.
Two optimists walk into a bar. One optimist says “what a nice bar.” “Yes,” the other optimist says, “I think we will have a very nice time here.” Proving that optimists are actually not all that funny.
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January 27, 2009
January 17, 2009
Six Points Towards A Critical Optimism
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1. Optimism has less to do with your concrete situation and more to do with your attitude towards that situation.
There is no point in being an optimist only when things are easy or going well.
Therefore there must be possibilities for optimism in any kind of situation, no matter how negative or catastrophic. These possibilities might have something to do with one’s outlook.
The cliché version of this idea is that in rich Western countries, where life is comfortable and we have everything, people are often miserable: on anti-depressants, in psychoanalysis, etc. While in very poor countries, where they have very little, there is often much joy and a great zest for life.
This cliché may or may not be true. Nonetheless, it does illustrate how sometimes optimism has more to do with one’s attitude than with one’s material situation.
2. Focusing on the next small, experimental step instead of the big utopian dream.
Jacob confesses that he is really not an optimist. He of course has an interest in optimism but in reality can’t quite find the way.
This confession is followed by a statement. If he were to say that “the world is not going well’ many people in the audience might disagree but everyone would know what he was talking about.
Reasons Jacob feels ‘the world is not going well:
- Increasing discrepancy between the rich and the poor. More and more millionaires and multi-millionaire and billionaires and multi-billion dollar corporations. And at the same time more and more people who are desperately poor, living off a dollar a day or less, in conditions that few of us would consider humane.
- The appearance of right wings governments popping up in so many different countries. Governments that care more about protecting the wealth than they do about the lives of their own citizens. And that get elected using the techniques of advertising and emotional manipulation.
- Environmental degradation. A fear that in our lifetime clear air and clean water will become increasingly scarce. One statistic that is particularly alarming is that some time in the next twenty years there will no longer be enough clear water to grow all of the rice we currently consume. Rice of course being the major food staple of much of the planet.
Jacob could go on like this all night.
However, a deeper reason for pessimism is that so many of these crisis’s are not ‘problems that can be solved’ but are instead thoroughly integrated into the fundamental structures of our society, inseparable from the very DNA of Western thinking and culture.
The kinds of changes required for substantial improvement, real fundamental shifts in the way we live and think, seem unlikely to say the least. And in comparison, the ethical decisions we are actually capable of enacting feel out of scale with the global breadth and complexity of the situation.
So thinking about all of this Jacob feels astonishingly pessimistic.
However, if we instead concentrate on the ‘next, small experimental step’ it is true that in any given situation there is always something that can be done. It is also interesting to think of it as an experimental step. You try something today. Tomorrow you look back and decide if you want to continue down the same path or instead try something different. There is always some room for possibility.
3. A respect for the facts and for reality.
Much of 20th century art and thought was about tearing away the veil of culture and illusion and seeing what lies underneath. Of course, if ones rips away a veil of cultured, civilized illusion, what lies underneath might well seem ugly in comparison. This 20th century desire to unmask, to reveal the way things really are, is one of the main reasons that ‘facts’ and ‘reality’ have become associated with pessimism.
However, we can’t let the pessimists claim control of the facts. Optimists also need to deal in the hard currency of facts and reality.
Saying something is ‘a fact’ or ‘a reality’ is always connected to power. Stating that something is a fact is also a way of making it into a fact.
If a father tells his son, “You can’t be an artist, instead you have to work a real job, that’s just the way life is, those are the facts,” at the same time the father is promoting a specific way of looking at the world.
To say that life is hard or cruel also serves normalize hardship and cruelty. To say that hardship and cruelty must always be denounced and fought against is clearly a different position. There is really no reason not to state that things do sometimes change and that life is often beautiful.
We are interested in an optimism that looks at the world with open eyes. There is of course constant cruelty in the world, the question is: what is our attitude towards it?
4. What would it take to turn a pessimist into an optimist?
An essential point: because if some people are simply born optimists and others are born pessimists then there’s nothing to be done and no point in talking about it.
Perhaps the first step in turning a pessimist into an optimist is for the pessimist to see their own pessimism not as ‘the way things actually are’, but as a bias, a lens or screen through which he or she views the world. Seeing one’s own position as a bias might create a small opening through which other possibilities might begin to flow.
