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Rightwing: The Politics of Optimism?
A lot of the discussion on FRC around the Occupy Wall Street, the Republican? and Luke's Bootstraps tread, has been focused on the argument that success or failure in life is either the product of the individual or that they "take a village" and that individuals have nominal agency over their own lives.
This has led in to something I've been thinking about a lot recently; Optimism and Pessimism and their effects on people's lives. What I've taken from what I've been reading, Optimism vs Pessimism is how you interpret events in your life.
Essentially, optimists internalize success and externalize failure. According to them, anything bad in their life happens TOO them and anything good happens BECAUSE of them. Moreover, the conditions that lead to bad things happening are temporary and unusual. The pessimist is the exact opposite; opportunities present themselves and they either get lucky or they fail to capitalize. Moreover, the conditions that lead to them to failing are systematic and permanent. Mind you, these are the theoretical 100% optimist and 100% pessimist.
For example, two people of equal fitness train the same amount for the same marathon and both place in the top 100 runners. The optimist interprets this as "My hard work payed off. In fact, if conditions had been better, I probably would have placed in the top 50." The pessimist, on the other hand, would say "I was lucky; I had a lot of time to train and I didn't get sick or injured. If things had been a bit different, however, I could have easily placed lower."
Martin Seligman broke these down and created a test that attempts to measure how your interpret events. Overall, an overall optimist will score an over all total of 8+ while an overall pessimist will score lower (I ended up at -3).
NOW, politics.
The optimist vs the pessimist method of interpreting events, I think, go a long way to explaining people accepting or rejecting ideologies like Libertarianism or Nihilism and I wonder if there really is a correlation. If someone is prone to believing that they are the fount from which all of their success flows, then an ideology that glorifies the rugged individual is not only going to appeal, it's going to make sense. This person will also look at someone who says that their ideology is wrong as stupid or crazy or weak.
While I've never identified with Nihilism, I've definitely skirted its edge and my gut reaction to people who claim total ownership over their own lives has always been skepticism. I've never put this together with my pessimism until recently, however.
The "stupid or crazy or weak" explanation is, I think, the natural reaction to someone telling you what you FEEL is correct is actually wrong, and the way you feel is, I think, definitely informed by how you tend to interpret events in your life. There are lots of studies that show that even when people are presented with evidence that something they feel is true is wrong, they are more likely to reject the evidence and get angry and defensive then they are to change their mind so I don't buy the idea that people choose the ideology they think is objectively correct (through that might be my pessimism talking).
So, if you've made it this far, I invite you to take that test I linked above (takes about 10 minutes) and see if the results match your sentiments in the threads I mentioned way up at the top of this wall of text.
I would be extremely interested to see how Thaed, The Tick and Luke score.
This has led in to something I've been thinking about a lot recently; Optimism and Pessimism and their effects on people's lives. What I've taken from what I've been reading, Optimism vs Pessimism is how you interpret events in your life.
Essentially, optimists internalize success and externalize failure. According to them, anything bad in their life happens TOO them and anything good happens BECAUSE of them. Moreover, the conditions that lead to bad things happening are temporary and unusual. The pessimist is the exact opposite; opportunities present themselves and they either get lucky or they fail to capitalize. Moreover, the conditions that lead to them to failing are systematic and permanent. Mind you, these are the theoretical 100% optimist and 100% pessimist.
For example, two people of equal fitness train the same amount for the same marathon and both place in the top 100 runners. The optimist interprets this as "My hard work payed off. In fact, if conditions had been better, I probably would have placed in the top 50." The pessimist, on the other hand, would say "I was lucky; I had a lot of time to train and I didn't get sick or injured. If things had been a bit different, however, I could have easily placed lower."
Martin Seligman broke these down and created a test that attempts to measure how your interpret events. Overall, an overall optimist will score an over all total of 8+ while an overall pessimist will score lower (I ended up at -3).
NOW, politics.
The optimist vs the pessimist method of interpreting events, I think, go a long way to explaining people accepting or rejecting ideologies like Libertarianism or Nihilism and I wonder if there really is a correlation. If someone is prone to believing that they are the fount from which all of their success flows, then an ideology that glorifies the rugged individual is not only going to appeal, it's going to make sense. This person will also look at someone who says that their ideology is wrong as stupid or crazy or weak.
While I've never identified with Nihilism, I've definitely skirted its edge and my gut reaction to people who claim total ownership over their own lives has always been skepticism. I've never put this together with my pessimism until recently, however.
