When I searched “American Optimism” in Google, I found an interesting article: “The land of optimism is in the dumps, but refuses to accept how it got there” by Gary Younge, The Guardian, October 15, 2007
Although I do not agree to the title, nor to the conclusions, there is a passage I liked:
(…) America`s self-image as the home of unrelenting progress - a nation of historic purpose and unrivalled opportunity where tomorrow will always be better than today - is the linchpin of its political and popular culture. Optimism, it seems, is a truly renewable national resource. It was used to build Bill Clinton`s “bridge to the 21st century” in 1992, and powered the alarm clocks for Reagan`s “new morning in America”.
“The American, by nature, is optimistic,” said John F Kennedy. “He is experimental, an inventor and a builder who builds best when called upon to build greatly.” This optimism is the source for much of what makes the US simultaneously so revered and reviled, dynamic and deluded, around the world.
On one hand it articulates a hope, bordering on certainty, that a better world is not just feasible but already in the making. Released from the hogties of tradition and formality, such confidence is driven by possibility rather than the past. Winston Churchill once said he “preferred the past to the present and the present to the future”. An American politician who wanted to get elected would say precisely the opposite. This optimism underpins the notions of class fluidity and personal reinvention at the core of the American dream. Where others might ask “Why?”, it asks “Why not?”. Such is the root of so much that is great about America`s economy, culture and politics. (…)
And there is another article I found interesting to read: “American Optimism from the Past to the Present” by Giuseppe Zaffaroni (Reflections about the intellectual currents threatening the American tradition, taking a cue from the thought of Richard Rorty, one of the most significant figures of “post-modern” pragmatism. A contribution suggested by David Forte’s words reported in the June issue of Traces (vol 5, no 6)
(…) Projection toward the future
Rorty maintains that what pragmatism and the United States have in common is the projection toward the future, the glorification of hope, compared to a Europe traditionally concerned with knowing reality, and thus slowed down by the weight of its past. (…)
Can we improve things?
We therefore have to abandon the presumption of “knowing” reality and ask ourselves the only thing that is concrete and useful: “Can we improve things? After all, the important thing is the hope of creating a new world so that our descendants may live in it with ‘more variety and more freedom’ than we can imagine.” This is why Dewey insists on the fact that the search for sure knowledge must be replaced by an appeal to the imagination; and herein lies, according to Rorty, the whole “American” spirit: “One must stop worrying about seeing if what he believes is well-founded and start worrying about seeing if he has been imaginative enough to think up interesting alternatives to his current beliefs.”
Undoubtedly, there is something fascinating in this optimism that launches a person continuously toward an unending adventure, that asks one to be open to changes which are, after all, unforeseeable, and that delivers reality into man’s hands as something totally at the disposal of his creativity and imagination. (…)
A great civilization is built on great hope. What is the factor of hope that the United States lives by today? There can be no doubt that the temptation to place one’s hope in the “future and only in the future” (Rorty) is very strong. In his article “Moses and the Shuttle” published on February 9, 2003, in Corriere della Sera (Traces Vol 5, no 3, pp. 39-40), Fr Giussani stated, “The history of America teaches us a positivity of life that is an example to the rest of the world,” (…)
