Sublime Optimism
Could
have been entitled, A Scientific Justification for belief in sublimity. As studies of the attitudes and
beliefs of individuals show, if nothing else, people are very optimistic. Despite all the daily trials and
tribulations that life will throw in the face of any individual, people will
for the very most part have an optimistic attitude about how things will turn
out. This does not mean, it is
important to state, that they are optimistic about each and every event that
occurs in their life, just optimistic in general about how it will turn
out. Interestingly most people are not
proven wrong about this assumption in the end. Surveys constantly show to the contrary, that most, when asked about their perception of the total experience of life will say things indicating essentially that it was an amazing, sublime adventure
and many even say that if they had the opportunity to change anything, they
would change nothing.
What can explain this overwhelming sense of optimism that is apparently sweeping over
the earth’s population? Some would say
that this sense of optimism is just nature’s way of having people fool
themselves into believing that everything is pleasant so as to motivate them
to go out and do well in a world that they otherwise wouldn’t really care too
much about improving. However, this
argument, that an optimistic approach to life is just an illusion, seems to fall short because it ignores the fact that most
perceptions that we experience about the world are not an illusion. Quite honestly the same argument could be
made about basically any positive experience that we have. If I wanted to make a similar, but false,
argument I could say simply that everything you see is in a sense edited only
for positive content. I also would say
there are actually millions of lethal bengal tigers right in your field of view who (for very hypothetical purposes) can only eat you if you become consciously aware of them. You don’t see them simply because your brain edits things for content to keep
you happy, motivated, and uneaten.
Now, however unlikely, this argument for an invisible threat may be true, just as the thought that your belief’s are edited for content may be
true, but neither is a real scientific argument in that neither deals directly
and only with the facts that are presented to you. The bad news for invisible tiger fans is that a scientific
mind should not and cannot buy into the argument for their existence in the
way it is framed. The good news,
however is that the argument that says positive beliefs are only a mental pacification
system also must be disregarded for the same reasons.
"Wait", a critic of this theory might say. Maybe an optimistic attitude toward life itself is a different kind of positive belief as compared to some less significant positive beliefs. Maybe people have evolved in a way so that optimism is necessicary for the mind to function. To this contention I would simply say that there are definitely many high functioning pessimists out there, so I dont think optimism can be really be considered a necessity.
This leaves us at the
quite interesting realization that your beliefs actually are your beliefs. Like all other conclusions in life, this one
was arrived at by your mind engaging in a regular component detection process, which is
simply the mind’s ability to identify specific facts about the world it
inhabits. Furthermore, when you really are able to
discover a sense of peace regarding your impression of the world you should
feel good about it, not uncertain, as the above component detection process is
seldom wrong. Importantly, I am not
saying it is never wrong, just seldom. Think about just some ordinary conclusions drawn day to day. As you read this
essay your mind has likely assessed you are in a room, that it has a given
size, that it contains some objects, and made a million other observations that
you’re only partially aware of until you think of them directly. If you were to investigate the truthfulness
about what your mind has assessed your environment to be you will find that it
was almost completely correct. The room
likely will be found to exist, is size probably will be very close to what you
had expected, and the objects that you see probably are actually there. Further if you look out the window and see a
field containing millions of blades of grass, upon investigation you will
probably find that they are there and that each one is quite real.
In summation I want to reiterate the main focus of this essay, that the
mind is not in the business of fooling itself. So, is this recognition of the reality of this observation actually
also a bad thing in that it validates the reality of people who have negative
assessments of things just as much as for people who have positive perceptions? I would contend that this is not the
case and suggest that anyone, if they really are true to themselves, will realize
that they actually are in touch with a positive outlook. What a negative perception of reality
actually indicates, I contend, is the mind being shrouded and concealed from oneself. What I hope that this essay can do is lift one major shroud that bears down on many minds, this being the shroud that any positive
belief is simply a fiction. When one
reads the words of this essay and can realize the necessary falsity of the
previous statement, then they will quite quickly be able to perceive themselves
and reality in a more clear and a more positive light.