The "stupid or crazy or weak" explanation is, I think, the natural reaction to someone telling you what you FEEL is correct is actually wrong, and the way you feel is, I think, definitely informed by how you tend to interpret events in your life. There are lots of studies that show that even when people are presented with evidence that something they feel is true is wrong, they are more likely to reject the evidence and get angry and defensive then they are to change their mind so I don't buy the idea that people choose the ideology they think is objectively correct (through that might be my pessimism talking).
So, if you've made it this far, I invite you to take that test I linked above (takes about 10 minutes) and see if the results match your sentiments in the threads I mentioned way up at the top of this wall of text.
I would be extremely interested to see how Thaed, The Tick and Luke score.
Comments
I do see where you are going with this thread and commend you for that.
I don't think people operate with the full picture in mind; instead they pass that picture through their own mix of optimism and pessimism and act on what comes out the other side.
For example:
6. You get a flower from a secret admirer.
I am attractive to him/her.
I am a popular person.
It doesn't matter who that person is or what the greater context of the situation is. In this case your reaction is either "this good thing is coming to me because someone else is bringing it" or "this good thing is coming to me because I am great and deserve it".
One externalizes the goodness, one internalizes it. If the situation is too alien, try and think of something analogous.
Even in the example that you give both answers are equally valid on the surface. Someone sent me a flower because I am awesome AND they find me attractive.
That, or I'm not sufficiently idealistic for this test to really be valid.
I got a 1, by the way. Moderately pessimistic. I prefer to think of myself as being a realist.
EDIT: And yes, part of the problem is that I often react to a situation in multiple ways.
And you would think they were crazy or stupid or weak.
And that is my theory; that people who subscribe to the opposite side of the ideological spectrum from myself, a stance that I find unfathomable, also happen to inhabit the opposite side of the Optimist/Pessimist (or Realist if you're feeling sensitive about it) spectrum and thus feel fundamentally different about how life and the world works.
I had to stop reading Atlas Shrugged because the characters made be feel physically ill. Thaed clearly did not have the same reaction. I'm trying to find a way of understanding that without simply dismissing the way he thinks as I've listened to FNPL and I'm pretty sure he isn't stupid or crazy or weak.
Edit: to avoid looking like I think I'm making a "boom goes the dynamite" point.
I will take pride though in my 10 points in "stuff of hope". Moderately Hopeless! Crying out for Change! Huzzah!
If things had been a bit different, however, I could have easily scored lower.
I fully believe that one can have a positive outlook while not also being deluded. Maybe I'm being optimistic about optimism.
Taking credit is a good thing, and I encourage. The issue is with taking undue credit; it results in dangerous self-delusions that, when promulgated, create a social construct telling people that it's OK to believe things that are not true.
Of course, as people have said before, the balance is to know rationally the difference between things you can and can't control. Farming, for instance, sucks as a profession because too many factors can't be controlled. You can work yourself to death, but you can't control the weather and you can't control the prices set by the Board of Trade, among many other factors.
I'm tempted to read the book again, just so I can try to write an eloquent justification for my gut reaction. I think people are getting too hung up on the test :-/
The principle is a good one, though. Getting people into a credit-taking mindset is crucial if you want them to succeed.
In my SCA performance life, I get to watch lots of really really neurotic people be incredibly nervous and crazy about their performance abilities. They freak out because they're worried that they'll fuck something up, or that they won't give the performance they feel they should be able to. I've watched friends melt down because they couldn't remember a word in a poem. By and large, few of them are willing to take credit for their success.
The problem is that they put themselves in the mindset of failure before they do anything, and it becomes self-fulfilling prophecy.
Encouraging people to adopt that mindset of success and accomplishment - "this thing happened because of actions I took" - is of the utmost importance in getting people to actually succeed. You can't wait until you've actually done something before you take some credit.
However, you do need to temper that with reality, or else you get self-delusion. You can't take all the credit, nor can you take most of the credit until you've actually done it. Hence my picking on the lottery question. You made the decision to buy a ticket - you took a risk and it paid off.
I go with the 80% rule when it comes to arrogance and credit-taking. If I am actually entitled to 80% of the credit that I take for my accomplishments, I can pretty easily justify acting as though I deserve 100% of the credit. However, you can't actually forget that 20%. This is just the line at which you deserve to be exalted for your accomplishments.