Optimism does not depend on your emotional state; rather, your emotional state depends on your optimism. Optimism is a natural consequence of your perception of the world. So, if you want to be an optimist, quit looking for an emotional solution and learn more about the real world around you. Go for the big picture.
1. Fulfilling Your Needs
There are two givens in this world, you and your environment. It is from your environment that you fulfill the needs which the famed-psychologist Abraham Maslow identified in his 1943 motivational Theory of the Hierarchy of Needs.
It is only when one of Maslow’s needs goes unmet that we experience pain. Pain is always a sign that there is something wrong. On the flip side, finding a solution to pain (or deprivation, the terms are interchangeable) results in pleasure. Finding a solution or an even better solution is called progress.
2. Backsliding
Once we progress, we tend not to backslide. If we do backslide, the pain which originally motivated us to find a solution reappears.
3. Progress
Furthermore, human needs are constant over time and space. This means that from one generation to the next we can become better and better at meeting needs. Voila: progress. Progress is disseminated through time and space by culture.
All one has to do is think about the developments which have occurred in the fields of science, technology, medicine or engineering. Scientists in the field of psychology have made similar progress in understanding human beings. Social movements for women’s rights, minority rights and gay rights are all part of this progress.
A person receiving welfare and Medicaid benefits today likely has better access to transportation, healthcare, communications and other innovations than J Paul Getty, the richest man alive at the turn of the twentieth century, had.
The World Bank estimates that a person is now escaping extreme poverty (lack of adequate food, clothing, shelter and healthcare) every 1.2 seconds.
Our species is not stopping there.
4. Disruptive Innovation
Cathie Wood, a financier and futurist, says that artificial intelligence, precision biogenetics, robotics, progress in aerospace and electric vehicles will lead to disruptive innovation much like electricity, the telephone and the automobile did a hundred years ago. Because these technologies will interact with each other, the progress will be exponential.
And now that we understand the problem with climate change (is “pollution” a better term?), we will tackle this issue the same way we have dealt with other issues. To be sure, climate change is an existential threat. We are not powerless, however, to deal with it.
That’s not all.
5. Reduction in Violence
In his book, The Better Angels of Our Nature Why Violence Has Declined, Steven Pinker, PhD, relying on anthropology and history, shows how the rate of violence in all its forms, including war, homicide, sexual assault, and even corporal punishment has declined precipitously.
This is not an accident. As with all needs, when they go unfulfilled, we suffer. Fulfillment means pleasure. War disrupts the fulfillment of needs on many levels—access to food, shelter and water, safety of body and family and needs of belonging to name just some. War, then, or should we say peace, is subject to progress. We are learning how to prevent wars and resolve conflicts better and better with each generation. Peace is not the goal of our species. It is a prerequisite for complete fulfillment.
There is more.
6. Curing Aging
In his book, Lifespan Why We Age—and Why We Don’t Have To, David A. Sinclair, PhD, a professor of genetics at Harvard University, suggests there may be a cure for aging. Scientists believe that there are creatures at the bottom of the sea which never die. Can you imagine human beings having the bodies of a twenty-five-year-old and the wisdom of an eighty-year-old and never dying?
7. Happily Ever After
Look at the trajectory we are on. Why is it so hard to imagine that someday, we will fulfill the needs of everyone all the time? Think about how our species will have evolved when this happens?