Why We Need A Little Pessimism To Live That Picture-Perfect-Beautiful Life
The world seems to be a terrible place to live in right now. Every place we look, we see vitriol. Everything that seems right seems to go wrong. We feel overwhelming self-pity about existing today.
Why do we feel like this?
Well, we live in an absurdly optimistic world. Everything is bright and shiny. Everything gleams with the lacquer of infinite possibilities. Most of it is businesses and self-help coaches trying to sell us things using cheerfulness and optimism to heighten our expectations. What’s worse is they are using the influence of rapidly improving technology to colour our worldview of life.
What Is Enlightened Pessimism?
A glass, half-filled with water, rests on a table. The optimist sees it to be a glass half full and tries to drink this water to quench his thirst. He will be disappointed because:
o he was thirsty
o he needed water
o he saw this bit of water in the glass
o he felt happiness because he got water
o he drank the bit of water expecting it to quench his thirst
o he was disappointed because now he’s thirstier and there’s no more water to drink
We as a civilization seem to have lost the wisdom in seeing the glass half empty. Buddhism taught us about life and suffering. Christianity cautioned us against the fallen state of mankind.
Did we take their dark message to heart?
No, we chose to only see the happy, shiny stuff and that, my friends, is where the water started going rancid. Expectations are the worst. It’s helpful to keep them in check.
Psychologist William James has rightly said that Happiness = Expectations/Reality.
As human beings, we can either change the reality or our expectations to ensure happiness. Pessimists know how to change or limit their expectations as they understand that life goes wrong.
I will commit blasphemy and say that things that make you happy quickly will never be good for you. Blind optimism is one of those things.
Essential pessimism is more about your worldview. The world is full of perceived distasteful realities, irrational hopes and expectations, and unforeseen outcomes. Pessimism enables us to develop the ethos to face up to these things.
The Western School of Philosophy classifies philosophical pessimists as people who see the inevitability of death as a catalyst to make things happen while one lives. These thinkers view the human condition as an absurdity. They note that we all search for meaning and fulfilment with our lives, but we do not sustain those things. Essentially, these pessimists thrive upon rational thought. They deem Socrates and his optimistic view of the world as the root cause of human unhappiness.
Popular pessimists like Schopenhauer, Mainländer preached resignation and self-denial. These philosophers were proponents of, “expecting the worst leads to the best.” Rene Descartes recommended eliminating emotion from perceived negative events and rationally judging the event. Some like Karl Robert Eduard von Hartmann saw human progress as this race towards achieving nothingness.
The celebrities among the pessimistic society like Nietzsche, Leopardi, Julius Bahnsen and Camus preach acceptance of everything. Dionysian pessimism as it’s called, accepts constant change, suffering while shunning continuous progress. Some like Albert Camus go as far as suggesting causing recognition (rebellion/revolution) and taking a leap of faith (suicide in the metaphorical sense) to deal with the absurdities of human existence.
The pessimistic idea of fallenness is a beautiful starting point for everything-relationships, career, health, life, and death. If you expect to fail in life (at least once), when the roadblock comes, you won’t choke, you’ll jump over it like a graceful ballerina.
Pessimism doesn’t cause failure. It changes your view of failure. Consider the ancient Roman philosophy of stoicism which became popular when the philosopher Seneca wrote a book on anger during Nero’s tiresome reign. He noted that optimism made him and the people angry. They expected Nero to change their life for the better. He asked the readers to assume that they lived in a place where it rains all the time. People there won’t get angry at the rain because they expect a rainy sky all the time. Then he asked people to assume that they lived in a place where it only rains during one season. You and your fluffy dog are enjoying a warm spring evening in the park and it rains unexpectedly. You will get angry immediately. Seneca highlighted how we are the cause of our own anger. We all believe in a picture-perfect universe where no bad things happen. So, when our optimistic souls encounter traffic or lost papers, we blow our gaskets.
Optimism causes expectations. Broken expectations lead to anger. Anger causes despair. Despair opens a Pandora’s box that would prefer to stay shut.
Optimism doesn’t equip us to deal with bad surprises. Seneca mentioned that our fates are entirely in the hands of a fickle and cruel Goddess of Fortune. Pessimism acts like an armour that protects us with the rationality of thought. He asks us to begin our day by making a list of all the things that would go wrong. Eventually when something would go wrong, you’d smugly go, “Ya, I saw that coming.”
