Optimism vs Pessimism
Do we live in a Good Universe with evil stripes, or an Evil Universe with good stripes?
To be optimistic or pessimistic, that is the question. Or to paraphrase the question that children ask about zebras, is ours a good Universe with evil stripes, or an evil Universe with good stripes?
What makes this question really difficult is, it cannot be answered by the intellect; it can be answered only by the heart, and so much of our postmodern culture functions as if it was intentionally designed to alienate us from ourselves, to cause us to become “men without chests” (to use a phrase from C.S. Lewis). To borrow a metaphor from Jonathan Heidt for conscious vs subconscious desire, the conscious mind is like a rider atop an elephant; it doesn’t matter if the rider is optimistic about where he wants to go, what really matters is how the elephant feels. The rider can lie to himself with charts and graphs showing the all-important line going up and up and up, but if the …
