To treat life positively and hope for the best today is even somehow awkward. Experienced pessimists and skeptics rule the ball everywhere. And the phrase “Well, you are an optimist” sounds so that the word “optimist” in it can easily be replaced, for example, with “naive”, “gullible” or even “stupid”. Why don’t we take seriously those who tend to see life in a rosy light?
In the eternal dispute about the glass – half full or half empty? — supporters of the second point of view win. Moreover, they win for a long time and for a clear advantage. Anyone who believes that everything will be fine is naive at best, stupid at worst. And in both cases, doomed to failure in life. Agree that it is this point of view that prevails today. And there are enough reasons for this, to be honest.
History with geography
For some reason, since ancient times, people have been more afraid of the forces of evil than they believed in the forces of good. How else to explain the fact that even today, for example, we superstitiously scold friends or relatives on the day when they have an exam, an interview, an important meeting, or some other test? Or we get frightened when a stranger on the street suddenly begins to admire our little child loudly – well, how will he jinx it?
“Of course, this tradition has ancient roots: this is how they protected themselves from the envy of their neighbors and from the machinations of evil spirits,” says psychologist Ekaterina Mikhailova. “And these roots are in our general propensity for magical thinking.” “Zagad is never rich,” goes the old saying.
Most good luck wishes sound like a reverse wish, almost a curse.
“And how were hunters and fishermen admonished before, and now almost everyone in the world? – continues Ekaterina Mikhailova. – That’s right – “no fluff, no feather” and “no bite, no catch.” And the correct answer, of course, is “To hell!” Look at the proverbs given by Dahl – what a horror there is!
It does not follow at all from this that in life it happened just like that, that a negative approach always turned out to be correct. But it’s a defense. In addition, folk mythology has the right to the grotesque, it helps to overwinter.
About “overwinter”, by the way, it is worth speculating and quite literally. Because, very likely, the reasons for our distrust of optimism can be not only historical, but also spatial. At least, psychologist Dmitry Leontiev does not exclude this: “To be content with little”, “if only there was no war”, “not to fat, I would live” – such a not very optimistic attitude towards life is characteristic of our culture.
In doing so, I would pay attention to some geographical patterns. The farther south we move – the Krasnodar Territory, the North Caucasus – the happier people live. The more they tend to arrange their lives, not content with just survival. They already want it to be both fun and beautiful. And the closer to the permafrost, the stronger the “rotational” consciousness: if only to survive, but there is no longer a matter of taste for life and joys. ”
If we return to history, the events of the past also feed a pessimistic attitude towards life.
Optimism, a cheerful faith in a brighter future, and everything that later ironically began to be called “positive” were planted in our country artificially – and quite zealously – for many decades.
“Sadness, doubts and just a sober look at things were considered “decadent” and a sign of unreliability, and not only in the 20s and 30s, but much later,” explains Ekaterina Mikhailova. – At a poetry evening at the Central House of Writers in 1964, the wonderful Novella Matveeva read in her childish voice: “When the critic forbade me to grieve, I stopped laughing, as if it were a sin, I also stopped. It must be out of sight, poor fellow, that he missed that laughter from under the whip is gloomy and unreliable.
The monolithic, non-arguing optimism in our collective memory remains insincere, coercive, responding to some kind of virtual “order”. And a person who openly declares his faith in an officially proclaimed beautiful future is thus either a cunning opportunist or a sincere fool.
Airbag
Pessimists also have quite worldly arguments against a positive attitude towards life. The most famous of them is formulated in a proverb, not given by Dahl, but very popular: “A delighted pessimist is better than a disappointed optimist.”
The idea seems to be logical: readiness for the worst acts as a kind of “airbag”, absorbs the blow when faced with real problems. But for an optimist, these problems can be an unbearable disappointment.
However, there is a deeper psychological reason in this approach, Ekaterina Mikhailova believes: “The longing for everything sunny, bright, smiling always remains. And as usual, if this picture of the world is unattainable or fraught with bitter disappointment, it should be devalued. Which is done with enviable constancy.