Pessimism also paves the path to perfectionism. Enlightened pessimism often paves the way to a person developing a perfectionist’s mindset. You may develop a pursuit of excellence that would make you a role model. Channelling perfectionism makes you the consummate professional if you’re willing to pay the price.
A perfectionist broadly refers to a person who:
1. knows exactly what they want.
2. knows exactly how they want their task done.
3. believes that no detail is too small.
4. has an encyclopaedic knowledge of their industry.
5. maintains a precise mental picture of their plan.
6. does not find any excuse to be acceptable when it comes to meeting their high standards.
Perfectionism is this urge to attain flawlessness. It involves people being critical(pessimistic) about themselves when targets aren’t met. Perfectionism comes in three flavours:
1. Yummy
It is technically referred to as self-oriented perfectionism. You will have high standards for yourself. You will be extremely self-critical when you fall short.
2. Party
It is technically referred to as socially-prescribed perfectionism. You will have this feeling that you need to live up to external expectations for validation.
3. Random
It is technically referred to as other-oriented perfectionism. You will expect perfection from others. You will judge the performance of others harshly.
No matter what kind of random yummy party perfectionism you’re guilty of, the common thread is pessimism. Having exacting standards push you hard but they have a very positive effect.
For starters, pessimism enables the pessimist to nit-pick. You develop an eye for detail. An eye for detail is key to unlocking the big-picture view of understanding of the world.
Then, it teaches resourcefulness. The pessimists among you know that we expect, demand and yearn for the impossible. When you target the impossible, it forces you to find a way to make it happen. This intense pressure you put on yourself eventually surprises you when you accomplish the task.
You also develop resilience. You will develop this tireless work ethic that will lead you to develop a commitment to go above and beyond.
Additionally, you will maintain a sense of self-respect. Self-respect doesn’t mean egocentrism. That’s why the focus of this article is constructive pessimism. Everyone’s definition of perfection is different, and this pursuit of achieving perfection might eventually lead you to greatness.
True Detective season one’s Rust Cohle practiced pessimism.
I find this back-and-forth between Rust and Hart to be the perfect segue to Kshitiz Gupta’s take on pessimism.
Blaise Pascal was a 17th century French physicist and philosopher who is perhaps best remembered for writing pessimistic aphorisms in his book Pensees. The book is divided into two parts: -The first deals with the problems of life, which remains more popular today.-The second focuses on what's great about God. Pascal had plenty of reasons to be pessimistic - his mother died when we he young, he had few friends, he suffered constantly with poor health, and he was a hunchback. To build a premise, we will take an argument from Arthur Schopenhauer's famous work, "The World as Will and Representation". He starts by giving a name to a primary force within us that is very dull but stronger than our moral or intellectual sense. In German it is called, Wille Zum Leben (The will to life). This force acts behind our unconscious mind as it makes the individual stick to existence and always looks towards his own advantage. The best example to describe it is the feeling when you stand at the edge of a mountain-the strong feeling inside your chest that prevents you from jumping and giving your life. This resonates with Pascal's idea that human beings are inherently flawed and one must always be vary to expect the worst which is the central idea around pessimism. The enlightened thinkers described it as the tendency to expect the worst in everything, though in comparison many modern thinkers make us look towards the bright side of things. The basis of the idea is that human beings are inherently flawed and aware of their conscious actions but not the actions driven by the will to life-they will always look to their own advantage. The will to life will always triumph because we can't control it as its hard-wired in us but we can control or mould our reasoning or moral sense. The will to life will always take the driver's seat, act discretely and will guide our moral & reasoning look at our own self-interests. Pascal beings with the argument that earthly happiness is a mere illusion and most of our problems come from the fact that we hate to be alone and actually think about our lives, ( "All of humanity's unhappiness stems from man's inability to stay peacefully alone in his room"). He points that there will always be something more that we want and we should think about the motivation that drive us to do things. Many modern thinkers state that democracy, advanced healthcare, human rights, and Silicon Valley will ultimately cure the ills of mankind but in fact it adds more to our angst and greed. We shouldn't dismiss research and progress but the infallibility of the notion that the world will be a better place should be dismissed. We are prone to anger, there is widespread disease, wars, and we are definitely more selfish. This recognition within our self and society will help us more than the idea of a utopia and that is what lies behind the thinking of famous thinkers like Schopenhauer and Pascal.
