Meanwhile, in our nation’s capitol, the rising influence of money in politics has led to a new low: Congressional deadlock. We live in an age of an uncertain global economy, sophisticated terrorism networks, rising poverty and hunger, growing economic inequity, skyrocketing health costs, an education system surpassed by many other nations, and the seemingly catastrophic threat of climate change. There are, of course, many reasons to be concerned about the state of the world today. So what explains the apparent disconnect-and how can we hold both views at once? And our optimism carries on into old age, as three out of four seniors anticipate that their next decade will be as good or better than their present one.
Most of us still believe that we can achieve anything through hard work. Yet an even greater majority, or seven out of ten Americans, report being fiercely optimistic about their own future and the future of their families, according to a 2013 Gallup poll. Our collective pessimism is so entrenched, in fact, that even when things improve-as they have on the economic front-we remain overwhelmingly cynical. The nation as a whole is simply going in the wrong direction.And a 2013 poll conducted by Penn Schoen Berland and Burson-Marsteller reveals that six out of ten Americans think: Slightly more than half of us think that the environment is getting worse, and only poor to fair to begin with, according to research conducted by Pew Research Center. It is, as pollster Mark Penn has written, possibly the longest running wave of pessimism in American history. While it is not unusual to think more negatively about the nation’s future than one’s own, what is different now is the depth, breadth, and duration of our current pessimism. Yet for a little more than the past decade, we have had a deeply pessimistic sense of our shared future. In fact, a study of three-dozen countries reveals that Americans rank first in optimism. No matter what goes wrong today, we really do think that the sun will come out tomorrow. Explaining the American disconnectīelieving in a better future is bred in the bone for most Americans. Recent research on private optimism and public pessimism offers some intriguing insights and points to a few provocative implications: Optimism has a downside-and a little pessimism might even help us to face threats to everyone’s well-being. How is it that we can hold these two perspectives at the same time: optimism for me, pessimism about we? Is it healthy-or even realistic-given that our personal lives are intrinsically connected to our collective one? And are there any advantages to this kind of double vision?
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