Optimistic vs pessimistic literature

[JohnAvg]

Who are, in your opinion, some the major representatives of what we call optimism and pessimism in Literature & Philosophy?Actually when we say optimism Paulo Coelho is the first name that pops out.On the other hand Friendrich Nietzsche,Sigmund Freud,Thomas Hobbes and Charles Baudelaire are some famous pessimists.

[phoenix151]

As for 2 authors who represent the "antithesis" of each other, I can't say. Perhaps Satre's Nausea and Emerson's Self-Reliance might come close.
However, I do think the book that best explores the whole specrtum of optimism and pessimism would be Candide by Voltaire.

[johann cruyff]

I'd say Arthur Schopenhauer also qualifies as a pessimist if we're taking non-fiction writers into consideration. Then there's Kafka... Also, the writer from my signature, Meša Selimović.

[JBI]

Leopardi is the king pessimist - seriously - he makes Schopenhauer look light. Pessimism generally works well in literature, whereas optimism usually fails, perhaps as hard as Coelho does.

The comic, in our day and age, is often pessimistic, whereas the tragic more often than not is pessimistic as well - as a society we have reached the point where the most accurate portrayal of culture is Pynchon's television screen with endless gray blur - static - nihilistic.

[JBI]

Also, I would like to add there are many pessimist lights out there, especially the generations writing after and between the two World Wars. Larkin comes to mind, as does the Eliot of the Wasteland (though I think in Little Gidding 5b he clearly shows himself as an optimist), and generally the Italian tradition of the 20th century, notably Cinema in particular, if we are taking scripts as a written form. The American model tried the opposite though, I think because of various political reasons, and tried to create an uneroding new American Pastoral in the "Family Unit", which ends up being the preoccupation of today's American writers for the most part - trying to undercut or lament said notion.

The 20th century is most certainly a darker century than the 19th (notably the first half). Though I think all writers eventually become pessimistic - Wordsworth to an extent even does - perhaps that is why after Elegiac Stanzas his career seems to erode.

[LitNetIsGreat]

:(I'm with the pessimists on every level, optimists worry me, they are a strange kind of people...

You can add Hardy to the list of noble pessimists his later works especially. The character I associate with most in literature is perhaps Jude Fawley (I might be geeky and open a thread on this question) perhaps I associate with his poorer upbringing and his lifetime struggle to become part of the university elite? Granted any woes I have are pale in comparison to that poor sod. Another character is Shakespeare's Fool, though I am not claiming to be as wise as him, most people aren't of course, that's the real tragedy of life.

I don't know, I just think I am in such a bitter, angry mood today, just ignore me. :alien:

[Tournesol]

V.S. Naipaul I think is definitely a pessimist, as well as a Nihilist.

[Dori]

Walt Whitman was an optimistic poet.

[mayneverhave]

Optimism and pessimism are not facts or a relation of truth, but merely just outlooks on the facts and how they psychologically affect us.

That being said, the overwhelming amount of literature tends towards pessimism. JBI is correct in associating the 20th century tragicomedy with a primarily pessimistic outlook.

However, would not Joyce's Ulysses, with its ending of positive affirmation stand as an example of 20th century optimism?

[Equality72521]

Trascendentalists = optimistic
Realists/Naturalist = pessimistic

hahaha

[lupe]

Who are, in your opinion, some the major representatives of what we call optimism and pessimism in Literature & Philosophy?Actually when we say optimism Paulo Coelho is the first name that pops out.On the other hand Friendrich Nietzsche,Sigmund Freud,Thomas Hobbes and Charles Baudelaire are some famous pessimists.

I can't imagine why Sigmund Freud would be considered a "pessimist". After all, the guy virtually founded a new science, one that helped us discover and explain so many things about human nature and has so far helped - medically - millions of people.

[Mr Endon]

[Phoenix, agree with the Candide remark, but it must be added that in Candide optimism is actually parodied throughout the novel and dismissed in the end.]
[Agree that Schopenhauer and Kafka are perfect examples of pessimism, but can't say I've read Leopardi to make a comparison, something tells me I should though.]

Now my input. Swift is an unforgettable pessimist. I also find it surprising that Beckett hasn't been mentioned yet.

