8 - Balanced View

 In the article we read last week, the author mainly promotes a “balance” between the idealistic standards of blinding optimism and heavy pessimism. While I do believe that such a balance is indeed a standard to strive for, I feel like it is a lot more complicated to achieve than the article suggests. 

One thing I want to contest is that some people are automatically “wired” to have an ideal perspective in optimism and pessimism. People do have their own perspectives, but it is a lot more dynamic than suggested, as people will change their perspectives on a quick basis. One person who is usually optimistic can have a bad day, causing them to be overly pessimistic in viewpoint for that duration of time, while a person who was previously pessimistic may have a change in world view and switch to be optimistic. I believe that honoring this balanced view of the world, while a good idea, is hard to strive for as reacting to such ideals is mostly a subconscious action. In order to enforce is idea, you have to actively think about interpreting things this way, which is something that is hard to do on a daily basis.  


What I think is a much more tangible goal is to get the most information of an event or circumstance. This will give you a more nuanced view of what happened and will thus make your judgement less emotionally charged. While we can do this view of the world around us, we can never take away the standard emotions that can make us react illogically. 

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