Up@dawn 2.0

Wednesday, December 13, 2017

Pessimism 2nd Installment (#10)




FIRST INSTALLMENT: http://cophilosophy.blogspot.com/2017/12/pessimism-10.html

So in my last post, I talked about society and how it wants us to look at the world from the bright side when we really should be looking at it from a more pessimistic perspective. This post will talk a little on Leibniz and his optimism perspective not being entirely true and how pessimism can help in the long run.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was a philosopher and polymath. He is also the creator of optimism. His famous quote for optimism is that "we live in the best of all possible worlds." It is entirely true to say that we live in the best world though? With the time era we live in now, the world is not at its best at the moment, nor has it really ever been at its best. Yes optimism is good, but it blinds us from real situations at hand. 

I read the comments under my first post and became aware of how a lot of people believe that we should be neither optimistic nor pessimistic, but realistic. With that being said, pessimism leans more toward realism than optimism does. Thinking negative about a situation doesn't always make you a bad person, it makes you more prepared for an opposing outcome. Just as optimism is beneficial in life, pessimism is as well. They balance each other in a way. Which is where the realism comes into play. You can always be 50% pessimistic and 50% optimistic, or 75% pessimistic and 25% optimistic. It all depends on your mental state and the way you handle situations.
Being blinding optimism could take you by surprise and have a big affect on you. Not ever circumstance is going to come out positive, life wasn't made like that. 

As for pessimism, there are some benefits to it. You are more well prepared for the future because you have thought out possible scenarios to situations. It is possible for you to live longer for being pessimistic because you wont be that big of a risk taker and think more carefully about your life. Your productivity is also finer because you will think the worse of your actions which will make you want to do even better. So thinking wrong does not mean that the outcome will be flawed, it might actually come out ok.

Getting personal now; I am more of a realist. I don't care to look at the bright side but more of the side with logic. Everything has reasoning behind it. I can look at something from a negative point of view or a positive one. Either way, its the logical result that matters the most. 


SOURCES:
https://lifehacker.com/the-benefits-of-pessimism-1620150406

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/09/pessimism-health-benefits_n_4392525.html

COMMENTS ON OTHER POSTS:
https://cophilosophy.blogspot.com/2017/12/how-social-media-is-effecting-our.html?showComment=1513219084073#c3502849970917965156

https://cophilosophy.blogspot.com/2017/12/aliens-bastard-child-of-repressed.html?showComment=1513218328413#c2796822277294236936

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