And I agree with JBI, optimism in the 20th century is not only rare but it is also very much displaced when there is. Adorno said there could be no art after the Holocaust (or no poetry, something to that effect). I wouldn't go that far, but would say that would wholeheartedly agree that there's no place for optimism after the Holocaust.

[JohnAvg]

Sigmund Freud is considered as a pessimist because his whole theory opines that every human is naturally bad and chases pleasure (sexual or not) even if he has to use violence.Generally he used to have a very pessimistic aspect for humanity.He believed that war and destruction are ineluctable.Isn't that pessimistic?

[JCamilo]

well, Pessimism is something strongly related to Voltaire and since Candide is written to counter Liebiniz, then you have two. Critical irony usually abuses of pessimism (Hence Swift, you could certainly add Machado de Assis, Tchekov and Jorge Luis Borges) because those guys are this way but they are not depressed or outcasts.
But I do not think Optmism fails, because Coelho is just numb, not optimistic. Tolstoi could be considered optimistic at some point of his life, a bit of romanticism have this trust on making things better (naturally, if Voltaire is pessimist, Rousseau will be in the other side, Shelley have a bit of "this trust also", Robert Louis Stevenson and one could argue that Faust is optimistic and not pessimist and Virgil writing for August new age, would certainly classify as optimistic...)

[JBI]

Surprised no one has mentioned the pessimist model - Sophocles - who is essentially the foundation of pessimist literature in the West (though Gilgamesh too can be read as pessimistic, it wasn't read, and therefore doesn't count).

I'm sure you all remember the words of Matthew Arnold:

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Ægæan, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.



As for another optimist - try Percy Bysshe Shelley.

[SirRaustusBear]

Kerouac is an optimist, at least in most of his works. That's part of what makes his writing so great, it's filled with a huge lust for life, like Whitman's poetry, where the speaker just wants to experience more and see more because it is all so beautiful.

[JBI]

True, Whitman is generally optimistic, though one must remember The Lylacs in the Dooryard no longer bloom for him.

[SirRaustusBear]

The Civil War really changed Whitman as a poet. His early Leaves of Grass stuff is overflowing with goodwill towards mankind and his hopes for unification, having all men come together as one in love and understanding.

His Drum Taps poems are really different and you can see the focus on his horror at what men are able to do to each other. Lilacs came soon after the war ended so he may have an optimistic and a pessimistic phase.

[JohnAvg]

Actually all romantics'-from Shelley to Novalis-feature is rather some sort of "sweet melancholy" than pessimism.There is a big difference between them.Nietzsche's,Freud's or even Machiavelli's pessimism has to do with a whole philosophical theory.On the contrary Romanticism in general places emphasis on emotions such as trepidation and awe.

[JCamilo]

Romanticism with the notion of progress and all have some tendencies towards optmism. Even someone who is really depressed or bittersweet is not exactly pessimist. For example, Poe believed in the advance of science and that was reducing the ignorance, thus making a better world...
JBI, is Gilgamesh trully pessimistic? He fails and fails, but in the end doesnt he come to the conclusion that great feats could allow him to be "immortal" In a way? Maybe Hesiod cicles are pessimistic, since it is always getting far from the gods... and less perfect ?

[sunshine_enl]

[Phoenix, agree with the Candide remark, but it must be added that in Candide optimism is actually parodied throughout the novel and dismissed in the end.]
[Agree that Schopenhauer and Kafka are perfect examples of pessimism, but can't say I've read Leopardi to make a comparison, something tells me I should though.]

Now my input. Swift is an unforgettable pessimist. I also find it surprising that Beckett hasn't been mentioned yet.

And I agree with JBI, optimism in the 20th century is not only rare but it is also very much displaced when there is. Adorno said there could be no art after the Holocaust (or no poetry, something to that effect). I wouldn't go that far, but would say that would wholeheartedly agree that there's no place for optimism after the Holocaust.


