We live in interesting times. Following on from @H-P-Saucecraft’s thought provoking statistical piece, I thought it would be interesting to gauge the overall mood and wellbeing of the Afterword by creating an optimism/pessimism index. Are we all chomping at the bit for the joy of tomorrow, or are we a bunch of miserable bastards who think everything is wrong, and nothing will ever get better?
The task is simple. Pick a whole number between 0 and 10 which you feel best represents your feelings about the future. Leave your love life out of it. As a fully qualified pessimist and glass half empty kind of guy, I can tell you that love never lasts, so that’s irrelevant to the task at hand. I’m talking about the feelings at the core of your being. Where there may be sunshine or showers. A score of 10 means you are supremely positive about the future, while ‘0’ suggests the end is nigh. A score of ‘5’ represents a state of ambivalence.
You can show your working if you wish. Explanations are welcome but not necessary. This is a thread primarily about numbers. At the end I will try and collate the results and give the Afterword’s mood some statistical clothes.
I will start the ball rolling with a solid, if mood threatening 2.
6- Without thinking about it too much.
Thanks @Foxnose. I think that’s the best way to approach it. Don’t overthink it. It’s more of a gut reaction type thing. You instinctively know whether you’re an optimist or pessimist. Picking an actual number might be a bit more tricky.
I swing from zero to ten in an instant, without pausing on any of the other numbers in between.
Shall I put you down for a ‘5’?
Hope springs eternal – 7
Although I’m a pessimist, I survive on the optimism of others.
6, maybe 7 for me.
Negative stuff is just life isn’t it? Compared to life when I turned 30 or even 40, things are pretty good and I’m pretty optimistic over all.
You can’t have 6.5 @davebigpicture. Your words spell out something bigger, so I’m putting you down for a ‘7’.
That’s fine. We have the usual issues that come with getting older. Declining parents, kids getting older and what that brings but my late 20s and early 30s weren’t great so in comparison, it’s all good. I’m sure Brexit will bring challenges but I’ll deal with those if and when I need to.
Hmmm, tricky. I think things are going to get worse for a lot of people, here in the UK at least. So I’m pessimistic in that respect, and in a concerned citizen, wishy-washy liberal do-gooder kind of way, I’m a 3. But it’s the opportunity to ride with the changes that matters, and to be able to look for good things in whatever comes. So in a pragmatic, utterly selfish, lucky me, dog-eat-dog, every man for himself kind of way, I’m an 8.
I’m with Chiz – for the world in general, it feels like we’re all going to hell in a handcart, pushing on the accelerator while we’re at it, and if anything I think things are going to get worse before they get better. However, in my personal bubble, things are looking reasonably good, and notwithstanding any unexpected lightning strikes I’m quite optimistic for the next 5 years…
… but in the spirit of the question, I’m going to say 3.
I think a ‘3’ represents a respectable form of gloom.
A ‘3’ qualified by an ‘8’! This post is far too nuanced for number crunching @chiz. Still you take an early and narrow lead lead with your high altitude index.
An 8 for me.
Plenty to moan about personally & to worry about in the world at large, but generations before us had to to contend with far, far worse.
Let’s face the music and dance!
Is optimism contagious?
Oh, 10. This is but the vale of tears through which we must all pass as if in a dream. The answer to the half empty/full glass is “what a nice glass!”
Do you have breathing apparatus up there?
I’m high on clean air! Powerful gasoline! Let’s eat!
(….real soon….)
7
1.
You’re talking my language @Arthur-Cowslip
8
As the great Adam (son of Jac) Holzman recently said, “I’m not worried about the future, I’m worried about the present.”
Hmm. Are we beginning to see the emergence of a bimodal distribution? Lots of 7’s and 8’s and 2’s and 3’s, but little in the middle.
Earth is but a microzit on an imcomprehensibly huge face pocked with innumerable blemishes. The entire duration of the human species is but a crafty fart in a long, languid Sunday evening bubble bath.
All the numbers and none.
A profound and moving existential belch there @Sewer-Robot, but this is no help to a man of statistics, always eager to quantify, and who seeks to reduce the human condition to something as depraved as a single number. Still, we are where we are. Sadly I must treat your excellent post as this thread’s equivalent of a spoilt ballot and move on. Thank you for your thought provoking contribution.
