I don't disagree with the author's scathing critique of the folly of optimism. I have been a cynic and a pessimist since I was a teenager and as I age, my cynicism has increased tremendously - I feel that humans are running the earth and all of its creatures (and non-creatures) to the ground, slowly and surely, all in the name of greed, power and profit. However, I have little sparks of optimistic as well as I encounter more and more people who seem to genuinely care about the state of humanity and for our whole planet. I love what Howard Zinn says about optimism in this article of his:
To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places--and there are so many--where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.While Candide made the most of out his situations, like Zinn, I would argue that we must act, to accept 'fate' and to do nothing will not create change in this world. We must do and act, instead of theorizing abstract thoughts. As Marx notes, ""The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it" (Karl Marx's 11 Theses on Feuerbach (1845)). While there is much that cannot be changed by one person, we can nonetheless affect those around us and have change slowly ignite one tiny spark at a time.
