What I Read Today

I read this article today on IHT The discouraging rise of pessimism.. on perception of how optimist & pessimist view the world beyond them.. to be frank.. i 'm not sure if i understood what the writer meant to convey.. but anyways its nice mind crunching thought..

[...]

Pessimism as philosophy is skeptical of the idea of progress. Pursuing happiness is a fool's errand. Pessimism is not, as is commonly thought, about being depressed or misanthropic, and it does not hold that humanity is headed for disaster. It simply doubts the most basic liberal principle: that applying human reasoning to the world's problems will have a positive effect.The biggest difference between optimists and pessimists, is in how they view time. Optimists see the passing of time as a canvas on which to paint a better world. Pessimists see it as a burden. Time ticks off the physical decline of one's body toward the inevitability of death, and it separates people from their loved ones.

"All the tragedies which we can imagine," said Simone Weil, the French philosopher who starved herself to death at age 34, "return in the end to the one and only tragedy: the passage of time."

Optimists see history as the story of civilization's ascent. Pessimists believe, in the idea that any apparent progress has hidden costs, so that even when the world seems to be improving, "in fact it is getting worse (or, on the whole, no better)."

As politicians, pessimists do not believe in undertaking great initiatives to ameliorate unhappiness, since they are skeptical they will work. They are inclined to accept the world's evil and misery as inevitable. Camus joined the French Resistance. But pessimism's overall spirit, as Camus noted, "is not to be cured, but to live with one's ailments."

[...]

pretty thoughtful... and heavy on intellect.. i agree with the writer that everything has a price.. some hidden costs.. but i don't think one can live with a general unhappiness in his/her environs.. given a chance if he or she can fix it.. whatever the hidden costs are.. at least i think so..

~Like A Hurricane~