ABC Radio National  Future Tense      Date/Time 26 Dec 2014
3:43:34am I believe in Star Trek. I grew up on Star Trek and I
see Captain Picard as the model of the ideal man and a
trekiverse as a human utopia.  But, I've also done lots of
personal research on why people are happy, optimistic, learned
helplessness, compassion exhaustion etc etc.  And my current
belief is that optimism is generally honestly related to ones
true life experience. While people are more likely to be
successful if they manage to maintain their optimism in spite of
bad experience, and there are people who are just pessimistic no
matter what, the degree of optimism in the world appears to be a
fairish barometer for measuring reality - apparently overall we
are just a little more optimistic than warranted.  There is a
book out about learned helplessness - some kind of self help
guide. One of the things I got from that is that TODAY people
are more likely to be optimistic if they don't take
responsibility for their actions, and if they ar