I’m a high 8, no strike that, lets make it a 9. I find myself looking forward to the future in all sorts of ways. Musically, culturally, personally and even politically (qualified by signs that the younger generation are sitting up and taking notice of what is happening in the world.) A change is gonna come!
Optimism #9!
7 … was going for an 8 but thought of Brexit and the unknown impact it may have. Otherwise life is good and I don’t see that changing for a number of years… if I’m wrong, I don’t want to be so I’ll stick my head in the sand.
Too early to call, but there’s a lot of optimists on this thread, and that surprises me. Not that that’s a bad thing. I just wonder whether there’s an element of self-selection going on here. Perhaps optimists are more likely to push their positivity, whereas most pessimists are either still in bed, or can’t be arsed to share their gloomy world view.
Still in bed and voting 1.
The “pissed uncle at a wedding” wavy arms in your avatar suggest otherwise..
I always used to tell my mates that there’s three aspects of your life you need to consider, or four for me and most of my mates, and if all those are looking good then you are laughing. Even if only one or two are good you can get through, but if all three/four are doing bad you need to take some urgent action. The three are your love life/personal relationships, your home and your job, with the extra one being your football team (okay, so maybe we’re shallow!). I never included health, but I was in my mid-20s when I came up with this theory, so I had the mid-20s invincibiity, that came spectacularly crashing down a few years later!
At the moment, the love life is shaky (but a little bit out of my hands), the home is great, particularly my new telly, but not half sucking money up since our kitchen set on fire (perhaps now wasn’t the best time for a new telly!), whilst the job is non-existent, due to my illness, but thanks to company sickness policies and NHS pensions I will still be paid to 65. And my football team is top of the league, having won two and scored six goals with no reply. So in balance, I’m happy – 8.
While life circumstances can nudge you around the scale, I’m not sure they necessarily lay the foundation of one’s overall outlook, if there even is a foundation. I’m sure parental attitudes and genetics play a part too.
I support MCFC and still place myself at a 2.
The World scores 1 – having spent my life in a world gradually getting better ( no nuclear war, Wall coming down etc etc) it’s all going down the toilet.
As for me, take away the crumbling body and those ever more frequent moments when I stand at the top of the stairs wondering what the hell I am up here for I’ve never been happier – a resounding 10.
“crumbling body”, can’t remember “what the hell I came up for”..
Dude, you iz a gingerbread man.
Get out of there! Run! Run! Fast as you can!
Interesting. I can’t separate the two, the individual from the general. If the World is at 1, then you’re not going to be spending much time at 10, are you? How can you stay up there with all those bad vibes hovering around in the background? My sense right now is that there is immense complacency in the West with regards to climate change, Brexit, Trump, globalisation and all the rest. “Things will sort themselves out” seems to be a common refrain, because it’s what we’ve got used to over the last 70 years, but history suggests otherwise.
Me, personally, 9.
I’m Lucky Af, me, assuming my MRI c. spine shows nowt than wear and tear.
The world, Trump, Brexit, NHS, 1
I’m going to give @retropath2 and @Lodestone-of-Wrongness a score of 1, since I’m more interested in world outlook than current state of happiness.
That’s a half each, then.
I’ve read the OP again and demand my score is registered at 10. The “future” is 100% guaranteed perfect
Amended
With you on your post @Martin_Hairnet.
“My sense right now is that there is immense complacency in the West with regards to climate change, Brexit, Trump, globalisation and all the rest. “Things will sort themselves out”.
Not forgetting extinction of species.
Depends on your criterion outcome. I have about 22% of my life left if I follow the average age of male death. I now don’t care too much about any competitive aspects to life, as 4 living kids, almost 150 journal articles and a comfortable life, let alone a wife who i am sure still loves me and isn’t about to up-and-go makes me a very lucky man My health is as it should be given my bad choices so I do not expect an especially long duration. As long as the cash flow continues, i will pay off the mortgage in 3 years, and retirement in 9. So that’s a 8 for optimism. Don’t like the prostate, arthritis, tiredness, work politics, modern stupidity, the illiberal shift by both the left and the right, and there are some ugly global trends. My kids may have a slightly more difficult life, but in some ways it’ll be better. whatever the Cassandra’s, humanity will survive for the foreseeable future, as change is inevitable for everything, and rather than worrying about climate change, adapt to it and don’t make it any worse. A few nukes thrown around? Nasty, but you see the bitch-slap and focussing of human minds it’ll generate. If need be, the population at the edges will carry on around the glass deserts to remind us of the great stupidity. The rise of Islam in it’s ugliest form? there have been big fights about this in Europe before. The desire for freedom will always defeat oppression, although it may take a while – empires rise and fall. All depends on your time perspective. One day humans will die out, and nature will reclaim it all.
