Glass half full ...

I have a friend who looks a the world very much like I do, but I find him hard to take for more than a few minutes at a time. The reason is simple, he is relentlessly, endlessly, negative about everything. Talking with him just makes a person tired. Indeed, I often find myself taking an optimistic view of something just to fend him off a little.

I think it is a tactic I should use on myself. It is far too easy to be pessimistic.

Human kind really is backing itself into a corner and it appears that evil is on the rise everywhere. Religious fundamentalism has hijacked the hopes of more than one country in the last decade, and is going a long way to derailing the US of A. War is the norm, civil rights are in retreat, and most of us work harder and harder every year and have less and less to show for it. It seems that even Mother Earth is a bit tired of us as the environment shifts dramatically, leading to ever more calamitous events reeking havoc on our modern societies. I am tired of the relentlessly bad news even as I know there is more in store.

Human trends work on scales that are usually much longer than individual life spans, making it hard to find optimism if one's personal life happens to get tangled up with a bad stretch of history. Imagine those who lived in Europe starting early in the 1900s ... WWI, WWII, the cold war ... 1919 to 1989 ... 70 years of trying to find good news. Imagine living in China pretty much during any time since 1911 on to today ... war lords, civil war, the war with Japan, the Cultural revolution ... ugly. But all are temporary upheavals even in the short span of human civilizations (as compared to that of the cosmos). Things have been much better in the US of A since 1900 or so, as long as one was white, male, and Protestant.

Happily the Protestant thing is a dying requirement. Though the Republican Presidential ticket is, in my eyes, one scheming Capitalist hypocrite and his faithful, bat-shit crazy T-party side kick, it is interesting that neither one is Protestant. In fact, in what I can take as a glass-half-full kind of thing, the only Protestant in the mix is Obama, and American Protestantism has renounced him with a level of hatred that is near astonishing, backing the Mormon and the Catholic instead. Should the Mitt and Paul show move into the White House, the Protestants are not likely to find much of a sympathetic ear to demands particular to their religion. (It is hard to imagine the Mormon and the Catholic being very sympathetic to young earth creationism, and hopefully, to the idea that all science is evil.) Should Obama stay for another 4 years, the Protestants will be even further removed from political power. This is all glass-is-half-full stuff.

The "male" thing might be fading a bit as well. Though women are not doing themselves any favor by sticking to religion or the Republican party, not all women are voting against their own best interests. It looks likely that the most outspoken of the anti-women jack asses running for the Senate are going to get their heads handed to them come election day. And it may well be that a Mitt and Co. loss could be attributed to the women they have managed to alienate. In any case women as a whole are not likely to allow themselves to be dragged back into the 1930s. They are too well educated and too entrenched in positions of power. The conservative / religious re-oppression of women is going to be a short lived phenomena. (Something the Muslims will be facing before another generation goes by as well.)

And then there is the "white" thing. Sad fact for the white racists and elitists among us ... we will not be the majority much longer. The Republican party's efforts to disenfranchise non-white voters is all the proof anyone needs that they see the future coming, and realize it doesn't belong to them. Plus, well, the fact of the matter is the guy in the White House for the last 4 years has not been White. Even if he loses next week the color barrier in the West Wing is broken.

So, glass-half-full? All the longer term trends seem to favor a better future. Climate change and global warming is going to kick our ass, no question. But that may well lead to a whole new view of the need for conservation and alternative energy. It will be a change in perspective that falls directly on the middle class of the first world, who have the resources to change lifestyles, live in smaller and more energy efficient homes, support public transportation, drive more fuel efficient (and eventually electric) vehicles. (When a major US business magazine has on it's cover, "It's Global Warming, Stupid; one can hear the sound of heads being pulled out of asses all over the nation.)

The continuing collapse of robber baron capitalism coupled with unrestrained consumerism is also promising. People will find a way to eat, to put a roof over their head, to stay warm. Whole new economic ideas will be invented, tried, and modified. China and South America are on the leading edge of blending old ideas into new economic systems. In Europe and the USA underground and off-the-grid economics are popping up and taking hold as people, unable to remove their Capitalist Masters at the voting booth, simply find ways to work around them. Unpresidented global communications and social networks moving at the speed of light will open up avenues never before imagined in human history. Societies hoplessly wedded to the whims of the Capitalists and cosumerism are already on the wrong side of history and will simply not endure much longer.

The world is struggling right now, but when you think about all the changes that are in the works, how could it be any other way? Old power structures will not give way easily, new ways of thinking always cause chaos at first. Things are looking grim, but they are also looking up.

I like this glass-half-full view.