Reasons for Optimism

George is agog at Pretty Lady's avowed optimism:

Is this an affliction or a blessing? Is it innate or have you developed and nurtured it? If the second to both questions, how can I get some?

George, darling, as Pretty Lady has stated before, without her innate and carefully nurtured optimism, Pretty Lady would still be a government employee. She will leave you to extrapolate the affliction/blessing ratio from this one statement.

But when she looks around her, it seems that there are almost nothing but reasons for optimism, on a large scale, and in a larger sense.

For example, George, did you know :

The amount of worldwide political violence has declined dramatically in recent years.

• The number of armed conflicts has declined by more than 40% since 1992. The deadliest conflicts (those with 1000 or more battle-deaths) dropped even more dramatically––by 80%.

• The number of international crises, often harbingers of war, fell by more than 70% between 1981 and 2001.

• Wars between countries are more rare than in previous eras and now constitute less than 5% of all armed conflicts.

• The number of military coups and attempted coups has declined by some 60% since 1963. In 1963, there were 25 coups or attempted coups; in 2004, there were 10. All failed.

• Most armed conflicts now take place in the poorest countries in the world, but as incomes rise the risk of war declines.

• The period since the end of World War II is the longest interval without wars between the major powers in hundreds of years.

The philosophical mastermind of global Islamist jihad is now, himself, starting to reconsider. There is a general sense within the most radical proponents of terrorist violence that perhaps terrorism isn't such a good idea, after all.

Global population appears to be self-regulating.

(Pretty Lady knows that it is fashionable to decry low birth rates in certain circles, but she is old enough to remember the knuckle-knawing about world overpopulation, in the 1970s. It appears, instead, that as countries grow wealthier and less patriarchal, birth rates decline naturally, to rise again to replacement rate once a society has adjusted itself to thinking of women as full-fledged citizens, rather than submissive baby machines.)

This method of population adjustment seems infinitely superior to the predicted mass die-offs that would occur, once resources such as water and arable land became grossly overstrained.


The Berlin Wall came down. In 1989. Don't you remember?


In fact, George, if one looks at how human life on earth has altered since, say, 1600, one cannot help noting an overwhelming shift away from conditions of violent squalor, and toward those of health, comfort, peace and compassion. In the 1600s, it was commonplace to execute hungry five-year-olds for stealing an apple. Disease, slavery, war, and child labor were ubiquitous and accepted facts of life. Public torture of both animals and humans was considered a socially acceptable form of entertainment. On a large scale, humanity would not recognize itself as humanity, today. That is an astonishing amount of evolution in just 400 years.

On a personal level, George, Pretty Lady's reasons for optimism are perhaps even more compelling. Being a lady who is consumingly interested in the stories of How Things Turn Out for people she cares about (which includes just about everyone she's ever met), she cannot help noticing the overwhelming resilience of the human spirit, everywhere she goes.

For example, one college friend of hers filed for divorce from her cheating, lying, thieving excuse for a husband, in New Orleans, the summer before Katrina hit. Now Pretty Lady gets regular photo updates of her college friend with her wonderful new husband and their adorable new daughter, in their lovely new home in Arkansas.

Her freshman year in college, a friend of a friend used to show up on the hall, drinking vodka from a water glass, in waterlike quantities. (Eight glasses a day.) He was already going into major liver failure; Pretty Lady was certain he'd be dead within five years. Five years later, he was sober, healthy, and employed, with a young family.

One friend went blind from diabetes. She was married, had a little girl, and sight in one eye, the last time Pretty Lady heard from her.

Everywhere around her, Pretty Lady sees people recovering from physical, mental, emotional and spiritual wounds that ought to have felled an ox, with increased compassion and wisdom. Former victims of childhood abuse go on to counsel other abused children. Cancer patients create cancer support communities. Miracles happen; forgiveness happens; healing happens. All the time. Every single day.

These things, Pretty Lady firmly believes, are not accidents. The patterns are so clear, from the micro level to the macro, that they must be hard-wired into our design. We must come here in order to learn through our mistakes, because that is what we do, over and over and over. We get knocked down, we lie there and reconsider, get back up and try again. Every time we try, we increase in compassion, in forgiveness, in generosity, in kindness, both personally and globally.

In fact, George, these things are so obvious and so consistent that Pretty Lady feels that it takes considerable force of will to deny them. Pessimism, cynicism and despair must be as carefully nurtured as optimism; indeed, they are our primary blocks to happiness, and the instruments of assured failure.