Maine could have been bigger than it is. Not by much, but still, 900 square miles is nothing to sneeze at, equivalent to roughly the size of Rhode Island. When Maine got it offered in the year 1831, at the expense of Canada, the Mainers said no. They wanted more, thinking they’d get it by holding out, yet they ended up with less. A classic example of misplaced optimism?
Hold on to that thought.
Bangor’s Stephen King once wrote a story about a bullied young girl in Lincoln County, back when he was still living in a rented doublewide in Hermon. He was in his mid twenties, insecure about writing about a cast of female characters, and reluctant to finish it. In fact, he felt so pessimistic about the early draft that he tossed it in the trash. After his wife convinced him to try again, he finally did, and then grudgingly submitted the manuscript to a publisher.
King was used to receiving rejection slips, routinely pinning them to his wall at first with a nail, later with a spike, once being told that “we are not interested in science fiction which deals with negative utopias. They do not sell.” But this one publisher actually did say yes to the manuscript. Soon, Carrie was selling a million paperback copies. By early 2023, Stephen King whose genre supposedly wouldn’t sell, had over 350 million books in print.
So what have we got here, the opposite? Unrealistic pessimism, one with a happy ending? It begs an interesting question. Do optimists and pessimists turn out to be wrong with equal frequency?
As we will see, the answer is a firm no. It’s not even close, in Maine, or anywhere else.
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History is written by optimists & so is the future