The Bright Side

Why Optimists Have the Power to Change the World

Sumit Paul-Choudhury, Canongate, 2024, hb., 288pps., £17

RICHARD DOVE is an optimist, but even he is cheered by a new book

My Mum is approaching her hundredth birthday. She will often fix me with a stare and say “Richard, what’s going wrong with the world” or “Why are there so many bad people?” She has a very positive approach to life but sometimes can be pulled up sharp by another news headline. It is a situation reflected on in some detail by Sumit Paul-Choudhury in his new book, The Bright Side – Why Optimists Have the Power to Change the World. As a cover quote outlines, the book “transforms optimism from a soft-hearted notion into a hard-headed advantage.”

In an early chapter there is a test to assess one’s own level of optimism or pessimism. My results were off the scale. It appears I am utterly and hopelessly optimistic. My wife scored much lower, a rooted realism very evident. You can see what 40 years of being married to me has done for her!

Sumit Paul-Choudhury starts with philosophy. Gottfried Leibniz was always a sunny side up chap. He recognised that evil was always present in the world, but we could and should do something about it to create the best of all possible worlds.

Arthur Schopenhauer, on the other hand, was Mr. Gloomster and carried a grey cloud wherever he went. Things, he considered, could never get better, only worse. We can take lessons from both these grand thinkers. When my wife was finally diagnosed with a serious problem with one of her kidneys, I was the one who collapsed in tears. I had assumed that ultimately all would be well. She had decided that something was wrong and had worked her way through the consequences. She was prepared, and I was not. The author underlines the sheer agony he went through when his wife died of breast cancer. He assumed all would be well and when it wasn’t, his life fell apart.

However, he argues, pessimism may have the advantage of being right in many cases, but it does not engender the capacity to change things for the better. Voltaire lampooned Leibniz and his fellow sunny side up thinkers in his novel Candide. Dr Pangloss was probably Leibniz even though written 20 years after the philosopher’s death. “The best of all possible worlds” is now termed Panglossian. But Voltaire dismantled the Leibniz viewpoint without putting any sort of alternative in its place. Paul-Choudhury (a former editor of the New Scientist) presents the case for realistic optimism. We assess the difficulties, deal with the setbacks, but go ahead with initiatives to change both our own world and what we find all round us.

In the author’s view: “Optimism in the face of the unknown future, willingness to accept and confront uncertainty: that’s true moral courage, not the passivity of ‘realism’…We are born optimistic. Some of us stay that way. If we get lost, we should try to make our way back.”

This is a thoroughly absorbing book, prompting the reader to reflect on his or her outlook continually. My Mum, despite her gloomy questions, maintains a sunny disposition and a positive outlook, perhaps going some way towards explaining how and why she confidently expects to hit the 100 mark in November.