Your post @Vincent – full of breezy optimism – is a beautiful illustration of this strange see-saw on which we dwell. Your ‘ugly global trends’ is my World War III. Likewise, I am convinced that ‘A few nukes thrown around’ will not end well for anybody, and is not something that should even be countenanced. Adapting to climate change requires international co-operation, something that seems so simple, but is still a step too far for some. That’s the thing about optimism. I think it relates to your faith and confidence in the collective human spirit. On current evidence I don’t see much of that on display. We’ve been moving away from collectivism for decades. Individualism has been crowned king.
So I anticipate more barriers to movement as people struggle to find new sources of water and land for food. On the current trajectory the mega-rich will be inhabiting their own heavily fortified kingdoms in places where food is still plentiful, sentries machine gunning down anyone on the outside trying to break in.
I used to think there were people in back rooms, working away for the common good, planning for all these contingencies. But Brexit has been a real eye opener, exposing the utter incompetence and self-interest of government, and I don’t think anything can be taken for granted these days. I am not a conspiracy theorist in any shape or form. I just have a very bad feeling about the future. That’s why I only score a 2 on the optimism index.
Yebbut… i look back to a horrible previous 6 thousand years of recorded history, with despots, disasters, black deaths, Hiroshima, death in childbirth, ancient dentistry, no recorded music, no light by which to read a book (if you could read, and had glasses to treat the short sight)… shit happens, event/ reaction/ counter reaction/ stasis/ decline/ event … you name it. I get it. And more, much more to come. But we carry on. Someone, somewhere, was born today, and they will do something amazing that improves human life in a small or massive way. In the long run, the human ape goes extinct or evolves further. Longer still, Africa and South America become a big continent again. even later, the sun expands, becomes a black hole, everything hereabouts gets shredded down to subatomic particles then ejected out to make a whole new bit of universe. In my next 20 or so years, I will try to keep going and invest my best into my loved ones and my surroundings and try to leave things a bit better than they would be otherwise. Those cnuts in the white house and downing street come and go, but basic humanity – and decency – carries on.
It’s the 21st century and we’re still getting a kick out of tribal conflicts. We think we have an advanced civilisation, but it’s only a few molecules thick, and continues to breed a love of the demigod. Wars remain routine, but now we have the technology for a major extinction event. We are clever, but mostly we are destructive, naked apes fumbling around in the darkness, grovelling and fighting over meaningless imaginary prizes, our history a litany of missed opportunities and the selfish acts of egotists. We have completely lost touch with the natural world and its significance in our lives.
No grounds for optimism here.
Without a doubt. With more knowledge, monkeys don’t always do as well as they should, as complexity does not appeal to them. You can really make a horlicks of things these days, and some people appear to be doing their best to do so. But If you think it is bad now, go back in steps of 100 years and subtract the everyday which makes life better and we take for granted. I’m put in mind of the Jewish parable of the rabbi and the goat, and “what did the Romans ever do for us?”. Literacy, women’s rights, immunisation, life span, dying of obesity rather than famine… Steve Pinker wrote a book on this.
2. Similar criteria as retropath2 – the steaming turd that is Brexit, Tango 45 across the water, my team losing the first game of the season 4-0, the slow emasculation of the BBC and the NHS, the probability of that blonde twat from Eton becoming PM, my failing eyesight, hearing and knees and my teams inept start in the Afterword fantasy league. Not even a glass half full – nicked by an England cricketer in self defense.
Take comfort @fortuneight in the fact that you are still two full grades above the very bottom of the optimism index. In other words, it could be worse.😉
I’m a 9
I have no real worries. My health is fine, I think. I live in an age of everyday miracles from the internet to anasthesia, with life quality that historic mankind would find unbelievably good. I want to be alive for ever just to see what happens. The reason I’m not a 10 is that I know that I won’t.
