Is Hapa optimistic about the world?
100% Hapa. The "Happy Hapa." What's "Hapa-ning"
These are refrains we hear associated with "Hapa."
If we accept that Hapa is, on balance, an idea which people focus "good" thoughts upon, is it fair to think of Hapa as optimistic? In other words, does Hapa believe the glass is "half full," that the way of the world is for things to spiral upwards, that people are inherently wholesome unless corrupted by something outside of themselves, that the human default and the social relations default is harmony over and above discord?
I don't know.
I don't think I would have much issue at all with Hapa if it were optimistic.
What gets me about Hapa is it has no urgency. Whether it may appear optimistic or not, the crucial thing is Hapa doesn't care.
Hapa's central mission is to end racism, which is a noble idea but that doesn't mean that the thinker of a noble idea is noble itself. You can tell me that you masturbate because it is the safest sex, but that doesn't mean you aren't a wanker. Robin Hood was noble and all in his vigilante efforts to implement a folksy "trickle down" economics in medieval times, but he was still a thief.
Rather than being optimistic, I posit that Hapa is actually indifferent.
Hapa's premise is "the world would be a better place if only racist people stopped being racist." This kinda sounds good. But as always the devil is in the details.
Let's assume that there is a kernel of truth here, that there is a meaningful number of racist people doing meaningfully racist things against "Hapas."
But even in the worst of times, why is it a valid assumption that the pivotal factor for Hapa progress/happiness/success is that other people stop doing what they are doing? Why isn't the responsibility with Hapa to be the motive engine, to self-start and do something about what is being done to Hapas? Why is the impulse to seek a remedy, to seek injunctive relief from these racists?
Hapa's supposed optimism is actually a mask applied onto self-absorption, the kind of self-absorption that cannot imagine oneself is ever the potential problem, even a contributing factor. Self-absorbed people always blame someone else. Hapa is self-absorbed because it cannot see (wishes not to see) that Hapa itself must be the pivotal factor. What Hapa does or doesn't do must be the factor for Hapa's imprint on the world--but I don't think Hapa is permitted to see things that way. That Hapa doesn't believe in its own agency to shape the environment it finds itself placed into says that Hapa cannot be optimistic nor pessimistic, it's not a player in this game; true pessimism is urgent; true optimism is urgent likewise; Hapa will give nods whilst it lets the world pass it by 'cause it just doesn't care.