Re: What is your outlook?

Description: Anna Deavere Smith draws a distinction between optimism and hope.

Question: Are you generally optimistic or pessimistic about the way the world is headed?

Transcript: Well I will quote Cornell West, who has the best definition of not optimism, but hope.  He’s not as interested in optimism and neither am I.  And I must point out to me that I think your question is an American question that Americans always want to know.  They always . . .  In our country, we always wanna know, basically, is it gonna be alright?  I mean that’s what you’re asking me: Is it gonna be alright.  I don’t know.  However, given that fact, I’ll quote Cornell who differentiates between optimism and hope by saying that optimism looks out the window and says, “You know, it looks pretty good out there.  Evidence is . . . based on the evidence, I think it’s alright.  It’s alright.”  Hope looks at the evidence and says, “It doesn’t look good.  It doesn’t look good at all.  I’m gonna go beyond the evidence to create new possibilities based on visions that become contagious to allow people to engage in heroic actions always against the odd, no guarantee whatsoever.”  And Cornell has respect for the struggle.  If the limitations of my experience gave anything to my lens, it is a love of the struggle, and a respect for the fact that part of the human condition is that we are struggling the way that a baby struggles from crawling, to standing, to walking.  Now that’s a part of the human condition.  So then to embrace not this short kind of idea of optimism . . .  It’s fine.  The fact that, “It looks good.  Let’s go.”  But to actually say, “It looks bad.  Let’s go . . .”  Because if we go now even when it’s bad, we might be able to imagine something powerfully enough that we create leadership because people wanna go after that vision of the future.  And I do think that what art contributes to the whole enterprise is that as the people who have spent time trying to turn imagination into actions, imagination into objects, that many of us would like to bring – especially to the abuse in the time when people only wanna look to see that it looks good, and therefore I’m gonna what I can count on – many of us would like to make a suggestion that causes people to try something hard, and to try to go the other way even if it looks bad.

Recorded on: 8/15/07