I’m a Meliorist

Are you an optimist or a pessimist? Optimism is defined as the theory that good must ultimately prevail over evil. Pessimism is very different: a belief that the world is as bad as it could be or that all things tend to evil.

Pessimism may well have proven useful in extreme situations, such as events leading up to the Holocaust—they say the pessimists went to Palestine and the optimists went to Auschwitz—but, as a philosophy of life, it is gloomy. It is associated with sadness, unhappiness and a shorter life span.

Optimism is surely more buoyant, and optimists are generally happy and enjoy life more than pessimists. The problem, though, is that optimism is not contagious or injectable. If you’re not an optimist by nature, it’s hard to convert.

Jewish thinkers are divided on the issue. Rabbi Haskel Lookstein declares that “to be a Jew is to be an optimist” and Rabbi Pini Dunner asserts that “the Jewish spirit is optimism. We always believe that the impossible is possible.” The historian Gil Troy is an optimist because “I am a Zionist, living the miracle of Jewish redemption after 2,000 years of wandering.”

On the other hand, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks rejects the idea of optimism, stating that our history, “so often written in tears,” does not permit us to be optimists. He encourages Jews to be hopeful: “It needs no courage, just a certain naivety, to be an optimist. It needs a great deal of courage to have hope. Judaism is for me the voice of hope in the conversation of humankind.”

As for myself, I am a meliorist because I believe that meliorism allows us to reconcile the debate between optimism, pessimism and hope. Meliorism is a doctrine that suggests that the world may be made better by properly directed human effort. The Latin word “melior” means “better” as in the English “ameliorate.”

Even if meliorism precludes pessimism, it does not contradict the rabbis’ positive attitude or the idea of hope. What meliorism adds is the emphasis on human agency. It suggests that suffering may be a part of life, but that people have the capacity to overcome adversity and make life worth living.

Rabbi Leo Baeck represents the middle ground, suggesting that it is possible to be an optimist if it is “ethical optimism,” based on sincere belief in God “whose nature is the moral law.” For Rabbi Baeck, “there is but one optimism, comprising all which rests upon the one God: ethical monotheism.”

Steven Pinker of Harvard is a good example of a meliorist. As a psychologist, he points out that in most developed countries poverty levels have decreased over the last century, while life expectancy has gone up. Over the course of history, since the age of the enlightenment, there have been dramatic changes: human rights, democracy, open economies and scientific discoveries. Pinker attributes these enormous advances to enlightenment values that have benefited the whole world. He acknowledges that this progress is an uphill battle, constantly challenged by tribalism, authoritarianism and primitive impulses. Still, it is the application of human effort—whether advanced by enlightenment values, as posited by Pinker or by religious values as posited by Baeck—that creates the progress that is demonstrable through modern history.

It is human effort, in thought and in action, that has the ability to degrade or uplift, darken or illuminate, depress or inspire. We, collectively, are the authors of our own fortune or misfortune. We, individually, respond to events and choose our attitude and reactions. Bleak fate is not common currency in monotheistic faith or in enlightenment thought. It is the power of the collective and the individual that shapes our lives as a society and as individuals.

We, collectively, are the authors of our own fortune or misfortune.

When we act for the common good, nothing noble is impossible. When we act selfishly or in extremis, in hatred, tragedy is inevitable. The collective determines the conditions of individuals. What we consider to be fate, or the force of history, is merely the actions of scoundrels imposing their agenda or malevolent designs on gullible or uninformed groups. The result is always pain and suffering for all.

I choose meliorism as my lens for perceiving life because I understand that values exist but must be applied. Right and wrong are not negotiable and truth is not “my truth” or “your truth.” Ethical monotheism and enlightenment values teach compassion, love, caring, responsibility, justice and sensitivity. These melioristic world views do not endorse the imposition of one individual’s way over another or bending the truth for a cause or agenda. They choose to learn from history instead of ignoring it.

Accepting the other is indispensable, kindness is sacrosanct, goodness is the cornerstone. Societies and individuals will suffer the consequences until we undertake the task of accepting our responsibility to create the world we know can exist for the benefit of all.

I am a meliorist because I believe optimism is naïve, pessimism is self-defeating, and hope is not enough. We need the silent majority, who are decent and good, to be silent no more.

Dr. Paul Socken is Distinguished Professor Emeritus and founder of the Jewish Studies program at the University of Waterloo.