☕ saturday mornings - October 29, 2022

hope, wasting life & the case for optimism

Tommy Dixon

Oct 29, 2022

Happy Saturday all!

I hope you’re having a great start to your weekend.

What I’ve been up to:

I spent most of the week polishing and publishing the first long-form essay I've written since July. It explores how we can become more tenacious, through the lens of one of the most famous leaders in history.
After a hiatus (and encouragement from a friend) I've gotten back into a daily meditation practice. For me, it does wonders. For anyone looking for a starting point, I'd recommend Sam Harris' Waking Up App.
I'm doing an in-depth study of stoicism. First, I'm working through the fundamental texts from the three main Stoic philosophers (Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Epictetus) before branching off to read more recent books on the topic.

Here's a recap of the most interesting things I've explored this week.

This is the hardest I've worked on a single newsletter, so strap in. Hope you enjoy 😊

✍️ Quote I’m pondering:

Howard Zinn, historian and author, on the importance of what you choose to emphasize:

“To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives.
If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.
And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”

📚 Book passage I loved:

It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it.
Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested. But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death’s final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing.
So it is: we are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it.

― On the Shortness of Life by Seneca

💡 Idea from me: The Case for Optimism

“The test of all beliefs is their practical effect in life. If it be true that optimism compels the world forward, and pessimism retards it, then it is dangerous to propagate a pessimistic philosophy.” — Helen Keller

80% of millennials think the next generation will be worse off than the current generation.

In 2018 Hans Rosling, a Swedish academic, conducted research to understand people's views about the state of the world.

Every group of people that Hans asked thought the world is more frightening, more violent, and more hopeless than it really is. And most people think that the world is only getting worse.

We're living in a generation of pessimists.

1. People

“If I have a choice, I'll choose optimism.” — Me

Philosophers have pondered for centuries whether the world is a fundamentally good or fundamentally bad place. Whether humans are loving and virtuous, or self-interested and deceitful.

It's an unanswerable question. One that leaves your mind spinning like you just got off a merry-go-round.

But the belief you choose is self-fulfilling.

Naval Ravikant has this idea that the world just reflects your own feelings back at you. In other words, if you’re an angry person, the world will feel angry. The same is true for joy.

You can choose how you want to architect your experience. How you want to perceive the world and the actions of others.

If I have one life, I want to choose good.

And, that’s not to say there aren’t bad people. But optimism is not the same thing as tolerance.

2. The Future

“The world desperately needs more optimism to make progress, so I should stop being so shy about it.” — Dr. Hannah Ritchie

In his essay on Peter Theil, David Perell writes, “The future won’t look like the present. It will either be much worse or much better. Whether the future is better or worse will depend on our actions.”

Humans are future-oriented beings. We need a positive vision for our future, a feeling we're moving towards something meaningful, to avoid crumbling under the hardship of everyday life.

But, optimism is waning.

Dr. Hannah Ritchie notes, "People mistakenly see optimism as an excuse for inaction. They think that it’s pessimism that drives change, but the opposite is true."

Pessimism blocks progress. It will lead us to stagnation and eventual decay. We give up when we feel like progress is impossible. If a problem can’t be solved, what's the point in working on it?

Optimists drive progress. They view problems as challenges that are solvable and work to make a difference. They believe we can make a difference.

Throughout history, most innovators that have changed the world were optimists.

And, there's a good case to be optimistic about our future.

In his book Factfulness, Hans Rosling invites us to think of the world as a premature baby in an incubator. He writes,

Does it make sense to say that the infant’s situation is improving? Yes. Absolutely. Does it make sense to say it is bad? Yes, absolutely.
Does saying “things are improving” imply that everything is fine, and we should all relax and not worry? No, not at all.
Is it helpful to have to choose between bad and improving? Definitely not. It’s both.
It’s both bad and better. Better, and bad, at the same time. That is how we must think about the current state of the world.

The world can be both bad and getting much better.

“Step-by-step, year-by-year, the world is improving,” writes Rosling. “Not on every single measure every single year, but as a rule. Though the world faces huge challenges, we have made tremendous progress.”

If we’re going to tackle the world’s biggest problems, Dr. Ritchie concludes, we need to be optimistic. We need to believe that progress is possible.

A positive vision for the future unites society and raises our spirits.

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Olympian Tenacity (~6 minutes)

Winston Churchill experienced some of the most devastating and humiliating failures out of any politician in history.

But, he had an extremely high tolerance for failure. Churchill had a unique ability to recover from setbacks, many people could not survive, and turn them into massive successes.

How can we channel Churchill-esque tenacity to handle failures in our own lives?

This essay may help if you're going through a rough patch, or want a brief bio on Mr. Churchill without having to read a 1,000-page book!

❓ Question for You:

How do you want your life be different in one year?

📸 Photo of the week:

This was taken in July 2021 on top of Mount Rundle in Canada's Banff National Park.

Nothing better than summiting a mountain for a 6 am sunrise with your best friends.

If you have any feedback or just want to be friends, feel free to reach out.

Please reply to this email, leave a comment, or find me on Twitter @tommy_dixon_

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Have a fantastic weekend.

Much love to you and yours,

Tommy