Optimism or Boosterism?

It is surely pleasanter to expect things to get better in the future, than to expect the opposite. 

Yet, if we are honest, such predictions ought to be rooted in honest realism rather than what happens to make us feel more cheerful at the moment. 

But aside from this, optimism is often tainted by Boosterism - which is often regarded as a distinctively American trait, but (since the US came to dominate global culture) is now seen almost everywhere. 

The idea of Boosterism is that optimistic prognostications are self-fulfilling: that if people believe something is going to be successful, to get-better; then this will happen. 

Boosterism seems to derive from people "talking-up" their town or business; exaggerating and boasting about its past and present success, in order to attract belief and investment - leading (it is hoped) to a more prosperous future.

Boosterism also applies to people as well as institutions; and, in England, has gone from a disapproved rarity in my early adult life, to something insisted upon by bureaucratic procedures - hence almost universal. 

For instance; UK scientists in the 1980s were self-deprecating and affected humility. But from around the millennium, scientists were required to construct and publish elaborate deniable-dishonesties concerning the great importance and influence of their work; as part of local and national bureaucratic research evaluation schemes. 

Since appointments, promotions, and funding depended on successful Boosterism; scientists soon believed these inflated self-narratives; and their scientific researches incrementally detached from reality, transforming into status-seeking fantasies.  

Such calculated untruthfulness, in a domain which was tasked with absolute truth-seeking; was self-justified in terms of all the "good work" that could be accomplished; "if only" I had that appointment/ promotion/ funding/ award or whatever...

In the end, those who embarked on this path simply became ever-more focused on satisfying the (ever-fluctuating) bureaucratic criteria of success - which were not merely irrelevant to, but actually opposed, the conduct of real science.   

On-line discourse has also become rampant with Boosterism; as can be seen by the self-presentation of most people engaged in social media, blogs, videos etc; including the frequency with which analysis and opinion is linked to monetization.  

This happens because the promotion of a place, or a business or other group activity, so easily becomes conflated with self-promotion; and self-promotion is justified in terms of its (supposedly) leading to benefits for the place, business or group. 

This can be seen in the absurd (but universal) practice whereby people who are awarded some prize, award or honour; claim that "I didn't want it for myself, but accepted it for the benefit of the team"... This! after grinding and grovelling in pursuit of just such a prize/ award/ honour, for perhaps several decades!

Anyway; our natural inclination to want to believe things are getting better may synergize with Boosterism in a spiritually-undesirable fashion. 

Typically, this is obvious to everyone except the person doing it; who is being gratified by (what seems to him) asserting success and its achievement, as if by magic!

Pretty rapidly; the process detaches from reality, and gets sustained by dishonest fantasy. The spiritual is subjective, and therefore genuine spirituality soon gets displaced by the observable and measurable objectivities of the material. 

Successful expansion becomes both outcome and goal - so that motives are re-orientated towards... wherever "success" leads. Expanding monetization rapidly shapes and drives evaluations and opinions.   

This form of corruption can be seen operating (in real time) with respect to individual people, with churches, businesses; and in institutions such as schools, colleges and departments of bureaucracy.  

Boosterism is perhaps especially dominant at present, when honest realism seems to lead to pessimism. An increasingly desperate desire to be optimistic at any price then joins with self-promotion - leading to the self-gratifying contention that Things Really Are Getting Better... 

Instead of recognizing that we have temporarily adapted to the demands of a fundamentally evil totalitarian system - and thereby become corrupted; Booster-people instead claim to have "bucked the trend".

The Boosters assert that a corner has been turned, the pendulum has swung - and they are merely riding a new wave of betterment.

And all that other people need to do to make the world a better place is... To believe the Boosters and do what they say! 

And anyone who disagrees with the Boosters' self-aggrandizing assertions - is a Bad Person who wants to stop all the good stuff from happening! 

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Note: This was stimulated by reflections at Francis Berger's blog.