On Optimism

Apparently, I have now become one of those women who, upon reaching "a certain age", turns to self-help books.  

This is a bit of a joke, of course: while I've always eschewed that section of the book store, I recently picked up Learned Optimism by Martin Seligman, a professor at my alma mater.  I thought that one of the more interesting chapters discussed the biological argument for optimism:

In his acute, speculative book Optimism: The Biology of Hope Lionel Tiger argues that the human species has been selected by evolution because of its optimistic illusions about reality.  How else could a species have evolved that plants seeds in April and holds on through drought and famine until October, that stands up alone before charging mastodons and waves small sticks, that commences to build cathedrals that will take several lifetimes to complete?  The capacity to act on the hope that reality will turn out better than it usually does is behind such courageous, or foolhardy, behavior.