Beckett!Definitely Beckett!The first play I read by Beckett(Waiting for Godot)didn't seem so bad,but after a semester on Beckett the idea of pessimism is closely related to him.Excepting Catastrophe,I think all of his plays go beyond pessimism!
I also have to agree on Swift,and to think that they've made a children's book out of Gullivers Travells!!
Now as far as optimist goes I'll just say that after finishing Grapes of Wrath I found myself being in a very good humour...weird?maybe!

[Taliesin]

Thinking about optimism, I recall such names as Steinbeck, Irving and Camus - yes, Camus. Somewhy he seems optimistic to me.

[LitNetIsGreat]

Thinking about optimism, I recall such names as Steinbeck, Irving and Camus - yes, Camus. Somewhy he seems optimistic to me.

Steinbeck in Of Mice and Men though is very bleak, it's a pessimistic moral, the pointlessness of dreams.

[Taliesin]

Hmmmh, yes, I admit I actually was rather thinking about "East of Eden" at that moment.

[Hank Stamper]

Thinking about optimism, I recall such names as Steinbeck, Irving and Camus - yes, Camus. Somewhy he seems optimistic to me.

yes camus can seem cynical and apathetic if read in that light, but he was very much concerned with the fact people should make the most out of their lives and strive for happiness/inner peace, which is why it is difficult not to see him as an existentialist, even if he did reject that label himself

[Jeremiah Jazzz]

As for another optimist - try Percy Bysshe Shelley.

I've just started to read him, and I'm in love. I'm sucker for his pieces now.

[mayneverhave]

Steinbeck in Of Mice and Men though is very bleak, it's a pessimistic moral, the pointlessness of dreams.

But look at the end of The Grapes of Wrath. Despite all of the pessimism of the rest of the novel, it ends on a note of rebirth and progress. Compare this with the ending of Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms, and you'll notice a stark difference.

[promtbr]

Who are, in your opinion, some the major representatives of what we call optimism and pessimism in Literature & Philosophy?Actually when we say optimism Paulo Coelho is the first name that pops out.On the other hand Friendrich Nietzsche,Sigmund Freud,Thomas Hobbes and Charles Baudelaire are some famous pessimists.

Way, way too simplistic to try to try to jump up and down on an author or oevre in an attempt to cram them into a suitcase that is labeled "optimistic" or "pessimistic". There are too many elements/themes/notions in a literary work. A work that is by consensus accepted as an example of literary art has tensions, dynamics, dialectics going on, many nuances and to my mind it would not be possible to simply reduce it to a tidy general category as optimism etc. I acknowledge a single work can have a narrative voice (Ginsberg's Howl comes to mind) that can be characterized as such, but there are still better, more narrowly defining langauge than *p word* or * o word* . Optimism/pessimism toward what? for example.
Pessimism is a pretty large blanket to throw over Baudelaire...ever read his essays? I don't see that even going over gloomy "B" alphabet authors like Beckett, Bernhard or Bukowksi...

I could see it MAYBE being a rainy day sophomore english discussion...

Guess that makes me a "pessismist" now.

[curlyqlink]

I'd say any long form work of literature that can be labeled as "optimistic" or "pessimistic" has probably not done its job properly. Hallmark greeting cards are optimistic. The Shack is optimistic. Batman is pessimistic.

Serious literature always contains elements of melancholy. I think that's why it sometimes gets labeled as pessimistic. Or "depressing".

I would not say Nietzsche is pessimistic. It seems to me that his work is exuberant. It returns again and again to the ancient Greek ideal of nobility, the ideal of youth and strength and the individual will triumphant. He saw Christian self-denial as pessimistic-- and celebrated pagan virility instead. His concept of the Birth of Tragedy is that the ancients came to grips with the inevitability of death by boldly staring it in the face via art. That, to me, is a triumphal vision of humanity.

[Chava]

I think it would be quite redundant to define books in those two categories, and agree that most of my loved books contain an element of melancholy. Most books are both, and it is up to the readers perception which category is most fitting.

[Eiseabhal]

I'm with the optimists whoever they are. Not because they're better but because there's enough misery in the bloody world without scribbly bastards adding to it.

[MANICHAEAN]

Me too, especially if incorporated in written drama, intrigue and passion.

Introverted pessimism might be judged by some to contain merit, but reading, (even writing) literature is to me an escape from the alternate bombardment of depressing daily international news.

