated youngsters means fewer aimless kids on the streets, fewer who turn to drugs or crime to make up for lost opportunities; fewer taxpayer dollars spent for remedial services or incarceration.

Our Republic is founded on the concept of shared responsibility for all, because in the end it benefits all.

Yet in just the past week national leaders, people who are supposed to understand this social compact, have proposed cuts that would decimate funding for reproductive care services for women (a targeted attack on Planned Parenthood); the arts (which enrich the lives of everyone; guess the Republicans think the arts and arts education should only be available to those who can afford them); support for organizations that build homes for the needy; programs that provide services for the elderly; and many other programs that serve those less fortunate in our communities. The amount of money they say all these cuts would save is a pittance compared to the overall discretionary budget.

One has to ask, whose interests are these people serving? It does not appear to be the country's.