A Healthy Pessimism

The problem with generalized optimism is that it will inevitably lead to generalized disappointment. Placing faith in forces beyond one's control, whether people or forces of nature, is bound to boomerang into faithlessness. This isn't true for everyone - certain lucky souls are capable of adjusting any circumstance into their belief system - but most people have a breaking point beyond which resignment rules. Resignment then becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, as a defeatist attitude leads to defeatist results. Rather than try and transcend expectation, expecations merely shift from one extreme to another.

The solution, difficult as it may be, is to turn unwilled resignment into a wilful detachment. Remain optimistic about the things you can control but lose any expectations of the realm of chance. Two examples: the weather and strangers. It's not that you shouldn't welcome good weather and friendly strangers, it's that you shouldn't be surprised at rainy days and downcast assholes. Jean-Paul Sartre once said "It disturbs me no more to find men base, unjust, or selfish than to see apes mischievous, wolves savage, or the vulture ravenous." That may be a slight exaggeration, but without even the inkling of such an attitude one is likely to remain permanently disturbed.

It may seem counterintuitive to blame the Iraq war on optimism but that, more than oil or imaginary weapons of mass destruction, was the main cause of the current catastrophe there. Plans for a peaceful and democratic Iraq mistakenly assumed that because such a scenario was in Iraq's best interest, the Iraqis would work to make it happen. Yet even the people of the West, conditioned by an Enlightenment tradition extolling reason above all, are liable to work against their own perceived interests out of spite or romance or faith or all three. To expect any differently from a people without the benefits of such a nobly failed heritage is like being disturbed by a ravenous vulture.

This is not to comment on the destructive or redeeming irrationalism of any particular culture, but of the capriciousness of humanity in general. History is full of glorious exceptions, but for the most part man prefers the spectacle of a crucifixion to the possibility of salvation. It is within the limits of reason to be optimistic of particular people, but to expect the best out of people in general is to surrender those limits entirely. If modern history teaches us anything, it is that if people expected less from human nature, real humans would be better off. Have faith in yourself by all means, but don't mistake yourself for the world.