A 2013 poll revealed that when it comes to seeing the glass as half-full, only half of Americans are prepared to admit they are optimists. Still, the number positively dwarfed those who consider their outlook to be outright pessimistic: a mere 3% took always see the glass as half-empty. The rest defined themselves as inhabiting a netherworld in which ambiguity is always in play and their hope are raised or lowered according to the specifics of the situation.
Lauren Berlant’s 2012 book Cruel Optimism suggests that a much broader, deeply ingrained and potentially dangerous sense of optimism is far more pervasive and that the poll’s 50% figure is wildly pessimistic. The fact is most people have a natural tendency to reject the label of being firmly optimistic when an alternative other than pessimistic is proffered. Among the more popular alternatives would be self-descriptions such as “pragmatic” or “realistic.” Anything to avoid what in the Age of Irony has become the ultimate insult to one’s intelligence: being marked as a Pollyanna, named after the young literary heroine whose sugary expectations that things will always turn out for the best has transformed her into a hopelessly gullible rube ripe for the picking in this dog-eat-dog world.
According to Berlant’s comprehensive study, however, it turns out that America is positively crawling with Pollyannas. More to the point, this individual philosophy has infected the social fabric of America as a result of post-WW society and governmental approaches the improving that society for the benefit of the greater majority in a way that continues to proceed as a virus destroying the body politic as those approaches have consistently fallen away in the post-1980’s restructuring of the American political ideology as it has moved farther to the Right and away from the liberal welfare safety net that provided a foundation for optimism.
As the foundation has crumbled, however, the optimistic view of most people has remained intact even in the face of consistently growing obstructions put in place to hinder that outlook. Hence, title of her tome, Cruel Optimism becomes a term that appropriately warns of the dangers of holding onto that optimistic sense formed in the wake of systemized approach to tendering the possibility of the living a good life or attaining the American Dream that simply does not exist anymore. The gene of optimism was passed down from generation to generation with the proof in the pudding and the evidence of that preceding generation managing to do a little better than the one which came before it. That pattern has come to an end in the wake of such cruelly optimistic outlooks that what has been the pattern for so long must by all rights continue on along the same path.
Berlant’s insight was widely praised by academics and reviewers responded mostly on an optimistic note.
