Optimism vs Pessimism

Speaking of the tradeoffs between optimism and pessimism....

While cynics get a brief tactical advantage by getting to sneer, like playground bullies, they undermine their own effectiveness at generating changes - in society or in their own lives.  And there is another major drawback, pointed out by "Paul" over in my cogent-smart comment community. 

"Self-identifying pessimists I have known claim that by being pessimistic they avoid being ripped off, but if you read the literature on stress you find that they pay a high price for it. Having a negative outlook causes your endocrine system to release cortisol and a host of other stress-related hormones (as does insufficient sleep). This chronic release has some serious side-effects, including the shrinking of the hippocampus. Anyone who wishes to know their enemy needs to accept that their own body can be one of their worst. Grumpy old men trap themselves in a feedback loop of hypochondria and failing mental health. Dr. Robert Sapolsky of Stanford makes the point that thinking positive thoughts all by itself cuts off these stress hormones and releases others that have more beneficial health effects. Optimists might get cheated once in awhile, but they tend to live longer and happier lives."

Here's the Amazon link to Sapolsky's most well-known book: Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers: The acclaimed guide to stress, stress-related diseases and coping. 

I would add that optimist-pragmatists live vastly more effective lives since they believe their efforts can change their circumstances, their lives and even their nation or society.  This may make them seem fools, part of the time. But they are also more likely to try collaborative or competitive efforts to make change. Automatically that means they are more likely (even occasionally) to succeed.

The world was made by the Franklins and Lincolns and Edisons and Roosevelts and Marshalls who believed it could be changed.

== They WANT us afraid ==

One commenter said "9/11 was a huge kick in the nuts for our culture. Maybe I am wrong, but people did not seem so unkind and paranoid and crazy with religion before then."

Ah, but 9/11 was a "kick in the nuts" only because we let it be. Our parents suffered such losses weekly during WWII and they were the lucky ones, compared to Britain... and then Germany, Russia, Japan. Yes, we entered a ridiculous state of panic.  But it was deliberately pushed upon us... and especially upon Red America. 

The media and the Bushes portrayed us as wimps and we swallowed it. 

 Except many of us didn't! Read Rebecca Solnit's A PARADISE BUILT IN HELL. (See below.) There is an industry based on keeping us panicky.  But we don't have to buy the product.  Steven Pinker proved... most things are getting better!  We need to note that, not  in order to kick back, but to have the confidence it will take to evade further mine-fields...

...and get to Star Trek.

== Can mythology and Sci Fi help?==

"The future was better when Star Trek: The Next Generation was making it."  So asserts an interesting rumination on how only one major media sic fi franchise has ever taken on the hardest and best challenge — telling good stories, criticizing possible errors, while assuming that maybe - just maybe - our grandchildren mights be better than us.  That Hard Assumption terrifies most lazy producers, directors and writers.  How much easier to make the Dullard-Dystopic Assumption, that we will fail and that our descendants will all be fools? It makes plotting and action trivial.  At the small cost of chopping away at our confidence as a civilization and a people.!

Glimmers of the finer path were seen in Babylon Five. I see hints of it in Halle Berry's EXTANT. Maybe the star-trekkian mantle of adventure-with-critical-optimism will be taken up by Marc Zicree's Space Command.  Oh, and I  left out STARGATE! Very upbeat. Except for one huge flaw. They stuck - till the end - with the insane premise that it would panic all of humanity senseless, if they revealed to citizens that Earth was now the lead planet in a newly hopeful galactic federation. Um?

Still… the irony is stunning.  That my own chief pessimism about our future is rooted in Hollywood's absolute determination to undermine our confidence with pummeling after pummeling of relentless pessimism.

 == Future Tech ==

Wow. Read this from Mark Anderson: 

“At the CEATEC Japan electronics industry trade show held in October, Rohm exhibited its wearable key device, a multi-function, key-shaped item capable of counting your steps, telling you if you are walking up and / or down stairs, are on a bicycle or in a car or on a train (in case you didn't know), estimating distance (point and triangulate), counting calories, detecting metal particles in your food or somewhere else they shouldn't be, locking and unlocking your cellphone, and monitoring UV exposure so you can avoid sunburn. It contains a gyroscope, a proximity sensor, an accelerometer, a pressure sensor, an ambient light sensor, a color sensor, a UV sensor, a magnetometer, a Bluetooth Low Energy wireless communication IC, and a microcontroller. Bought in volume, the unit price is one US dollar.”  

What an age.

The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) is asking for ideas from the private sector on breakthrough technologies to guide military investment for the next decade and beyond. 

As war drones improve, disturbing questions arise. As John Markoff says in the New York Times: “Britain’s “fire and forget” Brimstone missiles, for example, can distinguish among tanks and cars and buses without human assistance, and can hunt targets in a predesignated region without oversight. The Brimstones also communicate with one another, sharing their targets.”

The U.S. Defense Dept actually takes these issues seriously: “In a directive published in 2012, the Pentagon drew a line between semiautonomous weapons, whose targets are chosen by a human operator, and fully autonomous weapons that can hunt and engage targets without intervention."

Weapons of the future, the directive said, must be “designed to allow commanders and operators to exercise appropriate levels of human judgment over the use of force.”

== ... and prescience... ==

Rumors fly about, that Apple has teamed up with SpaceX and Tesla... or is it Google?... to create a new "iCar!" The patent cited here is just one of many that might be involved. As both a future-pundit and a stockholder in all those companies (Apple, since 1981), I approve!

Still might I point to this image from my 2009 graphic novel TINKERERS, kinda foreseeing this event?  Someone put it on my predictions wiki?

== Be prepared! ==

A fascinating glimpse of a study of disasters, showing that most people die because they are too passive, when situations become dire. Rather than madness, or an animalistic stampede for the exits, it is often people’s disinclination to panic that puts them at higher risk.  Very interesting and important…

…and yet, it does not tell the whole story.  Which Rebecca Solnit does in A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster, showing that, when they get a little time to think, many people respond to baad situations with courage and grit and dedicated citizenship.

Following up on that… I am doing my part: I took the CERT Civil Defense training and upgraded so I am now in California's Disaster Corps. They might call me up to head for any disaster site in the state. But CERT is lower level - local and neighborhood oriented with training that a busy person can take. You get certified and received tools... and confidence. It makes you part of the civilization's network of resilience.

== Miscellaneous ==

New and exciting: The Brighter Brains Speaker Bureau will connect your group, company or conference with dazzlingly interesting keynoters. It’s just getting started, but I confess to being impressed!  (If a bit biased ;-)

This list of "52 common misconceptions" is useful and fun... but I do know that the left-right brain "debunking" is very misleading.  It is more false than true.

PODCASTS!  A couple of new ones. First on Bloomberg… Predicting and Inventing the Future: Bill Frezza’s interview with me is available on SoundCloud and YouTube:

On some similar topics, I get carried away and blather on and on about the power of sci fi in self-preventing prophecies on The Note Show. The host seemed pleased, despite hardly getting a word in! Available at www.thenoteshow.com/david-brin and also on itunes and stitcher.

Yikes! Can the decline in marriage be attributed to … free online porn?

So cool! But this dinosaur costume could give some stranger a heart attack!