What an extremely nice suprise! This morning I had asked the question if and why Americans are more optimistic than Europeans and this evening I found the first answer in my mailbox. One of the Chicago Boyz wrote the following:
Of course we`re optimistic. The truth is that optimism is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
My grandfathers were both immigrant unskilled laborers. One was an Irish Catholic, the other an Irish Protestant with an English wife, and they came here during the Irish civil war and the Troubles. Their children married instead of shooting at each other. My dad left high school without graduating, but learned radio operation and repair while serving in the war, and was able to get good jobs in radio and television technology by keeping up with the advances in his field. The second generation was the first to graduate from college, and four out of the seven of us children have post-graduate degrees. My oldest son is about to graduate from medical school; his brother seems to be more inclined toward building his software career than finishing college; and my youngest is thinking about attending law school eventually. There is no reason to think my nieces and nephews will do any worse, as they are all good kids, and we all hope they do better than we did.
We were raised to believe we could rise by our own efforts, and that each succeeding generation could exceed the one before. So far, it seems to be working. We are a vigorous, quarrelsome, fun-loving, talkative, and hard-working bunch. None of us has ever believed that nothing could be done or that we should “know our place.” On the contrary, with hard work and intelligence you build the place you want to occupy. When you believe that achievement is possible, you also believe that failures and setbacks are temporary and can be surmounted with more effort. Without that confidence, progress is impossible. (…)
There are several of us who blog there who have similar backgrounds. It`s not an unusual story at all — I`ve heard many variations from my friends. Just change Irish to Italian, Jewish, French Canadian, or Chinese, and the story is pretty much the same. We used to say this about immigrants: “The weak didn`t make it, and the timid didn`t try.” Here on the east coast, we haven`t had to do much tree-chopping or Indian fighting recently, but the spirit was passed on to us.