Watching with a Clear Eye

One struggle in life is being able to find the happy mean between optimistic and pessimistic. Usually we reference optimism as a quality and pessimism as a defect, but it is incorrect to deem one end the better one. Optimism usually brings happiness and hope. People enjoy hearing positive ideas about the future, but optimism without limits leads to delusion. Optimistic point of views can be pulled down by pessimistic counterparts. A constant balancing of optimism and pessimism lets us find a better, more realistic perspective of life. Both ends we needed, despite the general dislike towards negative points-of-view.

The Inner Struggle

As humans, truth is one of the things we most want to attain. Falsehood and errors provoke feelings of uneasiness and insecurity. Learning what is real and what is not, what is true and what is false, is one prime objective we are meant to follow. In some cases, people will pursue the truth to the end of their lives, while others can avoid the pain of uncertainty with ignorance. In general we can say that ignorance taken to the extreme leads to apathy and delusion, but without it, we wouldn't be able to trace a line between what we want to know and what we want, yet cannot, know. Some people are innerly inclined to search for this realistic aspect of life. Quantifying and classifying, as well as making systems shows how we have tried to put aside the natural perspective to which we are confined into an abstract representation of reality.

It is common to think that things are evident once they are shown, but before being shown, those things are indecipherable. That means that once a truth is mined from reality, it becomes easy to show and understand, but before being mined, it was hidden among the endless complexity of reality. It takes a genius to be able to discern the that which is invisible to the current mindset. Breaking walls of thought is not an easy task; we are confined into ourselves, and very few are able to see past that which they are taught to see. This extreme of objective perspectives is a rare quality. Breaking from the line of thought requires a spark which most of us will never have.

The Happy Mean

As shown in previous parts, pulling opposites keep an equilibrium in society. Suppressing optimism or pessimism would lead to a society deluded into thought placebo, while a pessimistic society would lose interest in life due to hopelessness. Some people take the role of the ones who bring the hope, and some other bring the role of pulling those back to the ground. Allowing free speech let's this mechanism work. When people listen to arguments of opposing views, a general happy mean is found. In the end, those who struggle the most will be those who bring the hope and those who claim there is none. It is those who thrive in the fair middle point of the extreme who can perceive the future as clearly as possible. As oneself cannot be able to gauge his own level of bias, it takes a large group who can express their own views to be able to condensate and weight the ends.

Those who are able to level the scale and determine the truth to the best of their abilities who are fittest to lead. A realistic and representative perspective of life is required to unite and bring together the society and lead towards progress. Society can swing in different directions, but a leader should be able to notice and understand the change.

Impossibility of Perfect Realism

We perceive through our senses, which have been called deceitful in the past. More than deceitful, they are biased. There is no way of being able to measure reality with complete certainty. We can as individuals be sure of something, but another person may disagree. A system like Mathematics try to derive truth from basic axioms from which we have built the structure of science and technology. Even in that case of Mathematics, axioms are required to start. Therefore we could ask if truth itself exists as an immutable concept linked to every existing thing. Without our own perspective there is no observer who can in any way test the truth of a concept.

Truth itself is an idea we create to describe what we expect to observe regardless of the observer. But, is it possible to find all the truths? Where lies the limit of human capacity to describe and label in the most general way every object and concept? At best we can force ourselves to become better observers and be critical of our biases, as well as checking with others what they perceive. We should strive to find the happy mean between those who see life with optimism and those who see it with pessimism. In the end, we can know as much as we can observe, and that which others can experience and communicate.

Uphold free speech not as a right for people to express their ideas and feelings, but as a natural and organic way to allow society to move in a more balanced direction. We need to listen to everyone to understand and bring them together to a better center. The curse of those who live in the center is the realization that feeling hope or despair is not reality.

Strive for balance.