Philosophical Pessimism In Neutral Tones, By James Hardy

In the words of Winston Churchill, "The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty." When we are optimistic that we can get a job done, or that we can find a cure for a disease, we are more motivated, and we work harder. A scientist who is pessimistic that they will never find a cure for a specific disease will have a mental mind block against finding a cure for a disease, making it considerably harder for them to find a cure. However, a scientist who is optimistic about finding a cure for a disease will be motivated and more focused on their dedication to discovering a cure for a disease such as cancer. When you are optimistic, you are more motivated, and when you are motivated, you are more productive, consequently making optimism a particularly important priority in everyday

Mark Kingwell, in his award winning book In Pursuit of Happiness, asserts that the pursuit of happiness is meaningful and that the benefits far outweigh the risks. In fact, Kingwell’s argument is centered on the idea that people who want to be happy will be happy if they would only pursue what is that brings them joy. For this reason, he disagrees with the idea that biology is the main indicator of a person’s happiness. The idea that “you are either happy or you’re not” (414). Though studies conducted by various universities and esteemed psychologists have reached the same conclusion. In a study conducted by Dr. Jerome Kagan, a prominent psychologist at Harvard University, he concludes that there is a clear connection between dopamine levels

The loss of a loved one is perhaps the most difficult experience that humans ever come up against. The poem Porphyria’s Lover, written by Robert Browning, adds a sense of irony to this. At the most superficial layer, the speaker’s in both Porphyria’s Lover and Neutral Tones, written by Thomas hardy, both deal with loss. The tones in Neutral Tones seem to be indifferent, or Neutral. Porphyria’s Lover speaker ends up murdering his beloved at the end the poem. While this isn’t the case with the speaker in Neutral Tones, the two speakers are much more similar than we might think. The speaker in Neutral Tones doesn’t outright murder his lover, but there is a considerable amount of disdain and contempt towards his supposed lover. The speaker in Porphyria’s Lover is quite obviously a disturbed man, the sinister nature of the speaker in Neutral Tones, however, is not as clear. Delving further into this idea, I will also discuss other obscure parallels throughout the two poems.

The optimist sees the rose and not its thorns; the pessimist stares at the thorns, oblivious

Dickinson’s tone seems to portray suffering throughout the beginning of her poems, but gradually develops into a more hopeful and optimistic attitude

According to Dictionary.com, the definition of optimism is “A disposition or tendency to look on the more favorable side of events or conditions and to expect the most favorable outcome.” Looking on the more favorable side can help in the most difficult times. Having a positive attitude is the best response to conflict, especially in time of war. Optimists such as Winston Churchill and Anne Frank kept hope for a better future throughout World War II.

Then, he stated his idea “the optimism of uncertainty.” To support his opinion, Howard gave various examples during the last century. Infact, the history of humanity has lots of unpredictable shifts which happened at any moment, and the future itself is utter unpredictability as well. Howard gave his readers an example after an example: the unexpected revolution which overturned the czar in Russia and the fall of the Soviet Union later, the unpredictable shifts of World War II which the German army was defeated, and the failure of both the Soviet Union and the U.S. during the cold war... When the author mentioned these historical events, the author succeeded in convincing his readers that undesirable moments will not always continue and no one could predict the future ahead. He got pessimistic people who believed that the world is getting worse to shift their perspective: “Why don’t we believe the world can get any better?” Clearly, his message in the article is we should be hopeful of a positive outcome even though in bad

It is hope, he writes, that brought settlers to North America, that helped the first people avoid freezing in the Ice Age, and helped some survive the Holocaust. In history, Watkins emphasizes, one finds stories of people continuously succeeding in the face of hardship, stories that can help one maintain an optimistic mindset. Hope and optimism, once learned, can be as the essay suggests, “a shield against fate and it’s consequences” and the fuel one needs to keep going into the future, with the belief that everything will turn out

Also known as pessimism, the concept implies the total surrender with which persons face the challenges that compound their lives. It is the acceptance of a situation, however terrible it may be, and the belief that no action can be taken to transform the transpiring elements/activities. Defeatism implies that the subject in question puts up no fight whatsoever. It is common in situations that involve children who, as mentioned above, have been exposed to the same challenges repeatedly and have never managed to overcome them. However, the reason for their failure to get any positive results is the approach by which they handle the problems; an approach that in common situations has been corrupted by the environment. The environment may imply personalities within the neighborhood who mention how hopeless it is to attempt a solution.

   Leibnitz emphasized, in his Discours de Metaphysique (Discourse on Metaphysics) (1686) the role of a benevolent creator. He called the constituent components of the universe monads, and while the philosophy of monads is of little concern to readers of Candide, the conclusion which Leibnitz drew from these monads is crucial to an understanding of optimism.

The tone of the speaker was very sad, cold and lonely for misses his father. Evidence that support that he misses his father can be found in the poem. The second and the third stanza reflects how he feels about the weather and I think he meant the fall season in which he uses a cold tone “the garden is bare now. The ground is cold, brown and old”, he clearly just mentioning the negative sounding around fall. A lonely tone also found in the last few stanzas, when he mentioned that his food is almost cooked “White rice steaming, almost done. Sweet green peas fried in onions. Shrimp braised in sesame oil and garlic. And my own loneliness. What more could I, a young man, want.”. The part where he said, “And my own

Albert Schweltzer, a theologian, organist, philosopher, and physician, once said,”An optimist is a person who sees a green light everywhere, while a pessimist only sees a red stoplight… A truly wise person is colorblind.” Many people know about the dangers of constantly being pessimistic and looking down on people. But what many people do not realize is the dangers of excessive or even blind optimism. Some people swear by it and others think it’s crazy. Voltaire was a famous philosopher who could be said to be ahead of his time, for his beliefs on separation of church and state, freedom of religion, and freedom of expression, and he believed it was insane. He later wrote the novel Candide, which was made as a satire of all the things he believed

"The Futile Pursuit of Happiness" was published in September of 2003 by a man name Jon Gertner. It is an essay that discusses the difference experiences of happiness based on what a person believes will make them happy and the out come of their true emotions once the event actually occurs. The essay is based on experiments by two professors, Daniel Gilbert and George Loewenstein. The experiments the two professors performed showed that the level of happiness will not be the outcome because of affective forecasting and miswanting cause disappointment and false excitement in our real search for happiness.

In “On The Sufferings of the World,” Arthur Schopenhauer has a pessimistic outlook on life. He believes that suffering is a part of life and that without suffering, the world would be an even more miserable place. As many people may assume, life gets better as you grow older. Schopenhauer however disagrees with this statement and claims that life continually deteriorates. Before reading this piece I strongly believed that I was an optimist. I always like to see the bright side of situations but, Schopenhauer really gave me a different outlook on life, a pessimistic view, and I surprisingly agreed with many of his ideas. Although this is true, at the end of the reading, I disagreed with more ideas than not. Therefore, I do not think that Schopenhauer’s account on life is a good proposal to live by because not everyone is continuously miserable in their life and it is perfectly reasonable to have a positive outlook on life.

In an ironic way, the optimism of the vast majority is the greatest inhibitor of satisfaction. Both the future and the past are born of the present mind; the now is interminable. For some reason, humanity seems to possess an unwavering insistence on running, so to speak, to an illusory end that is really nothing more than a product of momentary dissatisfaction.