Optimist or Pessimist?

To write or not to write about Corona, that is the question....

Two things are necessary, a realisation of the severity of the situation and hope that we will survive it.

This is called the Stockdale paradox*, made famous by Jim Collins in Good to Great. When asked how why he, Stockdale, and not others, survived the POW camps in Vietnam, he answered that the ones who didn't survive were those who were either completely pessimistic or overly optimistic. The pessimists are obvious, but they optimists, the ones that said 'We'll be out by Christmas!'?

Why didn't they survive?

Stockdale's words, 'Christmas came and went, and then they said, 'We'll be out by Easter!' And Easter came and went and eventually they died of a broken heart.'

It's important to realise how bad this situation is, so we can prepare and deal with it, and it is also important to keep the faith, that this too shall end, not necessarily by Easter, or Youth Day, or even Christmas, but eventually, one way or the other, we will enter into a new world.

Get skin in the game, hold the paradox.

Pierre



*I've written about it before, but Repetitio est mater studiorum, Repetition is the mother of learning.