Optimist or Pessimist

It has been said that an optimist sees a doughnut and a pessimist sees the hole :)

This saying humorously captures the difference between the sunny attitude of the optimist and the bleak outlook of the pessimist. 

Candide, or Optimism by Voltaire is a brilliant satire on what he saw as the naively optimistic philosophy of the Enlightenment. Candide is an open-minded young man whose Tutor, Pangloss, has instilled in him the belief, inspired by Leibniz, that'all is for the best in this, the best of all possible worlds'. 

Indeed Everything is not for the best, and Voltaire knew it! 

Voltaire's use of garden imagery evokes the dichotomy between reality and philosophical abstractions that we identify with. Voltaire advocates a meliorism, the belief that the world can be made better by human effort, that is guided by our humanism. 

Meliorism is militant with its naive and childlike faith motto: "Let us make a better world." Meliorism is the belief that the specific conditions which exist at one moment, be they comparatively bad or comparatively good, in any event may be bettered. Professor Brogan writes: "Meliorism is the doctrine that intrinsic betterness is the fundamental value category."

A person is free in the sense that he or she must daily choose anew between policies that lead to success and those that lead to disaster, social disintegration, and barbarism. 

But with apologies to Shakespeare, "If neither an optimist nor a pessimist be, who or what should we be?" Is there a word for a better way to think about the future?

The word is meliorism. Unlike optimism or pessimism, Meliorism does NOT allow us to wriggle out of our responsibilities. It will take the meliorists who have gotten tired of the silly debate over optimism and pessimism to roll up their sleeves and actually make our world a better place.

A meliorist is someone who believes the world can and should be better, and that people have the capacity to improve it. Every student training to be an active citizen is a meliorist. 

Do not be trappped in the false choice between optimism and pessimism because you can actually be a meliorist. Operating halfway between optimism and realism, meliorism is the belief that the world, no matter what shape it may be in, can always be improved by the concerted effort of mankind. 

Life was lived peaceably once and may be lived peaceably again!

I believe that all things, no matter how bad, can always be improved, given enough determination from people willing to improve them.

It starts with each of us committing to simply be kind and considerate to those around us every day. 

Meliorism, or philosophical hopefulness, combines pluralism and humanism. We are capable of creating better worlds and selves. Pluralism says that better futures are possible and humanism that possibilities are enough decided by human energies, and meliorism that better futures are made real by our effort.

I believe that education is a tool to reform society and create change of the better. 

But Voltaire wrote in Candide, "Cela est bien dit, mais il faut cultiver notre jardin." "That is well said, but we must cultivate our garden."

I believe that the world can be made a better place by people's actions. 

Devote your energies toward improving the world we live in, rather than searching for answers that can never be found. And that includes the question of whether the ending of Candide is ultimately fatalist or philosophically meliorist. 

Only meliorism can underlie the philosophy of action that allows for the possibility of reform and progress through human effort. Dewey writes that progress is not inevitable. It is up to men as individuals to bring it about. 

Both individuals and groups have a responsibility to be active participants in their local community.