[ennison]

Ach Eis that's the ex -army man in you coming out in your word choice and the green machair-dweller coming out in you in your preference for the optimistic. By comparison I prefer the bleak sparse emptiness of the winter moor at the back of my dwelling-place. Coldness,muted colours and the harsh cries of the circling raven. The simple palette of the pessimist'll do me. Well, sometimes anyway!

[Pompey Bum]

Pessimism is an honest creed, and the pessimist is rewarded by a life of pleasant surprises: times when things turned out for the good after all, times when people rose above their natures, times when the lump turned out to be benign--who'd a'thunk it? The optimist's life, on the other hand, is a sequence of disappointments and disillusionments, cushioned only by the knowledge deep down inside that it was always a pack of pretty lies. Optimism, in my view sows misery. But pessimism will make you free.

[Clopin]

Straight optimism doesn't seem to make for very good art in any genre.

[Lykren]

It might be best when an artwork can't satisfactorily be classified as belonging to either category.

[MANICHAEAN]

Clopin:

I’m not sure what “straight optimism” consists of. Is it a combination of realism and optimism; or a kind of extreme optimism that one comes across for example in professional salespersons, and some newscasters and politicians? You must have met the type; warm dry handshake, perfect teeth, right amount of shown cuff, good eye contact and unbearably positive.

But leaving that to one side and taking up your view that “Straight optimism doesn't seem to make for very good art in any genre,” I singled out for consideration in the writing sphere, Oscar Wilde.

I had in mind initially the quote “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars,” but then the justifiable rejoinder might be that this is not an expression of hope and optimism by the author as such, but that of the fictional Lord Darlington in “Lady Windermere’s Fan.”

But then there is a direct quote of his;

“God knows; I won't be an Oxford don anyhow. I'll be a poet, a writer, a dramatist. Somehow or other I'll be famous, and if not famous, I'll be notorious. Or perhaps I'll lead the life of pleasure for a time and then—who knows?—rest and do nothing. What does Plato say is the highest end that man can attain here below? To sit down and contemplate the good.”

Being myself an optimist I’m sure there are many other examples; like Marcus Aurelius in “Meditations” / “Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them,” or even Eugene O’Neill whose plays were far from optimistic, “I am so far from being a pessimist...on the contrary, in spite of my scars, I am tickled to death at life.”


Pompey Bum:

Choose to be optimistic, it feels better. Human history is a history not only of the disappointments, disillusionments, and lies you mention, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, and kindness; and it’s what we choose to emphasize in this history which will determine our lives. The danger lies in that if we see only the worst, it has the potential to destroy our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places, and there are so many, where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of a different direction.

And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future.

We are runny out of time anyway!

To live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is in itself a victory.

[Pompey Bum]

Choose to be optimistic, it feels better.

Hedonist! :)


Human history is a history not only of the disappointments, disillusionments, and lies you mention, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, and kindness; and it’s what we choose to emphasize in this history which will determine our lives.

I would say it is choosing to behave with courage and compassion, not pretending that such is the way of the world. It isn't. I wish it were. But unfortunately history takes my side on this.


The danger lies in that if we see only the worst, it has the potential to destroy our capacity to do something.If we remember those times and places, and there are so many, where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of a different direction.

I don't think we are so far apart on this, Manichaean. But for me the danger lies in imagining that there are "so many" when in fact there are so precious few; and in growing complacent about the need, and naive about what this world is. But I am "optimistic" (if you like to put it that way) about the big things. I believe that life is good, but people (and nature) are bad. Like you, I believe in a God of love and justice. The meaning of life, in my view, can be summed up as: turn your heart to the Good, despite the world's depravity and your own. "In the gutter...looking at the stars" works for me. So does lying at Austerlitz, looking up at the clouds and boundless sky.


And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future.

Agreed. The Utopias have always brought slaughter in any case.


To live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is in itself a victory.

Agreed. Though for now it is as likely to bring martyrdom; a dirty word among optimists (of the newscaster sort in any case).

