Most of 2001 I had terrible problems with my sleeping pattern, eventually it became something of a ritual for me to watch "Asia Today" on BBC News 24 at about 4:45am. Even if I had no idea what was going on outside my room, I was generally up to speed with major events taking place in Asia. The reason I watched it was because quite often there was something happy in the 15 minutes. Asia has all kinds of grief and trouble and misery, but quite often even when there was worth of bad news to report, part of the 15 minutes would be made up with a happy story, sometimes it was barely even "news
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A personal note about hope. The way I talk, think, write, and reason is affected more than anything by my continual desire to make sure I'm being as realistically hopeful as I can be. When I'm dealing with others, if I hear something that has needless hopelessness in it (even subconscious), my inclination is to "correct" their sentence. I don't think it is realistic for me to help out the world by being a political leader, or an inspiring celebrity, or by developing some kind of medicine, or by providing an essential service to the community... I try to do it by helping a small number of people that I'm close to. Certainly at the moment it is the way I feel I can help the most... of course, I'm not closed to the possibility I might one day be in a different position and maybe be able to help more people, in more ways. Indeed, I hope I am in such a position
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I'm am optimist, really, but I just wonder if right now we are actually making any progress... It seems to me that we're just moving forward, and as we gain one thing, we leave something else behind or mess something else up... hmm...
No no, I know... I want things to improve too, I just don't really think that they are right now.. I think they can, but right now, it doesn't seem like we're really getting anywhere... and that view might seem rather pessimistic in itself, but I am an optimist.. hm.. do you think we're making much progress right now? On the whole?
I don't think we can look at anything on the whole because people assign different values to different things: I may think genetically modified foods are a good thing because they could allow us to feed those without food, whilst others would see human interference in the natural world in that way as a terrible occurence. There is lots in the world that is bad, and lots that is being done that makes it worse. But there are good bits too, and lots is being done to improve those. And whilst people care about the bad things and try to prevent them and seek improvement then we have causes for hope.
Thanks for commenting, but its a shame you did so anonymously because it seems like we could have had a good discussion - anyone who in a discussion about optimism can refer to the force as duck tape is welcome! As for the dividing too clearly between good and evil thing, this has already been discussed here. Utilitarian? In some ways I suppose, but not in some ways (for example if many people become happy by persecuting a minority, I would stick up for the minority instead). And I dont believe, or at least I dont think I believe, the religous stuff, but I thought the pastor made a nice point.
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Nice to have you back :)
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Sorry, went way off what I meant to say :)
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Feel free to comment again and thanks :)
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