A short YouTube podcast clip (recorded March 22, 2020) featuring Simon Sinek discussing optimism and idealism. Sinek argues that optimism is not foolishness but a choice to see the good in people and to pursue idealistic visions (e.g., world peace) even if they are practically impossible; progress and meaningful milestones matter more than reaching the absolute ideal.
And you have this fundamental vision of optimism. You call yourself an optimist. I mean, in this world, I have a sort of. I see myself a little bit as the main character from the Idiot by Dostoevsky, who's also kind of seen by society as a fool because he was optimistic. So 1. Can you maybe articulate where that sense of optimism comes from? And. And maybe also try to articulate your vision of the future, where people are inspired, where optimism drives us. It's easy to forget that when you look at social media and so on with the word toxicity and negativity can often get more likes that. Optimism has a sort of a beauty to it, and I do hope it's out there. So can you try to articulate that vision? Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, for me, optimism, being an optimist, is just seeing the silver lining in every cloud. Even in tragedy, it brings people together. And the question is, can we see that? Can you see the beauty that is in everything? I don't think optimism is foolishness. I don't think optimism is blindness, though it probably involves some naivete. The belief that things will get better, the belief that we tend towards the good, even in times of struggle or bad. You can't sustain war, but you can sustain peace. I think things that are stable are more sustainable. Things that are optimistic are more sustainable than things that are chaotic. So you see people as fundamentally good. Some people may disagree that you can sustain peace. You can't sustain war. I mean, you don't have to. I think war is costly. It involves life and money, and peace does not involve those things. It requires work. I'm not saying it doesn't require work, but it doesn't drain resources. I think the same way that war does. The people that would say that we will always have war, and I just talked to the historian of Stalin would say that conflict and the desire for power and conflict is central to human nature. I concur. But something in your words also, perhaps it's the naive aspect that I also share, is that you have an optimism that people are fundamentally good. I'm an idealist, and I think idealism is good. I'm not a fool to believe that the ideals that I imagine can come true. Of course there'll never be world peace, but shouldn't we die trying to? You know, I think that's the whole point. That's the point of vision. Vision should be idealistic and it should be, for all practical purposes, impossible. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try. And it's the milestones that we reach that take us closer to that ideal, that make us feel that our life and our work have meaning and we're contributing to something bigger than ourselves. You know, just because it's impossible doesn't mean we shouldn't try. As I said, we're still moving the ball down the field. We're still making progress, things are still getting better, even if we never get to that ideal state. So I think idealism is a good thing.