[Ecurb]

G.K.Chesterton denied being either an optimist or a pessimist -- despite being one of the most optimistic of writers. His sleuthing priest, Father Brown, regularly catches the criminal, and then, instead of convicting him, converts him. "The Napoleon of Notting Hill" is about the optimism of romance.

Chesterton devotes a chapter of "Orthodoxy" to the distinction between optimism and pessimism. Here's a link to the chapter: http://www.leaderu.com/cyber/books/orthodoxy/ch5.html

Here are some quotes, which might be worth discussing. The first is the opening paragraphs of the chapter; the last near the close:


WHEN I was a boy there were two curious men running about who were called the optimist and the pessimist. I constantly used the words myself, but I cheerfully confess that I never had any very special idea of what they meant. The only thing which might be considered evident was that they could not mean what they said; for the ordinary verbal explanation was that the optimist thought this world as good as it could be, while the pessimist thought it as bad as it could be. Both these statements being obviously raving nonsense, one had to cast about for other explanations. An optimist could not mean a man who thought everything right and nothing wrong. For that is meaningless; it is like calling everything right and nothing left. Upon the whole, I came to the conclusion that the optimist thought everything good except the pessimist, and that the pessimist thought everything bad, except himself. It would be unfair to omit altogether from the list the mysterious but suggestive definition said to have been given by a little girl, "An optimist is a man who looks after your eyes, and a pessimist is a man who looks after your feet." I am not sure that this is not the best definition of all. There is even a sort of allegorical truth in it. For there might, perhaps, be a profitable distinction drawn between that more dreary thinker who thinks merely of our contact with the earth from moment to moment, and that happier thinker who considers rather our primary power of vision and of choice of road.

But this is a deep mistake in this alternative of the optimist and the pessimist. The assumption of it is that a man criticises this world as if he were house-hunting, as if he were being shown over a new suite of apartments. If a man came to this world from some other world in full possession of his powers he might discuss whether the advantage of midsummer woods made up for the disadvantage of mad dogs, just as a man looking for lodgings might balance the presence of a telephone against the absence of a sea view. But no man is in that position. A man belongs to this world before he begins to ask if it is nice to belong to it. He has fought for the flag, and often won heroic victories for the flag long before he has ever enlisted. To put shortly what seems the essential matter, he has a loyalty long before he has any admiration.
.




It was the prime philosophic principle of Christianity that this divorce in the divine act of making (such as severs the poet from the poem or the mother from the new-born child) was the true description of the act whereby the absolute energy made the world. According to most philosophers, God in making the world enslaved it. According to Christianity, in making it, He set it free. God had written, not so much a poem, but rather a play; a play he had planned as perfect, but which had necessarily been left to human actors and stage-managers, who had since made a great mess of it. I will discuss the truth of this theorem later. Here I have only to point out with what a startling smoothness it passed the dilemma we have discussed in this chapter. In this way at least one could be both happy and indignant without degrading one's self to be either a pessimist or an optimist. On this system one could fight all the forces of existence without deserting the flag of existence. One could be at peace with the universe and yet be at war with the world. St. George could still fight the dragon, however big the monster bulked in the cosmos, though he were bigger than the mighty cities or bigger than the everlasting hills. If he were as big as the world he could yet be killed in the name of the world. St. George had not to consider any obvious odds or proportions in the scale of things, but only the original secret of their design. He can shake his sword at the dragon, even if it is everything; even if the empty heavens over his head are only the huge arch of its open jaws......

The Christian optimism is based on the fact that we do not fit in to the world. I had tried to be happy by telling myself that man is an animal, like any other which sought its meat from God. But now I really was happy, for I had learnt that man is a monstrosity. I had been right in feeling all things as odd, for I myself was at once worse and better than all things. The optimist's pleasure was prosaic, for it dwelt on the naturalness of everything; the Christian pleasure was poetic, for it dwelt on the unnaturalness of everything in the light of the supernatural. The modern philosopher had told me again and again that I was in the right place, and I had still felt depressed even in acquiescence. But I had heard that I was in the wrong place, and my soul sang for joy, like a bird in spring. The knowledge found out and illuminated forgotten chambers in the dark house of infancy. I knew now why grass had always seemed to me as queer as the green beard of a giant, and why I could feel homesick at home.

