Why is it good to be an optimist and bad to be a pessimist? An incurable optimist, as has been observed, really is just insecure about his pessimism. A pessimist, on the other hand, might be said to be a true optimist, since she at least doesn’t cower from the truth, and, accepting it as it is, endeavours to go on strongly despite it. These, no doubt, are sweeping statements, but the point that underlies them is that it is very difficult to tell objectively just how optimistic or pessimistic someone truly is; we have to take them at their word—but the very definitions of the words are so slippery that any self-professing of one’s stance is prone more to self-sophistry than anything approaching truth. To give an example: what makes a suicidal person pessimistic? Are they not in fact optimistic, given that they think suicide is a solution—that is, they actually seek a solution? Surely, if we define the optimist as someone who strives for and expects the best, then the suicidal person must be the most irrational optimist of all. More pessimistic is the one who considers suicide, but decides that it is worthless. [Read more →]

Surely nobody would say that democracy is the best system imaginable. Assuming a utopian system impossible, quite a few would suppose that it is the best possible system in practice. However, there is hardly a consensus on what constitutes democracy; it lists representative and liberal, Islamic and Christian, constitutional, grassroots, and even totalitarian democracies among its congregation. So newer, better kinds of democracy are certainly imaginable, if not necessarily practicable. [Read more →]

As far as I am able to see, there are only two positions one can adopt in answer to this. They are: “truth exists” and “truth does not exist”. One cannot say “truth sometimes exists”, because that means that it does. Nor can one say “truth is subjective”, because there are otherwise no true standards by which we can measure its validity. Saying “maybe truth exists” is neither here nor there. [Read more →]

We would all like not to be cynical about politicians: so much so that we become blind to the fact that it is this naivety that makes politicians act cynically to begin with. This is perfectly illustrated in the recent case of Bush-Obama, which will likely become a fable in many years to come, of the kind of phenomenon I mean. The Bush administration has made people more cynical of politicians than they have been in a very long time—whether this is really it’s fault is another matter—and such is the weariness and doubt of the American people that the prevalent attitude seems to be, “any administration is better than the Bush administration”. Needless to say, this sort of feeling is easily capitalised on by any cunning politician. The extra-cunning politician, however, will think to himself, “how can I make myself even more appealing to my voters than the other cunning politicians?” The answer is simple: style yourself as the polar opposite of George Bush. And this is exactly what Obama has done—so far, very successfully. [Read more →]

I shall make my first post light, and propose a solution to the problem that since time immemorial has plagued people with nothing better to do. I speak (of course) of the what-came-first-the-chicken-or-the-egg puzzle.

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