Realistic optimism cures recession

Jake Goldbas

Staff Columnist

Published: Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Updated: Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Jake Goldbas

Optimism literally means belief in the best good. According to the Economist, we also know that optimism is related to the release of serotonin, the brain chemicals that make us happy. When asked whether the glass is half empty or half full, scientists might tell you that the beaker is really 220 milliliters. It always ends with realism, the affirmation of true knowledge against delusions.

So, against real-life problems we come into a problem of where to apply optimism. I, therefore, advocate your personal acknowledgement of “performative” truths. That is, there are certain positions of authority in our lives that we recognize their judgment as the analytic truth, the real truth. In this way, when a ball crosses the plate, a baseball player swings and the umpire says that it is a strike, it is his declaration that this event was the strike that makes the event a strike, which makes the proposition that ‘it is a strike’ true. In these situations, it would not be true if, say, you or I did it.

I am not advocating any delusional thinking. Some performative truths can be the individual’s own recognition of herself. When someone hands you an orange, he or she really did hand you an orange, but the only person who has the authority to say that you like oranges is the person who holds that orange, just like the priest’s authority to do what he does, just like the umpire’s authority to do what he does. There are quite a few times where you personally decide what matters in life.

During the Great Depression, President Franklin Roosevelt said we have nothing to fear but fear itself. He was talking about the run on the banks that everyone made when they lost confidence in the banks’ abilities to pay things back. Everyone is talking about his or her opinions but forgetting the necessary distinction between optimistic, performative truths and realistic analysis. No one is really sure how to deal with what really matters because we have all forgotten our own emphasis on the reactions. People get their wires crossed really quick when they try to make a bad math test grade into a good one with just their will. Your reaction is as real as the test, but you should use that to change real outcomes in real life rather than changing what is.

Personal recognitions are true to this extent and that truth is not relative in the least. Your performative truth to yourself is 100 percent true for all of us; everyone will acknowledge that the fact you, like the orange, is true. Your individual personal stuff is true for you. In this same way, you very much have the authority to say what are appropriate reactions for yourself at your time. This is what everyone is talking about when they say that you decide what matters to you.

Go out there and do what matters to you, what strikes you as true on analysis, then make the best possible beliefs about your future actions and work as hard as you can toward making things happen. It’s only when you realize that life matters that you can fight for life. That’s the truth.

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