[NikolaiI]

Me too, especially if incorporated in written drama, intrigue and passion.

Introverted pessimism might be judged by some to contain merit, but reading, (even writing) literature is to me an escape from the alternate bombardment of depressing daily international news.

If you look at life lived in a more natural state you will see much more of this. Part of the issues of today are a result of the experiment of modern life. . . historically we're evolved to live in much smaller groups, a few hundred or so. If you visit any tribal group, what you will generally see is the way life is supposed to be lived. Happy beautiful people, living in tune with nature.

[NikolaiI]

Me too, especially if incorporated in written drama, intrigue and passion.

Introverted pessimism might be judged by some to contain merit, but reading, (even writing) literature is to me an escape from the alternate bombardment of depressing daily international news.

If you look at life lived in a more natural state you will see much more of this. Part of the issues of today are a result of the experiment of modern life. . . historically we're evolved to live in much smaller groups, a few hundred or so. If you visit any tribal group, what you will generally see is the way life is supposed to be lived. Happy beautiful people, living in tune with nature.

[Pompey Bum]

G.K.Chesterton denied being either an optimist or a pessimist -- despite being one of the most optimistic of writers. His sleuthing priest, Father Brown, regularly catches the criminal, and then, instead of convicting him, converts him. "The Napoleon of Notting Hill" is about the optimism of romance.

One of my favorite Sherlock Holmes stories is The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle, in which Holmes...wait, SPOILER ALERT! ...in which Holmes lets the bad guy go in the end because it's Christmas. It's cool because, you know, that's just not Holmes. Great story.

Upon the whole, I came to the conclusion that the optimist thought everything good except the pessimist, and that the pessimist thought everything bad, except himself.

Oh that's hilarious! :-D

Yes, of course Chesterton is correct that there is "a deep mistake in this alternative of the optimist and the pessimist" (as is Lykren to object from an artistic perspective). And even I will concede that the glass is half full. Unfortunately, it is half full of arsenic. :)

[Clopin]

If you look at life lived in a more natural state you will see much more of this. Part of the issues of today are a result of the experiment of modern life. . . historically we're evolved to live in much smaller groups, a few hundred or so. If you visit any tribal group, what you will generally see is the way life is supposed to be lived. Happy beautiful people, living in tune with nature.

That's not the reality of tribal people. There are problems with the modern way of life but they don't come anywhere near offsetting the benefits. Go live in a tribe if you think it's the key to a happy, beautiful, life where people are in touch with nature and nothing bad ever happens,

[Clopin]

Clopin:

I’m not sure what “straight optimism” consists of. Is it a combination of realism and optimism; or a kind of extreme optimism that one comes across for example in professional salespersons, and some newscasters and politicians? You must have met the type; warm dry handshake, perfect teeth, right amount of shown cuff, good eye contact and unbearably positive.

But leaving that to one side and taking up your view that “Straight optimism doesn't seem to make for very good art in any genre,” I singled out for consideration in the writing sphere, Oscar Wilde.

I had in mind initially the quote “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars,” but then the justifiable rejoinder might be that this is not an expression of hope and optimism by the author as such, but that of the fictional Lord Darlington in “Lady Windermere’s Fan.”

But then there is a direct quote of his;

“God knows; I won't be an Oxford don anyhow. I'll be a poet, a writer, a dramatist. Somehow or other I'll be famous, and if not famous, I'll be notorious. Or perhaps I'll lead the life of pleasure for a time and then—who knows?—rest and do nothing. What does Plato say is the highest end that man can attain here below? To sit down and contemplate the good.”

Being myself an optimist I’m sure there are many other examples; like Marcus Aurelius in “Meditations” / “Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them,” or even Eugene O’Neill whose plays were far from optimistic, “I am so far from being a pessimist...on the contrary, in spite of my scars, I am tickled to death at life.”

Well I phrased it like that to draw a distinction between someone like Dostyevsky, who you could call an optimist I suppose and someone portraying the world as simply, straight up being largely good. Dosto might leave you on an optimistic note in Crime and Punishment or The Brothers Karamazov, or he might leave you with a harsh negative as in The Idiot or Demons and while I think it would be silly to call him a pessimist in the grand scheme of things (it doesn't get much mors optimistic than Job, etc or Christianity in general) I wouldn't want to label him a 'straight' optimist either.

