How much water is in the glass?

Tell me how the glass is half full?

Personally, i would rather the glass were half full, or indeed completely full, but if, for example one has cancer, is it better to concentrate on comforting facts, eg the weather is usually warm in the Canaries, grapefruit picked fresh from a bush in palm springs tastes indescribably amazing, or would it be better to deal with the problem at hand?

I just don’t see how looking at a serious situation through the glass half empty/half full lens works. Yes, that is important idea in terms of overall human happiness and being grateful for what is still good is important, but not at the expense surely of deliberately ignoring life-threatening and planet-threatening problems? that just means that someone else is going to have to deal with a problem that has been created on our watch and i think it is reasonable to say that that is selfish and not becoming of a mature being.

The Trumpian confusion of weather and climate is a good example. In fact, this confusion is deliberately propagated by the neoliberals because they have discovered that their greatest weapon is doubt. That leads to discord, and pretty soon everyone is fighting (which is great for the NRA and arms manufacturers everywhere).

Are we asking the correct question? How can we recognise the situation for what it is rather than creating the optimists vs the pessimists?

Underneath all of this are two facts:

• the more well off humans become, the less they are willing to give up (not far off the Matthew principle perhaps)
• for a system to be sustainable, inputs must balance outputs. we are simultaneously exhausting the sources (parts of nature and the planet) and overwhelming the sinks (other parts of nature and the planet – parts which are almost invariable connected to the sources). i actually thought we would be able to go on with the neoliberal wrecking operation rather longer without it becoming generally apparent (with the exception of climate catastrophe or Water Closet if you prefer), but it seems that poor old spherical planet earth is calling in the chips sooner rather than later.

The question will arrive, also sooner rather than later: what are well off people going to give up? The current answer of absolutely nothing (and indeed I want even more), will not hold for all that much longer it would seem. Greed it turns out, is not quite as good as Adam Smith, Margaret Thatcher, and Gordon Gecko told us it was. What a shocking surprise!