A positive optimist promotes a vision of a better future to motivate people to strive for it. A negative optimist also hopes for a better future but focuses on what keeps us from achieving it.

Criminologists are negative optimists (negoptimists). Hoping to to make society safer, they focus on criminal behavior. Oncologists are also negative optimists—hoping for their patients’ longevity, they study cancers that keep their patients from achieving it. On practical matters like crime and cancer, negoptimism prevails.

In politics, religion, and spirituality, it’s a mix, with plenty of positive optimists (posoptimists) promoting their vision of the better world. They keep their eyes on the prize, sometimes a utopian vision of an ideal world, heaven hereafter, some Communist or MAGA ideal. Sometimes the ideal is nostalgic (America great again) or a great returning to how we were meant to live in harmony. Sometimes it's a story of inevitable progress toward some inevitable ideal.

To posoptimists, negoptimism just seems like pessimism. “Don’t be negative. Don’t fight what’s bad; focus on what’s good. Give people a vision of a better future. Focusing on what doesn’t work just discourages people.” Positive optimism carrots, no sticks. Focusing on what doesn’t work discourages people especially when it involves what isn’t working about their behavior. You can mobilize more people with a positive vision that they can identify with.

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