新编大学英语第四册unit1 Text D: Optimism
Optimism
1 I suppose it's in the nature of science to be optimistic. One of the unspoken assumptions of scientific inquiry is that there are answers to every question. The answers may take years or decades or centuries to find, but for every question about the observable world, a scientist will tell you that there is an answer.
2 A scientist believes in cause and effect. There is a reason or reasons for everything that happens. The optimistic belief that all problems can be solved and all questions answered is common in technologically advanced and scientifically oriented societies. Rather than being suspicious of change, these societies believe their lives will benefit from it.
3 I am one of those people whose life knows only change. The one certainty I am aware of is death. All other things are subject to change. I have known changes for the better and changes for the worse (we now have the means to destroy our own planet), but I have never questioned the fact that whether I liked it or not, change was unavoidable. How, you ask, with our infinite capacity for evil, can I remain optimistic about change?
4 The answer, I suppose, is similar to the one I would give if you asked me how the knowledge of death affects my life. I know that I'm going to die. Everything that lives eventually dies. But I can't live as if every hour were my last. If I did, I would be inactive. I wouldn't go to work; I wouldn't bother reading the daily paper or going to school. In short, I wouldn't have time for all those little joys a good meal, a walk in a garden, a chat with an old friend that make life worth living. Instead, I would spend my life between fear and tears.
5 In the same way, I can't live in fear of what some new technological horror might do. I can't live in fear of the possibility that as the earth's population grows and we use up more and more of our nonrenewable resources, our children may have to lead poorer lives. I can't live in despair about increases in crime, nuclear weapons, and environmental pollution.
6 I am not saying that these problems are not serious. They are. What I am saying is that fear and despair can't solve them. If we are going to solve them, we have to believe that we can. And this is where a sense of optimism is important. Consider the alternative. If we believe that nothing can be done to save us from ourselves, we aren't going to try. If we try, but do not really believe in what we are doing, we will fail. As I see it, the only way we can make the future succeed for us is to believe that it is possible to make it succeed. The great pyramids of Egypt, the Roman aqueducts, the Gothic cathedrals of Europe, and the Great Wall of China were not built by people who said it couldn't be done.
7 Problems in human relations are obviously much more difficult. And I'm not foolish enough to equate technological problems, which have solutions, with human questions, which don't always have simple right or wrong answers. What I am suggesting, however, is that if we believe that human questions have solutions, we may, given patience, reason, and compromise, actually find some. If we don't believe solutions are possible, we will never find any. Or to put it another way, you will never find what you don't look for.
8 Optimism takes energy. It is much easier to be a pessimist. You just sit back and let it whatever it is happen. It is an emotionally lazy position. Optimism, on the other hand, requires commitment. If a person believes that something can be done, he or she is responsible in some way for doing it or helping to do it. For example, once a person believes that it is dangerous to drink too much liquor, he or she is almost required to drink less. If that person doesn't, he or she is committing a form of suicide.
9 The twentieth century has not been kind to optimists. We have, in this century, witnessed murder, barbarism, war and genocide of a scale unknown in previous human history. Sometimes, it seems that for every technological advance, we have suffered from the misuse of that very advance. Atomic power both lightens and darkens our lives. Still, we have no alternative but to keep trying. Every person saved from mistreatment, starvation, or genocide is a feather in the cap of humanity. If we sit back and just let things happen, we are less than human. From this point of view, optimism is essential to preserving our humanity in these difficult times.
