Well, it was bound to happen, I lapsed in writing my blog and I am back now with something I know a lot about: My own opinions!

No one else in the world has the expertise that I have in this domain, except my therapist. He knows too much…

Preamble aside, lets talk about the topic of the day: Optimism as the human default.

Let’s get optimistic, optimistic!

Lets get the point out up front: I believe humanity defaults to optimism.

So, obviously I am going to be somewhat skewed in this as I would consider myself an optimist. I have had some success in life, and have been lucky with some of my choices. This may make it seem like a soft take, but I think humans are optimists.

I think this because of how we have structured our world today. I have examples, don’t worry. Gotta make sure to pad out the post or Google won’t give a shit about it.

Example the First

The fact that I think Google / the internet might give a shit about this blog post.

Love me a self-referential joke. Though, seriously, so many people day to day truly do things to hopefully be discovered or seen or to impress their small community. Isn’t that optimism? We often toil on a project so that in the end we can say, I did this and it is great. I do this on all my projects, including painting, and I am freaking COLOURBLIND. Still, the optimism perseveres.

Example the Middle

The News.

I know, weird take since the news is, like, super negative. However, that happens to be EXACTLY MY POINT. News channels make untold amounts of money by reporting on the terrible stuff. People tune in for that information. Why? Because we expect everything to generally work out, we are optimistic about life and the world, so when horrible things happen it is shocking. People engage with things that are exciting or unexpected, it is what makes comedy funny, and what makes roller coasters worth waiting over an hour for.

The only reason bad news is engaging and shocking must be because as a whole, we don’t expect bad news. It is engaging content because it is unexpected!

Man, this is really coming together isn’t it.

Example the Last

Gotta have 3 examples, rule of three is critical in comedy and in most writing.

Here is the dark one, I think humanity is optimistic by default because we are all still here. As my 85 year old neighbour likes to say:

“Man shouldn’t live past 60, but I guess the alternative is worse”.

THE ALTERNATIVE IS WORSE. I know he’ll never see this, but Bill, I live by this now. I know that of course, this is not true of everyone, and people do make that ultimate decision. That again is proof of our general optimism, but one that I hate to rely on. We see suicide as sad, ultimate and the last resort, because we truly believe we can press on and do better. The alternative is worse.

Wow, this took a weird turn

Yes, yes it did. Though I feel that text like this is something we will cherish in the future: weird snapshots of how people think today will be the future version of ancient texts. Just with a lot more emojis and gifs. So to wrap, you’re welcome future internet archaeologists, for giving you something else to read in place of another LinkedIn post about a person’s Sigma Grindset.

Post Cover Image from: Kyle Glen