Realistic Optimism

Yesterday Dr. Levy seems to have found his intellectual equalibrium again and actually conducted a class with an actual point to it, rather than these political roomanations he had been doing lately. He said that optimistic people get by better than pessimistic people. I think they've done experiments with drowning rats where the optimistic rats were able to keep alive several times longer than the rats who had no hope. People who see the glass as half full rather than half empty. I remember one time at a Bible study in the "Sunkist" house where Pete Richards was teaching on this topic, and somebody had a half filled glass of water and I was thirsty at the time and went for the water and they yanked it away from my reach. Sometimes Christians will do that. They will extend a promise to you and then yank it away when they find you are actually reaching for it. This is kind of where the phrase "pie in the sky" comes from. If's OK and commendable to SAY you believe their bullshit because agreeing with them is an act of piety. But to ACTUALLY take them at their word is something Christians shy away from. Their cardinal rule is "Never put your Faith where it is ever in any real jeopardy of Failing you".

People wonder whether our President is an optimist. He wrote "The Audacity of Hope" but as I said in one posting "For this president to hope in anything IS audacious because he hasn't planned for anything. He isn't working to get done the job he needs to do. He expects it all to fall neatly into his lap. I told Dr. Levy that I thought President Obama was an optimist but that he was out of touch with reality. He thinks this health care bill is going to pass. Unfortunately he is in the position where he MUST see it passed because his whole carrier is riding on it. If somehow the house passes the bill, if they can pressure or otherwise round up those stray votes, then the democrats will have a platform to run on in November. If not they will have brought the republican dream of STOPPING the forward progress of this President. I think people who are just now getting around to buying gold and silver are several years late and that ship has sailed already. If you're in gold and silver right now you should be thinking about getting out of the market. Of course optimistic people have to deal with problems, too. In world war II they were optimistic, but they also planned for every contingency and thought every action through to its probable conclusion. I asked Dr. Levy about these people on TV who are always talking about "people being in denial". My personal bias on this issue is that people bring up negatives because to invert a saying "If they can't say something Bad about you then they just won't have a conversation with you". As such people look for the illusive "double dip" in this economy. With each passing day this economy appears to be getting stronger. This idea of the "double dip" recession is the brass ring that republicans have been striving for. I find that a lot of times Christians will find all sort of negative things to say about, for example, people going into business for themselves, if they don't like you will will magnify every conceivable negative.

Of course to point out a negative when I do it is so that problems that do exist can be isolated and dealt with or otherwise neutralized. It never occurs to a Christian that you might be bringing up a problem with the idea of eliminating it so that it WON"T be a problem for you from now on. Some Christians conflate these two thinking on one hand that they are optimistic because they are always talking about how wonderful it will be after Jesus comes. On the other hand if you actually point out a real problem they get hysterical and think you are being negative or "resisting their words" or some such thing. I used to hear the phrase "I'm feeling resistance from you" when I would point out something more than obvious. Of course I have been resisting discussing a period in my life from about May of 1985 through about February of 1987. There were a lot of problems for me in this period. And more to the point, the way certain things were handled or mishandled, set up problems that occurred in the future. Republicans may be "setting up a problem for themselves" if they are too dogged on this filibuster thing. Because every word they say about it now will be used against them in the future when the they are in power and they are being filibustered.

There was an investment guy on KTLK today who claimed that he could make money for you in investments by a broadly diversified plan, in good years as well as bad, consistantly, and we're talking an average of better than fifteen percent a year. I would sure like to know how he does it. I gave a Buy signal about six months ago and since then stocks haven't gone up all that much. But it seems that right now they may be taking off and breaking into new highs. If the economy breaks out of this recession, we could be looking at a Ronald Reagan type situation for Obama in 2012 similar to what Reagan had in 1984 where he was unstoppable. It's been so long since there was really a good economy people have forgotten what it's like. They've forgotten what it's like to say government has MORE money than they expected and now they have extra money for the expansion of old programs and the addition of some new ones.