[Eiseabhal]

I see Ennison. Now YOU are that curious and rare creature - a Calvinist that keeps Lent. Does that constitute optimism or pessimism? Anyway I'm looking forward to another Donald Macleod and if we meet there again you'll be gagging for a dram by that time. Green-machair optimist indeed!!

[ennison]

I think that makes me an optimistic pessimist. I've been practising a difficult tune recently Eiseabhal. It's one of those odd marches that appeal to me: The Crisis.Written over seventy years ago. Do you know it? Difficult low-hand grips. Not an often heard tune. One to wrestle with like Jacob's Angel.

[Pompey Bum]

That's not the reality of tribal people. There are problems with the modern way of life but they don't come anywhere near offsetting the benefits. Go live in a tribe if you think it's the key to a happy, beautiful, life where people are in touch with nature and nothing bad ever happens,

You've got that right, Clopin. In the tribal area where I lived the infant mortality was shocking. Most children who survived infancy had tummies sticking out like pregnant ladies, full of roundworms (and believe me, roundworm was the least of their parasitical problems). Among adults, there was untreated leprosy, untreated filariasis ("elephantiasis"--I've had it!), untreated schistosomiasis, and untreated syphilis (and myriad other STDs). AIDS was just blossoming. There were no hospitals. There was no anesthesia. Women died in childbirth or shortly afterward all the time. The only condoms in town were mine (thank you, American taxpayer!)

There was no civilian police force. Any member of the local gendarmerie could have entered any house he chose and, if he felt like it, raped any woman he found there without consequences. Sometimes they did, though usually they just let a chief know what they wanted and that was that. Even the supposedly good husbands beat their wives with sticks. One time a man murdered one of his wives because she was (supposedly) cheating on him. He never denied it. There was no arrest let alone prosecution because there were no courts out in the bush.

On the whole I see the idea of tribal life as natural and therefore beautiful as either condescending or dangerously naive. Some aspects of life were simple and beautiful, but wanting anyone to live like that is (in my opinion) morally wrong, and using it as a model for anyone else is just crazy.

[Ecurb]

Tribal people vary, of course. Nobody would want to return to the days before anti-biotics, vaccines (smallpox, which has killed more people than any other infectious disease, has been eliminated), anesthesia, etc. However, there's no reason to think that tribal people weren't better off than the civilized people who also lacked those technologies. I'd rather live in a hunting and gathering tribe than in ancient Egypt, or Rome. Life expectancy was greater (cities were breeding grounds for disease), and most of the people in Egypt and Rome and Athens were slaves.

More women died in child birth when the births were assisted by doctors than when they weren't, until modern antiseptic techniques were practiced, which was about 140 years ago. Tribal people, of course, have not fared well when the impact of more powerful civilizations affects them -- bringing disease, different use of resources, etc. In addition, increased population makes it impossible to support the sheer numbers of humans without the technological advancements in food production, so simpler, tribal lives would be impossible on a large scale in the modern world.

We have a very good life, compared to our ancestors, Pompey (and compared to people in poorer countries, like Gabon). But I'm not sure that our civilized ancestors had a better life than simpler, tribal cultures (unless they were in the "one percent"). Looking at simple measurements like life expectancy and average height at adulthood (which is affected by nutrition and childhood disease), the tribal people were often better off. Civilization was not kind to human health -- for the first 6000 years (although it has been for the last 150).

[Clopin]

We don't live in ancient Rome so what's the comparison? Given the choice between a South American tribal lifestyle today and an urban lifestyle three thousand years ago I would choose an urban existence... right now, in the Western world, which is what we're talking about.

[Pompey Bum]

We don't live in ancient Rome so what's the comparison? Given the choice between a South American tribal lifestyle today and an urban lifestyle three thousand years ago I would choose an urban existence... right now, in the Western world, which is what we're talking about.

