I understand optimism as the conviction that everything will turn out all right and pessimism conversely as the assumption that everything will turn out badly. But I don't know what will happen and how it will be and anyone who claims to know I find slightly suspicious. Instead of optimism, pessimism, critical optimism or critical pessimism, I prefer to talk about hope – hope as a dimension of the human soul. At the very least, however, I am an optimist in that I believe that even in the twenty-first century we have hope for hope.