If one’s pessimism if not a fundamental reflection of the world, but is (at least partly) a bias, perhaps in some situations a more optimistic view would be more useful.
5. There is no optimism without imagination.
This point speaks for itself.
6. Resistance.
The most essential point. We have no interest in an optimism that simply says everything is going well and life is full of small, beautiful things and we should enjoy them and be grateful. (Though this is of course true.)
Because when we say ‘critical optimism’ we also mean an optimism of resistance, an optimism that allows us to fight against injustice and to fight against the abuses of power.
In developing this project we have realized that capitalism and the right wing are often extremely optimistic. We therefore need a critical optimism, an optimism of resistance, that has the strength and force to match injustice blow for optimistic blow.
In an interview with Cinemascope magazine, the American experimental filmmaker John Gianvito says:
“As far as one’s thoughts about our present predicaments or about the future, I have no difficulty understanding from whence the pessimism and cynicism springs. However, what’s critical for me is that regardless of one’s thoughts, one’s actions must be those of an optimist. Otherwise one is only further assuring that the status quo remains unchanged.”
.
1. Optimism has less to do with your concrete situation and more to do with your attitude towards that situation.
There is no point in being an optimist only when things are easy or going well.
Therefore there must be possibilities for optimism in any kind of situation, no matter how negative or catastrophic. These possibilities might have something to do with one’s outlook.
The cliché version of this idea is that in rich Western countries, where life is comfortable and we have everything, people are often miserable: on anti-depressants, in psychoanalysis, etc. While in very poor countries, where they have very little, there is often much joy and a great zest for life.
This cliché may or may not be true. Nonetheless, it does illustrate how sometimes optimism has more to do with one’s attitude than with one’s material situation.
2. Focusing on the next small, experimental step instead of the big utopian dream.
Jacob confesses that he is really not an optimist. He of course has an interest in optimism but in reality can’t quite find the way.
This confession is followed by a statement. If he were to say that “the world is not going well’ many people in the audience might disagree but everyone would know what he was talking about.
Reasons Jacob feels ‘the world is not going well:
- Increasing discrepancy between the rich and the poor. More and more millionaires and multi-millionaire and billionaires and multi-billion dollar corporations. And at the same time more and more people who are desperately poor, living off a dollar a day or less, in conditions that few of us would consider humane.
- The appearance of right wings governments popping up in so many different countries. Governments that care more about protecting the wealth than they do about the lives of their own citizens. And that get elected using the techniques of advertising and emotional manipulation.
- Environmental degradation. A fear that in our lifetime clear air and clean water will become increasingly scarce. One statistic that is particularly alarming is that some time in the next twenty years there will no longer be enough clear water to grow all of the rice we currently consume. Rice of course being the major food staple of much of the planet.
Jacob could go on like this all night.
However, a deeper reason for pessimism is that so many of these crisis’s are not ‘problems that can be solved’ but are instead thoroughly integrated into the fundamental structures of our society, inseparable from the very DNA of Western thinking and culture.
The kinds of changes required for substantial improvement, real fundamental shifts in the way we live and think, seem unlikely to say the least. And in comparison, the ethical decisions we are actually capable of enacting feel out of scale with the global breadth and complexity of the situation.
So thinking about all of this Jacob feels astonishingly pessimistic.
However, if we instead concentrate on the ‘next, small experimental step’ it is true that in any given situation there is always something that can be done. It is also interesting to think of it as an experimental step. You try something today. Tomorrow you look back and decide if you want to continue down the same path or instead try something different. There is always some room for possibility.
3. A respect for the facts and for reality.
Much of 20th century art and thought was about tearing away the veil of culture and illusion and seeing what lies underneath. Of course, if ones rips away a veil of cultured, civilized illusion, what lies underneath might well seem ugly in comparison. This 20th century desire to unmask, to reveal the way things really are, is one of the main reasons that ‘facts’ and ‘reality’ have become associated with pessimism.
However, we can’t let the pessimists claim control of the facts. Optimists also need to deal in the hard currency of facts and reality.
Saying something is ‘a fact’ or ‘a reality’ is always connected to power. Stating that something is a fact is also a way of making it into a fact.
If a father tells his son, “You can’t be an artist, instead you have to work a real job, that’s just the way life is, those are the facts,” at the same time the father is promoting a specific way of looking at the world.