Exactly. We were talking about today and whether tribal life results in happy people living in harmony with nature. My experience of several years in rural Africa was that it did not. In fact, even the notion of tribal people living in touch with nature was largely a fantasy of the "developed" world. The limited prosperity that there was (and we had it good) came from the men who were able to get jobs mowing down the vast rainforest for okoume wood. And families didn't go hungry back in the villages because the other men (and boys) spent their days hunting animals for meat, including chimps, mandrills, lowland gorillas, and anything else they could shoot dead. They used to laugh derisively at my objections that they were killing endangered species. It was considered tough and manly not to care. "We are more important than gorillas," they used to tell me.

Anyway, Ecurb makes an interesting point about history. The skeletal remains of ancient hunter-gatherers show evidence of appalling physical courage (we truly stand on the shoulders of mighty men), but also, in some cases, of cannibalism, and not always out of necessity. And the bones of Neolithic farmers show evidence of terrible violence, probably from attacks by rival groups competing for their fields. We can debate which lifestyle was preferable on the history thread. My point on this one is that the fantasies we have inherited about "noble savages" living beautiful and happy lives in touch with nature are not doing modern tribal people any favors. And they are silly models to have for ourselves, in my opinion.

[Ecurb]

We don't live in ancient Rome so what's the comparison? Given the choice between a South American tribal lifestyle today and an urban lifestyle three thousand years ago I would choose an urban existence... right now, in the Western world, which is what we're talking about.

Well, so would I, Clopin. However, it's a controversial and complicated discussion. Has anyone read "The Forest People", by Oxford anthropologist Colin Turnbull? It's Turnbull's ethongraphy of the Mbuti pygmies, and portrays them as leading an idyllic, loving life in the busom of the Congo forests. Back when I studied anthropology, it was already a controversial book -- some claimed that Turnbull fudged the story to promote the romantic notion of tribal hunters and gatherers. In any event, any idyllic life that may (or may not) have existed among the Forest People has probably disappeared by now.

Turnbull wrote a companion book called "The Mountain People" about another African tribal group, the Ik, who led a horrible (even evil) life. Both books (some have argued) promote the notion that contact with modern civilization has destroyed whatever was good about tribal culture. In any event, some tribal cultures are brutal (warlike tribes in the Amazon and New Guinea, for example, boast 5:1 ratios of five-year-old boys: girls, which suggests infanticide or selective neglect); others (if we can believe Turnbull) are more admirable.

I agree, though, that tribal life doesn't lead to idyllic harmony with nature in the modern world.

[Clopin]

I'm beginning to hate even the word 'anthropology'.

[AuntShecky]

A "Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm" world view seems utterly unrealistic in this day and age. Unrelieved optimism goes hand-in-hand with literal, linear optimism which rings false in literature. You want sunshine, read a "mainstream" airport-style novel or watch a movie on the Hallmark network. Recently theatrical films are beginning to back away from the traditional, Hollywood style "happy" ending.

Among the most pessimistic writers in American literature are Mark Twain (especially in his later years), Eugene O'Neill, and Kurt Vonnegut.

[Clopin]

And Twain and Vonnegut are humourists as well! It's funny but when I was heavily into the Russian writers I would hear (and still do) with shocking regularity, "I don't know how you can read that all that time, it's so bleak and depressing" which is, I think, not really fairly applied to Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Turgenev, Gogol, Pushkin, et al but rather more applicable to a lot of American artists who produce very bleak works of art and don't receive the proper credit for doing so. Vonnegut especially I remember finding almost uncomfortable due to the subject matter,

[Ecurb]

I'm beginning to hate even the word 'anthropology'.

Thanks for sharing, Clopin.

[Eiseabhal]

Yes Ennison I know the tune and you are a bloody optimist at heart if you think you'll get the music out of that one. I was thinking of the stories of Neil Munro just now and thinking that what I mean by optimistic is that which makes me smile or laugh. It's totally untrue to say there is no good optimistic literature. Any insider is at heart optimistic. The Aeneid is optimistic and so is Job but The Book of Job has been tampered with. The join is as obvious as the join in Khubla Khan. Pope's poetry is optimistic. So are the great songs of John Mc Codrum. Until "Oran na h Aoise" anyway.