Yes, you were once an optimist

On the dust jacket of the operators manual for the mind:

We are in a state of grace in our infancy because we have no model that requires reasons, no notion of cause, effect or propriety. We accept all that happens. [we don't like some things then to be sure but there is not the added stress of thinking "that should not have happened"] Youth is a miserable time because we have learned, sometimes over our father's knee, that actions have consequences, there are causes and effects, there are reasons. We come to demand reasons. We try to fit all experience into this model...it breaks. We are hurt. We can be so hurt we start revolutions to make the world be as it should be. The great feat of maturity is to relinquish that model, not doing so as an act of defeat but as a progression to a new vision of the struggle, a view where, for some things, there are no reasons or bigger reasons than we can comprehend and, child-like again, we accept, we cease our futile fight against what is.

Caution: many books purport to be this manual...I am not sure I got the real one.

War, thy name is human frailty

See in history how conflict grows from shameful little seeds to the bloody flower of war with such repeatability. It flows along, enabled on most scales by impersonality but the costs are always personal, thus you know we feed ourselves a lot of myths...I offer you more constructive myths about conflict:

All of the PR that war making throws up speaks or shouts about strength and courage ["ours"] and treachery ["theirs"]. But most campaigning for war stands upon fear and little of it stands up to even the lightest scrutiny. From "Gott mit uns" to the predictable "they fired first!", you have to wonder that so few are struck by the symmetry of propagandas in conflict.

When hatred straddles your path, veins popping, spitting and screaming its thousand righteous reasons in your face, remember to dig for the fear that is its only honest reason.

The most fertile soil for the seeds of war is alienation. It is a weakness old and broad as mankind itself that we can be distant even from our neighbors, ignorant of the humanity in even those with whom we trade and have commerce. When we are satisfied for a label to stand in for a tribe, a sect or a nation, we are doomed.

Sometimes the best way to be rid of an enemy is to befriend him.

I like to think "Know thy enemy" works as well for the pacifist as for the warrior. What beneficent force put that phrase in mouths of old military gurus when, acted upon in its fullest sense, it might turn a warrior into a pacifist? Maybe it hasn't worked yet because its never fully quoted. Its oldest attribution is Sun Wu Tzu, who followed that pharse with ", know thyself..." not something a warmonger would really want to do.

Study will conquer more fears than armor ever did.

And do not insist that the other side study too, for the existance of sides is a construct in the minds of one party that our natures cause to be immediately reflected in the minds of the other party, a self-fullfilling prophesy of separation.

The best defense may be to take no offense.

Awareness is not optional

But it can be drowned out.

How many times do we turn on the radio or the TV because we are not comfortable with what is playing in our head?

Consciousness is an appetite for preoccupation. Hence we seek companions, be they people or deities. Only when you are truely alone are you truely yourself, but are you then complete?

Life is not optional

Having options may seem to make life bearable but if you do not have commitments, what the heck is your life anyway?

Mountain bikers know

....that if you look at the rock you want to avoid, you hit the rock but if you read the trail for the spaces between the rocks, you navigate a rough trail ok.

If you count your blessings, you may forget how many scars you have.

Truth in labeling

The term "blind faith" puzzles me. Those who profess it seem to actually be claiming an enhanced vision, an ability to see some scheme behind reality that need not agree with observation or history and is a privileged re-interpretation of both.

How would we fare if Blind Faith were a statement of hope rather than of certainty, an admission that a human's basis for knowing is terribly limited and necessitates leniency in judgement?

Are you now or have you ever been an optimist?

I am not of two minds about cynicism. The two things I have to say about it are not unrelated. And I consider myself an expert. My own father labeled me a cynic not long after I started my schooling. I see it now as a symptom. There has grown up in the world a malaise so common the symptoms confer status.

Most cynics are just bruised optimists.

Cynicism is a cheap way to feign sophistication.