The Half-Empty Flask: A Refreshing Dose of Pessimism

Optimism in our society is becoming out of control; a disorder of epidemic proportions. People are so focused on overcoming the trials and tribulations of our times that they are living an illusion. You see, optimism today is not so simple as seeing the glass half-full. It’s deliberately turning a blind eye to reality.

It’s denial of reality, guised as an aversion to confrontation, and all things “depressing.” An example of this is how more people vote on American Idol than they are in their state, local and national elections. It’s a lack of accountability, such as teaching-to-the bottom approach to education in our schools, as shown by the increasingly laxening grading scales and test scoring (400 SAT points just for writing your NAME?). It’s our buying huge homes and new cars we couldn’t afford during the 1990’s because we were so busy trying to emulate the celebrities we worshipped, we failed to see that the money we were spending wasn’t real.

And if not ourselves, we still fail to blame the corporations that sweet-talked all our money out of our pockets, then raised our interest rates, raised our premiums to deny us coverage, cut our wages, trimmed our benefits, lied to us or worse, fired us. “This could never happen to me,” we thought, “because I am responsible.” And so are the smiling public figures we didn’t vote for, and for those we did, usually the President, we echo the groundbreaking wisdom of pop icon Britney Spears: “He’s our president and we gotta support him!” For the first time in a long time, mainstream America is facing the challenges they once percieved to be problems only suffered by the lower classes. That’s why America needs to remove her rose-colored glasses and grind them into the ground. Perhaps it is already happening, because we voted in record numbers last election and the Republicans and gasping and whining from the impact of our rejection of them on state, national and local levels.

The pathological optimism is self-imposed ignorance. It is a pursuit of political correctness designed to avoid offending anyone at any cost, particularly in your speech. It is rude to discuss politics in public these days; it is a fireable offense if you are on the clock. The marketplace, once a public forum in days of yore, is now cleansed of any productive public interaction that does not pertain to the buying and selling of wares, under the guise of “not offending” others. This causes us to look at our vital and important knowledge of politics and current events as private, secret affairs to be shared only with our real life and perhaps online friends.

Pessimisim is a less-stress way to pull one’s head out of the sand. You see, a pessimist always expects the worst, therefore he is always prepared and he is never disappointed. The proverbial Ant, if you will. He hopes for the best, but that is a non sequiter. The optimist, the proverbial grasshopper, expects the best and therfore has no need to hope; therefore, he has no hope. It is my hope that we can all start to make some progress by opening up the half-empty flask and figuring out how to make it full again with a healthy dose of pessimism.