It does my professorial heart good to see you remember so well the Pascal and William James we read together in PHIL 102 over 25 years ago. However, my philosophical heart is saddened by the thought that my own thinking on this particular issue (not other issues, though!) hasn't advanced or even changed since toward the end of the last millennium. I still think James was right: both pessimism and optimism can be self-fulfilling prophecies, and by now I'm sure some fancy people claim that they can show the neurons and synapses that prove this -- some day. Having now turned 68, which makes your middle-age seem adolescence, I believe, though, that basic character is set almost from birth: some people are born optimists and some born pessimists, and the task (as in the Greek tragedies) is to learn how to accept one's fate with grace. (And, by the way, great name for the puppy!) --Love, Steve
It does my professorial heart good to see you remember so well the Pascal and William James we read together in PHIL 102 over 25 years ago. However, my philosophical heart is saddened by the thought that my own thinking on this particular issue (not other issues, though!) hasn't advanced or even changed since toward the end of the last millennium. I still think James was right: both pessimism and optimism can be self-fulfilling prophecies, and by now I'm sure some fancy people claim that they can show the neurons and synapses that prove this -- some day. Having now turned 68, which makes your middle-age seem adolescence, I believe, though, that basic character is set almost from birth: some people are born optimists and some born pessimists, and the task (as in the Greek tragedies) is to learn how to accept one's fate with grace. (And, by the way, great name for the puppy!) --Love, Steve