I like this response a lot.
Put me down as an 8. “Smile – it may never happen”, as they used to say…
As we used to say pre 2011 – “SMiLE – It May Never Happen. Thankfully We Have Pet Sounds”
An incorrigible pessimist writes….. 4. On a global scale we are probably fucked, though I suppose from our 21st century relatively comfortable cushion, concerns are probably not quite as pressing as they might have been in, say, 1914 or 1939….. But all the signs are there, and as someone (HP?) said on here recently, it feels like the first stirrings of WW3 are out there. Global disinformation, Trump, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Brexit, climate change, organised crime – it’s all profoundly depressing. The decline in the generation that lived through the last war, and who had first hand knowledge of extremism and unimaginable brutality, and who knew why the world order that had kept the peace for the last 70 years was important – to the West at least – seems to me to have something to do with the new headlong rush into making all the same mistakes all over again. Then again, the West’s approach to maintaining that order might have something to do with the mess we are in now.
Ask me again tomorrow – it might be a 2.
Being a natural curmudgeon, I can rarely see beyond a 5,
But with an ambivalent streak, the fact that it is only a 5 is the opportunity to find new ways of dealing with the sh*t that is about to fall.
5 – Bang Average
The glass is neither half full, nor half empty. But it is the wrong size.
The world feels more dangerous now, with more varieties of impending shitstorm, than at any time in my rather long (by AW standards) life. I spent the Cuban Missile Crisis in a state of feverish anxiety in case I got vaporised before I got laid, but in general the long years of the Cold War didn’t disturb my breezy optimism.
But now…the list is too long, and I waver between 0 and, in my more optimistic moments, 2. So you’d better put me down for a 1.
It’s a ten from me.
PS. I’m a cockroach.
Yes you did read that right.
@mikethep You are the first to raise the spectre of the zero. From someone of your wisdom, experience and maturity, that feels significant.
I am a solid 9. Can’t do anything about political situation and although I don’t like Brexit I really don’t think it will be as bad as all the naysayers will have us believe. The Sun will still rise every morning. At 61 with a job I love in a stable company and a family all apparently in good health there is not much to concern me at present.
Fully aware that all this could change in a heartbeat but I can’t worry about things that might happen only deal with them when they do.
It’s how I lead my life these days and taking this approach helps me to sleep at night.
A solid 9 eh? Lucky Mrs T….
….hurrrr
In a world of Trump, Brexit, the ineptitude of both our current political parties, the rise of the far right across Europe, and much more, logic would make it a minus 1. But those things will all pass – let’s face it there has been worse shit within the least hundred years never mind the last thousand. Global warming is a much bigger worry, but my natural instinct is that somehow that will get sorted, and that we’ll learn to adapt. There is no basis for this whatsoever but there we go. Put me down as an 8.
This is an optimistic tour de force.
3, maybe 4 on a good day.
(Did I mention that I am back on anti depressants?)
@jackthebiscuit I’m putting you down for a 3. Dalliances with higher ends of the scale count only as optimistic holidays, and not part of ‘everyday life’.
With all the troublesome shite going down I should be pessimistic. Brexit will have an effect, but I don’t think the sky will fall. And anyone who saw me would say “There’s a miserable looking git” – but inside I’m dancin’. Also, one of my girls got really good exam results yesterday – put me down for a 7, Martin.
Optimist here although having aged a bit I’ve probably plunged from 9ish to 7ish. Living in The West definitely helps, the levels of repression in the world are shocking, as is the ever-more-noticeable global warming. Hell, even Ireland (where I come from) was getting too warm this summer, likewise Britain (holiday) and Germany (live here). Seems like Megan is more newsworthy than Brexit in Britain, while the main story in Germany is the court decision to bring back, on a formality, an Islamist activist deported years ago. That’s how frigging liberal it is. You couldn’t make it up.
On the other hand, there’s the reason we’re all here: music. And family, friends, football. Yeah, lots of details to be hopeful about in our world. Put me down for 7.
Can I ask a practical question at this point?
Yes, of course. Although I think it’s too early to be thinking about hampers.
Are we doing Stonehenge?
Oh, that.
I’m an eternal optimist and believe that there will be another Kate Bush album…….
So it’s an 8 from me.
