I think last night after looking at all the angry people participating in the well orchestrated outpourings of spontaneous emotion surrounding the teabagging, I finally realized what essentially distinguishes me from the neocon's - hope.These guys are pissed off all the time. The only way you can be pissed off all the time is if you don't think anything can ever get better than it is right now, and, to distinguish this from simple contentment, you have to be certain that everybody else is dedicating their lives to taking what little you do have, away. To take a neo-conservative world view, be it political or theological, is in my view to surround one's self with negativity. Change becomes not a force for potential enlightenment but rather just another form of erosion. That which is good cannot become better, it can only be etched away by events which result in the diminution of what came before. I find that sad.
I can't help being an optimist. I have hope that we have come no where close to where we will go. I have no doubt that a hundred years from now enlightened people would think me a narrow-minded dinosaur. And being the bleeding heart old liberal that I am, the thought of that, makes me smile... How can I be sure this can happen? Look around, "we've got an army!"
3 comments:
:-)
Strange. I consider myself a pessimist, but I am actually able to be content, to see the world as not entirely negative, and change as not exclusively a decline into the abyss. I am a pessimist, but I still think that people are basically good and can hope for improvement. Maybe I am just a really sullen optimist...
I think that you might be onto something here, because I have heard conservatives who actually make the fact that it has certain pessimistic views into a selling point for conservatism(because, you see, optimism means immaturity). And I've seen the same done with the Christian view of a fallen humanity, consistent with all the crime and war and whatnot. But, then again, they also think that low taxes, gun rights, and prayer are the keys to success for a society, so I guess it's a case of pet idealisms.
Seeker I guess I always assumed you were a sullen optimist - ;)
Is that like a liberal elitist - i.e. one who is utterly contemptuous of the people they feel compelled to help?
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