Relentless Optimism
or, sunshine and fucking rainbows
I’m a big ray of fucking sunshine. I’m delightful.
When I was starting my Substack and discussing the chosen name “Ambivalent Dad” I heard a particular criticism a couple times: “Dude, you aren’t ambivalent? You argue constantly about everything?” Which necessitated me going down a rabbit hole of explaining why, no, I actually think I’m incredibly uncertain and ambivalent even if I frequently choose a particular stance and will drive it home.
Similarly, when I tell anyone I know in person that I am an eternal optimist I get weird looks. I think the Substack does a better job of capturing my optimism, at least I hope it does, but something I want to explore is how it hurts me if I wanted to make money at this.
Squirt, my little eternal capitalist, wanted to dig deeper this morning into why I wasn’t making any money with Substack. And today I took a different tack to explain why I don’t expect to see money. Put simply, the way I want to live my life is incompatible with making money on Substack.
To wit, there ain’t no money to be made in being optimistic.
Hope
Optimism is about hope. Max Roser said it best at Our World in Data:
The world is awful. The world is much better. The world can be much better.
~ Max Roser, Our World in Data
Roser talks in his piece about a balancing act that I think everyone should participate in. This understanding that the world can be horrible, improving, and still have much improvement left. But I believe it has to be a deliberate choice of perspective no different than looking at a messy coffee table.
Unfortunately, I think it is also human nature to choose the choice of focusing on the awfulness. The world is awful. My life is awful. Everything is horrible and going wrong and really all you can do is numb yourself to it and ignore it. The sticky point is that these are true statements. The world is awful. Parts of everyone’s life are awful. At best all we can do is choose some of what is terrible.
My choice is to view the future with hope.
The world, generally, chooses the opposite because it’s in our nature to focus on the bad. We’ve all heard “if it bleeds, then it leads” but it’s a truism for a reason. I was reminded of this when I stumbled upon a Slow Boring piece from Covid times that digs deep into why the news really does work exactly in this way.
It’s a media problem, and it’s a technology problem, but like Iglesias says - it’s really just a human problem.
Begging to Differ
I am a naturally rebellious person. You tell me the sky is blue and I say “fuck you, it’s more grey today.” And that’s a problem! So as I’ve grown older and sought to know myself what I’ve chosen to do is focus on being rebellious only where it is really justified. When the juice is worth the squeeze. And, usually, it ain’t worth the squeeze, but there are exceptions.
Optimism is such an exception. When I read negative opinions, I’ve trained myself, annoyingly according to Spouse, to think about the positives. I like to think I am willing to always recognize the negatives. I live in America in 2025 so it’s not like I can escape national dysfunction and irrationality. But I hold tight that we’ll move forward in a positive direction.
That magnet on my refrigerator has been pointed to more times in my conversations with Squirt than I can count. It is a keystone for my life and, I hope, it becomes one for Squirt as well. Not because it is a given to get to justice, but because it is a reminder that we, people, must make it happen. Because people have to make a choice, and the more right choices we make the faster we can bend the arc of the moral universe.
The world can be made better and it is being made better but we have a long way to go.
Nobody Wants It
Relentless optimism is boring.
Humans want to be angry. Humans want to be sad. Humans want enemies. Conflict. Chaos. Hate.
And that is exactly what drives engagement. I have lots of honest and defensible rage in me. I could write angry screeds about Trump or flip it around and tear into Democrats. I could talk about how distorted the media has become. Hate on social media. Talk about all the darkness in the world and drag it all down further into the darkness. I could take five minutes to find people that I disagree with and pick fights. Start some conflict, say some obviously incorrect things to drive engagement, or just throw some very one-sided tweets.
That’s the playbook. There’s no such thing as bad publicity. It all grows your audience and boosts the signal. And that’s how you make money in the modern media.
Fuck that, I refuse.
I’d rather be boring. I’d rather look at the world through a lens that admits there’s good and bad both. I’d rather see the dumpster fire and the rainbow.
So, sorry Squirt, I’m not sure this’ll be putting you through college but I hope it’s somewhat useful and gives you some guidepost as you navigate this big, beautiful, and awful life.
Squirt Says…
I think that is wrong, that most stuff is totally pessimistic today. It's just putting more negative stuff in the world. But what makes me feel extra mad is that nobody is doing anything about it. We could totally fix it, but we don't. Well the first thing I can think of is actually taxing the rich. Solving world poverty and probably world hunger too after all they make up less than 2% of the world population but 45% of global wealth even half of their money could help the world. By solving problems like these there is less to be negative about.
Dad Responds…
I love that you’re thinking about solutions. And solving some of the world’s problems would theoretically help eliminate things to feel negative about. I think the question to ask is, if we lived in a utopia, would most of humanity be happy or would we still have hatred and conflict and chaos? For myself, I think that’s why a Utopia is more like a mathematical limit that can never be actually reached.
And now *I* feel ambivalent.