A friend of mine sent me a link the other day to an interesting piece by "No Impact Man" claiming that being optimistic "is the most radical political act there is." Although the entry was posted last August, it related directly to a conversation we'd been having a couple of days earlier and I was glad to read it because it got me thinking about how I see the world.

I prefer to think of myself as hopeful and pragmatic rather than optimistic and idealistic. I agree with "No Impact Man" that "realistic" is a term that shuts down conversation rather than keeps the discussion going. As an historian, however, it's hard for me to be "optimistic" in the narrow sense.  The historical record is too full of stories about the awful things people have done to each other over the ages. I have difficulty believing in the unqualified "goodness of people," to use the language of "No Impact Man," and think that one of the problems of many left-leaning proposals for reform is that they fail to take into account the presence of evil in the world.  

(I should mention at this point that I just got scammed on eBay to the tune of $1,200 in spite of being a relatively experienced operator in this venue. I also spent an hour this evening working with PayPal security on an investigation into an unauthorized payment of $245 out of my personal checking account. So I'm a little sensitive right now on the question of humankind's goodness.)

At the same time, it is too easy to avoid dealing with the struggle between good and evil that resides in each of us by externalizing it and portraying evil as something that only exists outside of us. One of the real dangers of a lot of rightwing thinking is the extent to which it portrays the world as a struggle between the forces of light and the forces of dark, setting up a simplistic dynamic that papers over the complex mix of motives that often drives human behavior.

In any event, I am a hopeful person (as opposed to being optimistic) in the sense that I believe human beings have the ability to wrestle with the struggle between good and evil that resides in each of us and find a way to do what is in the common good a lot of the time, if not most of it.

When it comes to the question of idealism vs. pragmatism, I definitely come down on the side of the latter. Not in the sense of readily sacrificing my core values to achieve a desired result, but rather as a way to move forward based on these values. Too often, at least in my experience, idealists get so caught up in trying to figure out how to maintain their moral purity that they fail to act and do more damage as a result of this paralysis than they would if they had the courage to make the best possible decision based on limited but sufficient knowledge.

I find Williams James’s understanding of pragmatism to be particularly compelling. Pragmatism, writes James, "appears less as a solution … than as a program for more work, and more particularly as an indication of the ways in which existing realities may be changed.” In his formulation, pragmatism does not adhere blindly to theory as an end in and of itself, but rather puts theory to work in the search for solutions. “Grant an idea or belief to be true,” he asks, “what concrete differences will its being true make in anyone’s actual life? How will the truth be realized? What experiences will be different from those which would obtain if the belief were false?” These questions seem especially pertinent to the conversation about sustainability. It seems far more important to me to see sustainability in terms of its practical consequences rather than getting bogged down in what course of action is most consistent with some abstract ideal. In light of the pressing challenges posed by peak oil and climate change, spending too much time and energy worrying about being absolutely correct or scoring points is a form of self-indulgence we cannot afford.

And, yes, I sure would like to get my money back ...