There will be another Kate Bush album? Fu-uck. I just downgraded my ten to two.
You appear to have a capricious core. The true optimist – the holder of the mighty ’10’ – would be immune to the threat of more Bush craft. I am tempted to remove your score from my detailed statistical analysis.
Actually, nothing lifts the Saucecraft heart more than the prospect of another Kate Bush recording, unless it’s a new Elvis Costello album. Those two in one year would bring more joy than this old heart could stand!
Thanks for all the contributions so far. Keep those scores coming in! Got a bit of a busy day today looking after my 94 year old father, so I may be away from the blog a bit. But the responses so far suggest that people identify quite strongly as optimist or pessimist, with few fence sitters. In other words, we are distributed as twin peaks.
Ask him for his score, too 🙂
Recently, my father has undergone the most profound transformation. Up until December 2016 he was living alone in the UK, perfecting the art of being miserable. He was moody, difficult and completely anti-social, rarely leaving the house. Then he suffered a mini-stroke – a transient ischemic attack (TIA), and it was clear he could no longer cope on his own. So we dragged him over to Spain, set him up in a new house in a nearby pueblo blanco, and got an English speaking carer to take over the lion’s share of the work.
Confounding all expectations, he embraced these changes with enthusiasm and good grace, and is now living the life of Riley. He takes a walk every morning, greeting the locals as the oldest man in the village, hangs out at the bar, swims in the municipal pool. It’s incredible.
We went for coffee and pan tostada this morning. He wasn’t able to give me a number on the optimism index. The stroke seems to have completely scrambled his brain with regards to numbers, which is ironic for an old maths teacher. But it also seems to have unburdened him of some of his old obsessions, and made him a much more pleasant person to be around. He’s as happy and content as I’ve seen him in years.
That’s fantastic, Martin! I’ve had a word with my old man (98, TIA) and he’s coming over to join you! He’s bringing his luggage – mostly dirty laundry and a fresh colostomy bag.
The other day he was chatting about his old piano teacher (his memories of childhood and WWII are still very vivid, whereas the later years seem to have faded) and I worked out that she was born some time in the 1860s! I’m always fascinated by the way in which lives connect and span across time.
That’s cool. My dad has survived colon cancer – with collateral damage – so they’ll be able to chat endlessly about bag brands and habits.
I’m down to my last five sheets of A2 paper and completely run out of A1. I only have half a tube of zinc white left and sales of paintings and prints have dwindled to virtually nothing.
Ten when I’m painting. Two when I’m not.
@pencilsqueezer Great to see you on the thread Peter, but what is the humble statistician to make of a 10 and a 2? Your post exposes a truth, that optimism is malleable and can move around the scale, but I need a simple snapshot of the zeitgeist, so I’m putting you down as a 2. That’s the zone where all the cool kids are hanging out.
While Mr. Hairnet’s away from the blog I thought we could have a rude word contest? Boost his chart action.
I’ll start:
Marigolds
Muffin
Valve
Plunge
Gusset.
Mess.
Pottage.
Crust.
Crumbs!
Spillage.
Spoilage.
@minibreakfast Care to spill a number?
@GCU-Grey-Area ditto
The Grey-ometer’s needle seems to flicker between 3 and 8, with nothing in between, like our MG’s rev-counter currently does, between 1000 and 2000.
8 – I’m in good health, so’s my other half, I have lots of work.
3 – best friend’s not had an ‘8’ on her dial for ages, and I’m despairing of where we are politically.
Sorry @GCU-Grey-Area, you missed the midnight deadline. But check the results below.
@Mike_H Give me a number while you’re here.
Oops – he’s back. As you were.
Touched and charmed by this collective effort to get that hamper to Spain. Just worried about the shipping costs now.
Make mine a 3. Not great, but not a disaster either.
8. With no explanation.
I have become profoundly pessimistic recently, which is the absolute opposite of how I have felt for most of my 68 years. I am in good health, although I was diagnosed with prostate cancer earlier this year (now removed), have a comfortable retirement doing lots of exciting and pleasurable stuff, have two great grown up kids who I am inordinately proud of, and I live in Devon….yet the world I knew is crumbling around me. We are clearly destroying the planet and every living creature on it other than ourselves and those we eat or have as pets, and then we have the utter stupidity of our politicians who do fuck all about the big stuff but just fight amongst themselves over who can screw us over. It’s a 1 from me….maybe, just maybe, someone will see sense.