One way or another, such an attitude towards life is wrong. Negative attitude and expectation of the worst does not bring benefits
This has been proven by many studies. Thus, the neuroscientist Tali Sherot experimentally demonstrated that pessimism does not help to survive the shock when faced with adversity.
She observed a large group of students in the course of preparing for exams. And then she assessed their psychological state after leaving the examination room. “Studies have shown,” writes the neuroscientist, “that students who expected to get bad grades on exams were just as disappointed and upset as those who expected good grades.”
It is possible, by the way, that our pessimism is rather feigned. At heart, the vast majority of people remain incorrigible optimists without realizing it. And they can grumble as much as they want about the economy, politics, neighbors or the weather, but in relation to themselves they maintain the belief that everything will be fine.
Otherwise, knowing about the statistics of divorces, we would simply never decide to get married. And also not to have children, not looking for a job and not doing anything at all to leave at least some trace in the world. Perhaps so, but this is some very deep, evolutionary level of optimism, obviously necessary for the human race to continue to exist.
Meanwhile, in culture, optimism is regularly ridiculed. Remember, for example, the brightest image of an optimist in world culture?
Naturally, it will be Dr. Pangloss from Voltaire’s philosophical novel Candide. A caustic and funny caricature of the most worthy, by the way, philosopher and, without exaggeration, the great man Gottfried Leibniz. But who, apart from specialists, today remembers Leibniz’s reasoning “about the goodness of God”? And everyone remembers the saying “Everything is for the best in this best of all possible worlds”. And they willingly use it – as a rule, to laugh at the next simpleton-optimist.
Yes, and in psychology, a positive attitude to life until the very last moment was not very much in demand. No, there was, of course, the French pharmacist Emile Coué, who practiced positive self-hypnosis back in the XNUMXth century. And today there is a school of “positive psychotherapy”.
And yet, psychoanalysts and therapists are much more likely to focus on the psychological traumas and complexes, childhood experiences and excruciating fears of their clients. That is, a positive outcome of their work, of course, is implied, but the work goes again with a negative.
half volume
With the advent of positive psychology, the situation, it would seem, simply had to change. But many people confuse positive thinking and positive psychology. And absolutely in vain. By positive thinking they understand anything – from an abstract idea, a certain set of rules of life, where the focus is on the desire to see the pluses in everything, and to semi-magical ideas like “if you want, you can.”
The latter, by the way, are now in great fashion – to be convinced of this, it is enough to quickly look around the shelves of any bookstore. Here are just scientific justifications for this approach, alas, no more than the idea that pessimism protects against disappointment.
“Positive psychology is not therapy through positive attitudes,” explains Dmitry Leontiev. “She does not say that life must necessarily be treated with optimism, and does not offer any a priori ideas at all.
This is a field of science whose task is to understand what exactly helps us live better. Not just survive and adapt (which has been the focus of psychology for a long time), but live well. We study many different circumstances and influences on a person’s life. And only having studied, with figures and facts in hand, we draw conclusions.
And there have been a lot of relevant studies over the past 20 years. What is their conclusion?
In short, optimism is useful. But not always. “As elsewhere, the question arises: with what to compare? – emphasizes Dmitry Leontiev. – If you choose abstractly, between generally constant optimism and constant pessimism in all situations, then optimism will be preferable. But in life there is nothing “at all”.
And every time a lot depends on the specific circumstances. For example, optimism is good where there are no objective criteria for assessing reality, where we choose only between hope and despair. But where criteria exist, it is better to choose realism.
In other words, the glass does not have to be half full or half empty. After all, you can say that water (well, or wine, kefir and any other liquid of your choice) occupies 50% of the volume of this glass. And in many circumstances this will be the most correct wording. And for others, both optimism and pessimism will be equally useful.
Psychologist Martin Seligman, one of the founders of positive psychology, proved that optimism has a great advantage in solving creative problems where breakthrough ideas are needed, and the cost of making a mistake is not too high. Pessimism, on the contrary, is in demand in conditions when revolutionary breakthroughs are not so necessary, but any mistake can be fatal.
“Seligman formulated this very aphoristically,” says Dmitry Leontiev. – He advises the leaders of large companies to hire optimists for the positions of directors of development and marketing. And take pessimists into chief accountants and heads of security services.”