curmudgeons...

It’s funny how you set up a blog because you’re dying to say something, but once you’ve set it up the pressure of the blank page, that first post, renders you speechless. However, my determination perseveres.

I was watching I, Curmudgeon the other night, a documentary I recommend to all, documentary addict and newbie alike. What I found interesting is that the negative people (the curmudgeons) had a similar view to Tolstoy in his Confessions that happy people are living some kind of lie. That if they knew The Truth, they would be as negative as the curmudgeons. And The Truth, at least what’s at the centre of it, seems to be knowledge of our own mortality.

I question the validity of this claim for many reasons, some stemming from the fact that most curmudgeons seem to be motivated less from knowledge of their own mortality, than some reaction against a society that they believe has rejected them. But, putting this aside, still this claim lacks something. Is it really more logical to be pessimistic than optimistic? Are optimistic people delusional, are they naive, are they uninformed? Or do these characteristics more accurately describe the pessimist?

It seems to me that anyone who jumps to conclusions, be it the optimist who fails to see the violent side of mankind, or the pessimist who does not see the good, is missing the point. It seems that The Truth that we need to grasp is our own mortality, but that the curmudgeon is thinking that mortality equals death, whereas mortality also equals life. It means that we are really alive.

I throw this question out to the sea of people that is the internet population [a habit I cannot break after teaching]: Does any claim of the optimist unfailingly sound religious? Does saying you must have faith in peoples’ goodness sound more spiritual than saying you believe in the badness of people?