@NigelT Total empathy here Nigel. I think the signs are really grim. We seem paralysed in our economic thinking, unable to move beyond ancient models of continuous growth, which are both damaging and unsustainable. There is huge inertia, and any transition to new modes of thinking is bound to be painful and dangerous. Are you familiar with Kate Raworth’s doughnut economics?
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/apr/12/doughnut-growth-economics-book-economic-model
Just a note that midnight tonight is the deadline for entries to the Afterword Optimism Index. I will then retire to my underground laboratory, and work tirelessly to make sense of this feast of numbers. See you on the other side!
I’m a 7. Less worried about Trump than Brexit, which I’m still hoping will disintegrate, and the risk of a Corbyn government which would probably be emigration time but I still have a little faith in the common sense of the masses though after the referendum I do wonder.
@Twang Whether we stay or leave I think the Brexit conversation is going to dominate British politics for years.
I agree. Whatever happens we’re in for endless what-if / imagine-if stuff. Depressing.
This just in!
The simple dot plot above shows the number of people with each score. There were six people who scored ‘1’, three who scored ‘2’, and so on. The total sample size was 38, with a mean of 5.8 and a median of 7. The modal (most common) value is 8, although the distribution of the scores appears bimodal, suggesting that people are either optimistic or pessimistic, with few sitting on the fence.
Initial thoughts? Speaking as a pessimist, The Afterword is far too optimistic for it’s own good, which can only end in tears. It’s all very well saying that life is good, musn’t grumble, blah, blah blah, but our brains evolved before Trump, nuclear weapons, diesel cars and Facebook. I can see how having a positive outlook can bring rewards and advantage, but in this day and age it also starts to carry enormous risk, if optimism turns to complacency. Perhaps the best strategy is to be an optimistic worrier.
“He who laughs
Has not yet heard
The terrible tidings.”
Bert Brecht said that…
“The Afterword is far too optimistic for its own good…”
Which is pretty much what I was saying via the Fun Boy Three 😉
If you wanted a pessimistic result, you should have asked the AW how they feel about the future of music! 😀
@Locust Excellent point!
I live a bit of an isolated existence, where it’s easy to get bogged down in your own little world and thoughts. I was genuinely interested in gauging the Afterword mood, at a time when (from where I’m sitting) world events seem to be edging into the realm of the unstable. I’m surprised at the level of positivity on display, but pleased to see that I am not a lone voice of
realismpessimism. That certainly gives me grounds for optimism.I’ve seen the future
….and it will be, and it works
….brother, it is murder
….let’s call it a draw.
I thought it was gonna be all crack and anal sex. I was looking forward to it.
I’ve always had a problem with that line – isn’t it tautologous?
Depends if you can extend from one to the other.
The world is as black as a dark night in hell
What kind of a place can this be?
Pessimistic optimism is the way. Here’s why.
If you start out feeling optimistic and things go well, your pleasure is muted because you were expecting things to go well anyway. If things don’t go well then you feel disappointment more strongly than if that’s what you were expecting.
If you start out feeling pessimistic and things go well, you feel pleasantly surprised and that adds to your pleasure. If things go badly it’s not such a big deal, because you were expecting that to happen anyway.
So be pessimistic and who knows, you might get a pleasant surprise!
Coincidentally, I just watched James Acaster on Netflix. For anyone who has it, from about 40 mins on is appropriate to this thread and to Mike’s post above …
https://www.netflix.com/watch/80213803?trackId=14170286&tctx=2%2C6%2C6c97577c-532c-48c3-8a83-7a5e53b8720c-76941483%2Cd1043f43-5618-4f77-ace7-da266253c9cf_6318009X3XX1534621729739%2Cd1043f43-5618-4f77-ace7-da266253c9cf_ROOT
Scott Redding 1
Jorge Lorenzo 10
Brexit 10
China and the looming, inevitable South China Sea war 1, maybe even a -1.
If I lived in the UK I’d be depressed too. I live in a country where you have to try hard to be even a little bit fed up, and it’s just not worth the effort.
PS Martin – I added a second “thumbsaloft” to your own, just to cheer you up!