Seriously Comical

I am currently reading this book, ” What are you optimistic about?” edited by John Brockman and written by the greatest thinker (apparently, I’ve seen most of the contributors giving speech on TED. Actually, I wouldn’t read this book if one of my friends (my lecturer actually) recommended this. After reading nearly 100 pages (it’s about 70 excerpts from the contributors), I found out that most of them are either professors, scientist, physician, and psychologist. The surprising-but-not-really-astonishing fact is all of them are book authors, or at least work on science magazine. And this lead me into a question, “Is someone who wants to be a greatest thinker need to write a book?”. Do I need to write a book in order to be “intelligent”?

I know that “yes” is not a good answer or actually wrong in some ways, but it is.

Actually, writing a book isn’t necessarily needed to be done, but at least you write. Short articles, narratives, or any kind of language expressions. Why we need to write? We need to write in order to reflect upon ourselves. Upon our own thinking process. By “mirroring” on our thoughts, we can “see” clearly” the way we think. And it can’t be done by talking. Reflecting our thoughts, correcting it, replacing words by words to make it better are the highway to improve our thinking process. It’s like seeing yourself dancing on a recording and correcting the wrong moves.

However, writing isn’t the main issue here. Writing about the future is. Writing about what are you optimistic about is the genius idea to create a book, especially when all the writers are the greatest thinker from all over the world. I found that one of the contributors wrote that he is optimistic that evidence can bring a better world. Most of the contributors who studies physics are optimist that they will discover the theory of everything. Philip Zimbardo, The Professor from Stanford University, believes that situational forces are strong enough to change evil people into good people and vice versa. They who is called as “the greatest thinker”  wrote their own hope about the future in one book. And I believe this book is a step forward into a better world.  So, if I’m asked that “What are you optimistic about?”, I’ll say:

I am optimist that if the discussion about the ideal future is facilitated, the world of tomorrow will be an ideal world for everyone. (It’s sounds impossible though, but as an optimist, I’ll say it’s possible).