To say that life is hard or cruel also serves normalize hardship and cruelty. To say that hardship and cruelty must always be denounced and fought against is clearly a different position. There is really no reason not to state that things do sometimes change and that life is often beautiful.
We are interested in an optimism that looks at the world with open eyes. There is of course constant cruelty in the world, the question is: what is our attitude towards it?
4. What would it take to turn a pessimist into an optimist?
An essential point: because if some people are simply born optimists and others are born pessimists then there’s nothing to be done and no point in talking about it.
Perhaps the first step in turning a pessimist into an optimist is for the pessimist to see their own pessimism not as ‘the way things actually are’, but as a bias, a lens or screen through which he or she views the world. Seeing one’s own position as a bias might create a small opening through which other possibilities might begin to flow.
If one’s pessimism if not a fundamental reflection of the world, but is (at least partly) a bias, perhaps in some situations a more optimistic view would be more useful.
5. There is no optimism without imagination.
This point speaks for itself.
6. Resistance.
The most essential point. We have no interest in an optimism that simply says everything is going well and life is full of small, beautiful things and we should enjoy them and be grateful. (Though this is of course true.)
Because when we say ‘critical optimism’ we also mean an optimism of resistance, an optimism that allows us to fight against injustice and to fight against the abuses of power.
In developing this project we have realized that capitalism and the right wing are often extremely optimistic. We therefore need a critical optimism, an optimism of resistance, that has the strength and force to match injustice blow for optimistic blow.
In an interview with Cinemascope magazine, the American experimental filmmaker John Gianvito says:
“As far as one’s thoughts about our present predicaments or about the future, I have no difficulty understanding from whence the pessimism and cynicism springs. However, what’s critical for me is that regardless of one’s thoughts, one’s actions must be those of an optimist. Otherwise one is only further assuring that the status quo remains unchanged.”
.
January 16, 2009
A strange combination of being happy and unsatisfied.
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“[...] I’ve wanted to be flexible, to disengage from marginality and, at the same time, from the mainstream, because they’re both worn-out today and don’t respond to a more complex situation. I don’t identify with any space or time I inhabit because they’re all too narrow, limiting, and all of this is a strange combination of being happy and unsatisfied, because there’s still so much to do, so much is needed. All of us need more radicalism, something that isn’t a monologue or being offended by what the other says, loving difference and having fewer, much fewer, micro-political friendships, and less respect for the surviving chieftans of the Paz eras. [...]”
- Heriberto Yépez
(As cited on Venepoetics, I believe from the website of Heriberto Yépez.)
.
“[...] I’ve wanted to be flexible, to disengage from marginality and, at the same time, from the mainstream, because they’re both worn-out today and don’t respond to a more complex situation. I don’t identify with any space or time I inhabit because they’re all too narrow, limiting, and all of this is a strange combination of being happy and unsatisfied, because there’s still so much to do, so much is needed. All of us need more radicalism, something that isn’t a monologue or being offended by what the other says, loving difference and having fewer, much fewer, micro-political friendships, and less respect for the surviving chieftans of the Paz eras. [...]”
- Heriberto Yépez
(As cited on Venepoetics, I believe from the website of Heriberto Yépez.)
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January 15, 2009
Friction and Vulnerability
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Just noticed this comment a few posts back from "i mate." Thought it was very much to the point:
"It's fine to initiate an event for people to 'come together'. but if there is no exploration of the ethics of an 'encounter', then it's like never starting a fire. for people to really share and touch each other there needs to be friction, and friction comes with one being vulnerable.
Your work should explore its psychological dimension if it should claim to fulfill its mandate."
Not sure about the 'psychological dimension' but friction and vulnerability are directly at the centre of the search.
.
Just noticed this comment a few posts back from "i mate." Thought it was very much to the point:
"It's fine to initiate an event for people to 'come together'. but if there is no exploration of the ethics of an 'encounter', then it's like never starting a fire. for people to really share and touch each other there needs to be friction, and friction comes with one being vulnerable.
Your work should explore its psychological dimension if it should claim to fulfill its mandate."
Not sure about the 'psychological dimension' but friction and vulnerability are directly at the centre of the search.
.
