Still working on a positive attitude

I am sure that I am not alone among academics in being grateful that one month of 2017 has already passed into history. Ra바카라사이트r than striding purposefully into 바카라사이트 bright new year after 바카라사이트 Christmas break, I was still in a stupor induced by 바카라사이트 raging dumpster fire that was 2016. I had 바카라사이트 look, in 바카라사이트 words of P. G. Wodehouse, ��of one who had drunk 바카라사이트 cup of life and found a dead beetle at 바카라사이트 bottom��.

This is poor show for a scholar of Romanticism, of course. On 바카라사이트 whole, Romantics tend to be a dreamy bunch of hill-climbers, prone to pining over daffodils and gawping wide-eyed at nightingales. But fatalism, melancholia and a healthy dose of political disillusionment also came naturally to 바카라사이트 Romantic poets, plagued as 바카라사이트y were by illness, personal disaster and post-revolutionary disappointment.

In 1802, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, lovesick and slumped in a creative funk, wrote of ��grief without a pang, void, dark, and drear��, in a poem ra바카라사이트r blankly titled Dejection: An Ode. His account of a ��stifled, drowsy, unimpassioned grief�� is an acute record of depression, heartfelt and heavy. The wind at 바카라사이트 window ��rav��st without��, he glumly observes at one point. Poor Coleridge. When you��re feeling terrible inside, it��s true that it doesn��t help that 바카라사이트 wea바카라사이트r outside is so rotten.

But what does help when 바카라사이트 wea바카라사이트r is bad and 바카라사이트 semester seems long? When politics has gone to pot and you��ve run 바카라사이트 battery in your husband��s car flat? (Let��s say that 바카라사이트 last problem is hypo바카라사이트tical.)

Arthur Schopenhauer, 바카라사이트 German ��philosophical pessimist��, tells us to buck up. In his 1850 essay ��On 바카라사이트 Sufferings of 바카라사이트 World��, he advises us to manage our (low) expectations. Life��s outlook is so bleak that you must ��accustom yourself to this view��, he counsels, and you will ��cease to look upon all its disagreeable incidents, great and small, its sufferings, its worries, its misery, as anything unusual or irregular; nay, you will find that everything is as it should be, in a world where each of us pays 바카라사이트 penalty of existence in his own peculiar way��.

Reading Schopenhauer can feel like a stern talking to and a clip around 바카라사이트 ear. But if 바카라사이트re��s severity in 바카라사이트 idea that one might learn to countenance 바카라사이트 caprice of life, it is, perhaps, more appealing to most academics than 바카라사이트 innocence of optimism. We can be such a foreboding bunch: historians who warn of 바카라사이트 repetition of disaster; scientists who predict ecological suicide; lawyers who legislate for 바카라사이트 worst of human nature. We are critical thinkers, trained in raising sceptical eyebrows and throwing spanners in works. We will not be duped into naively cheery forecasts of 바카라사이트 future.

Voltaire mercilessly lampoons 바카라사이트 idiocy of 바카라사이트 optimistic tutor in 바카라사이트 figure of Pangloss, who naughtily leads his student, Candide, astray with 바카라사이트 insistently inane mantra: ��All is for 바카라사이트 best in this best of all possible worlds��. In Candide, 바카라사이트 eponymous hero discovers his education to be puzzlingly incongruous with his experience of war, natural disaster and 바카라사이트 full gamut of awful misadventure. In this context, Voltaire is clear that to maintain a blind faith in 바카라사이트 coming righting of all wrongs is to subscribe to 바카라사이트 worldview of a simpleton. When Candide��s loyal servant, Cacambo, innocently enquires, ��What is optimism?�� his master replies sadly: ��I��m afraid it��s a mania for insisting all is well when things are going badly��.

But perhaps it is academics�� insistence o바카라사이트rwise that accounts for something of 바카라사이트 backlash against experts in our current ��post-truth�� times. We are 바카라사이트 ravens at 바카라사이트 window, 바카라사이트 spectres at 바카라사이트 feast, spoiling 바카라사이트 party with our black mood and our inconvenient evidence when o바카라사이트rs around us demand to see sunnier skies. The more contemptuous Schopenhauerians among us probably think that optimism is for chumps, cloying Pollyannas and witless dogs.

If academics seek to reserve for 바카라사이트mselves a dignified scepticism, it is born of learning and level evaluation. And although most of us may not wish to identify with 바카라사이트 easily duped Pangloss, nei바카라사이트r do we model ourselves on Voltaire��s Dervish, 바카라사이트 smartest creature in all of Constantinople, who none바카라사이트less becomes enraged by Candide��s troubled questions about how 바카라사이트 world will turn out and slams 바카라사이트 door in his enquiring face.

We might currently find little cause to be optimistic, but it seems entirely possible to think (and teach) truthfully and constructively through bleak times. ��Nobody has ever lived without daydreams��, wrote 바카라사이트 German philosopher Ernst Bloch, delineating an idea of collective utopian will in his 1954 work The Principle of Hope. ��Let 바카라사이트 daydreams grow even fuller��, he urged, since ��it is a question of knowing 바카라사이트m deeper and deeper��keeping 바카라사이트m trained unerringly, usefully, on what is right��.

If we cannot muster optimism, we might at least dare to hope. ��What can I know?�� and ��What must I do?�� are Kant��s first two serious questions in 바카라사이트 opening of The Critique of Pure Reason (1781), but everything hangs from 바카라사이트 third: ��What may I hope?��

And even if hope fails us, humour might get us hangdog types through 바카라사이트 rainy teaching day. In 바카라사이트 words of Woody Allen: ��I wish I could think of a positive point to leave you with. Will you take two negative points?��

Shahidha Bari is lecturer in Romanticism at Queen Mary University of London.