Here are some other optimisms (I like that it can be a plural, like feminisms) that came to my mind reading this:
- related but not identical to dispositional optimism, there's "the best might not happen, but the worst will be survivable and things won't always be this bad." Which is one of my favourite lifelines. ("It will be all right, Fleet Captain.")
- there's what one might call fatalistic optimism: "the die is cast, there is absolutely nothing I can do to affect the outcome, and I've done as much contingency preparation as I can, and tensing for the blow won't affect the outcome at all, so I might as well sit back and hope for the best." Which is kind of making lemonade out of the lemons of being powerless in a situation. (In a situation where one does still have power and control, this form of optimism is actively destructive, of course.)
- and there's, idk what to call it, despairing optimism? - the very quiet "I will rebuild it again" sort, when the worst has happened.
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regna
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Date: 2015-08-14 06:49 pm (UTC)- related but not identical to dispositional optimism, there's "the best might not happen, but the worst will be survivable and things won't always be this bad." Which is one of my favourite lifelines. ("It will be all right, Fleet Captain.")
- there's what one might call fatalistic optimism: "the die is cast, there is absolutely nothing I can do to affect the outcome, and I've done as much contingency preparation as I can, and tensing for the blow won't affect the outcome at all, so I might as well sit back and hope for the best." Which is kind of making lemonade out of the lemons of being powerless in a situation. (In a situation where one does still have power and control, this form of optimism is actively destructive, of course.)
- and there's, idk what to call it, despairing optimism? - the very quiet "I will rebuild it again" sort, when the worst has happened.