Alexander Melamid Quote
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There's a crisis of ideas in art, which is felt by many, many people... Artists now - I cannot speak for all, but I have talked to many artists who feel this way - we have lost even our belief that we are the minority that knows. We believed ten years ago, twenty years ago, that we knew the secret. Now we have lost this belief. We are a minority with no power and no belief, no faith. I feel myself, as an artist and as a citizen, just totally obsolete... Okay, it can be done this way or that way or this way, or in splashes or smoothly, but why? What the hell is it about? That's why we wanted to ask people. For us - from our point of view - it's a sincere thing to understand something, to change course. Because the way we live we cannot live anymore. I have never seen artists so desperate as they are now, in this society.
- Alexander Melamid
(As cited by Carl Wilson in Let's Talk About Love: A Journey To The End Of Taste.)
.
There's a crisis of ideas in art, which is felt by many, many people... Artists now - I cannot speak for all, but I have talked to many artists who feel this way - we have lost even our belief that we are the minority that knows. We believed ten years ago, twenty years ago, that we knew the secret. Now we have lost this belief. We are a minority with no power and no belief, no faith. I feel myself, as an artist and as a citizen, just totally obsolete... Okay, it can be done this way or that way or this way, or in splashes or smoothly, but why? What the hell is it about? That's why we wanted to ask people. For us - from our point of view - it's a sincere thing to understand something, to change course. Because the way we live we cannot live anymore. I have never seen artists so desperate as they are now, in this society.
- Alexander Melamid
(As cited by Carl Wilson in Let's Talk About Love: A Journey To The End Of Taste.)
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January 14, 2009
Paul Chan Quote
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At the time, the mid-'90s, the AFL-CIO was doing college recruitment, and big labor unions were going to colleges and universities talking about how they should organize. It was thrilling. It all culminated with the UPS strike in 1997 in Chicago with Ron Carey, the Teamster president. Here's a guy who came up from the rank and file of the Teamsters, who was forced into confronting a company that refused to negotiate with the workers on a new contract. 185,000 workers walked off the job, and UPS blinked. They broke the company and got a new contract. I lived close to a UPS processing center on the South Side of Chicago, and we'd bring them donuts. It was a great moment. Then of course Carey was booted; after the strike the Teamster hierarchy voted in the son of Jimmy Hoffa as president, even though Carey had just led this insane victory, and even though everyone knew Hoffa Jr. was shady. One of the lessons you learn is that changing things often means losing your job or getting jailed, or worse.
– Paul Chan
[You can find the rest of the interview here.]
.
At the time, the mid-'90s, the AFL-CIO was doing college recruitment, and big labor unions were going to colleges and universities talking about how they should organize. It was thrilling. It all culminated with the UPS strike in 1997 in Chicago with Ron Carey, the Teamster president. Here's a guy who came up from the rank and file of the Teamsters, who was forced into confronting a company that refused to negotiate with the workers on a new contract. 185,000 workers walked off the job, and UPS blinked. They broke the company and got a new contract. I lived close to a UPS processing center on the South Side of Chicago, and we'd bring them donuts. It was a great moment. Then of course Carey was booted; after the strike the Teamster hierarchy voted in the son of Jimmy Hoffa as president, even though Carey had just led this insane victory, and even though everyone knew Hoffa Jr. was shady. One of the lessons you learn is that changing things often means losing your job or getting jailed, or worse.
– Paul Chan
[You can find the rest of the interview here.]
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January 8, 2009
This little square
.
1.
Everything is settled. There is a specific way to do each new thing.
There is even an agreed upon way to break the rules.
2.
Maybe there will be no end, no flash, no blast,
no final show
This is your project and you must finish it
you tell yourself, you keep telling yourself
again and again
all the while knowing that it matters little
whether you finish it or not
(no one will notice, no one will care)
nonetheless you press on
this is my project, you say
this little square of irrelevance
it means something to me
damn them all
this is mine
.
1.
Everything is settled. There is a specific way to do each new thing.
There is even an agreed upon way to break the rules.
2.
Maybe there will be no end, no flash, no blast,
no final show
This is your project and you must finish it
you tell yourself, you keep telling yourself
again and again
all the while knowing that it matters little
whether you finish it or not
(no one will notice, no one will care)
nonetheless you press on
this is my project, you say
this little square of irrelevance
it means something to me
damn them all
this is mine
.
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