Kshitiz is done talking. Now it’s me again.
Hope is a wonderful thing. Just like salt. We currently live in a world full of hope, courtesy of advertisers, marketers and self-help coaches. Just like how having too much salt kills us eventually by giving us high blood pressure, blatant optimism hollows out our soul.
Take any popular self-help message and rationally analyse it.
‘I was poor/stupid/fat/unpopular/small/insignificant/lonely/in debt. Then I discovered this magical ability/power/powder/mantra/protein shake/message. Now I am rich/smart/fit/popular/big/significant/happily married/debt free. Buy my book/course/Box CD set. Subscribe/ Follow me on my social media. Don’t forget to spread the love.”
What this message peddles is that everyone can be rich/ smart /fit /popular /big /significant /happily married /debt free. Just a basic economics lesson will tell you how untrue the aforementioned notion is. These charlatans take ladles of salt and feed this uplifting message to optimistic people who will soon be plagued with envy. If person X in the book did it, why isn’t the same happening with me. This sense of opportunity will make you envy anyone who’s not your equal because in your head, they are just like you. In reality however, the difference between the 1% and the 99% exists. That’s why these motivational messages are depressing.
Pessimists never start out with notions like equality of opportunity. So, when reality hits, they aren’t depressed by the notion of not having achieved enough.
You have also probably read/heard about rags to riches stories that started in garages and end as the most powerful (& rich) enterprises in human history. A photo of a billionaire with the quote, “He came from nothing. If he can do it, so can you” sounds nice, but that’s not the truth of the whole situation. According to Venture Capitalists, about 98% of all submitted business ideas fail over time. Pessimists keep that statistic with them. Optimists do not. Optimists focus on the minute probability of the successful outcome while the pessimist will focus on the possibility of failure.
We are programmed to be optimists by our surroundings. We are constantly fed this message about how we are in control of our destiny. Subconsciously, that latches on to our self-esteem. Why have suicide rates skyrocketed these days? People expect that their individualistically awesome self will thrive in this cruel, unforgiving world. Then, when failure hits, this lovely human will take the entire blame personally. Pessimismon the other hand celebrates stories of public failure. Note how I didn’t say mock, I said celebrate. Earthquakes happen, market crashes happen, toxic relationships happen, life happens. We aren’t the only ones controlling our destinies. Circumstances play their part as well.
Pessimism also celebrates the idea of death. We can call it the cheerful side of pessimism or how to be happily sad. Pessimists contemplate the idea of death. Everyone dies. The idea of deathtends to define our real priorities. Mundane things like what others think about you, certain aspects of your career, and that TV series that doesn’t stream on Netflix seem to suddenly not matter at all.
Pessimists reflect on death frequently because, well, the roof can literally fall on your head today. Remember the first time you went to a beach. Watching that vast, empty space will make you feel small and take away this narcissistic sense of self-importance and egoism that’s synonymous with optimism. As Kshitiz urges you, read Arthur Schopenhauer, Pascal, Leonard Cohen, and Nietzsche. They will teach you to understand the sadness in your life. Everyone experiences sadness. If you don’t address it, you might see your sadness turn to despair and later depression. Rationalize your sadness, don’t shun it. Don’t fake it till you make it.
Trust the greatest philosopher of all time (Nietzsche) when he asks us to suffer and figure out the simple reason behind our suffering. Optimism teaches us to endure-this too shall pass. Pessimism teaches us to suffer. Pessimism opens us up to experiences we don’t seek. Take every successful story that we see today. These stories are not just about where the ideas started or what the innovators did with the ideas. It’s primarily about people who were experiencing the lowest of lows and leveraging the insights they got into business opportunities. Darkness, metaphorical and literal makes us feel small. It is in darkness where we have our best insights.
If you are an eternal optimist, sit down and contemplate your existence. You’ll watch your life and your decisions play out. You’ll wonder where your life has gone to when measured against your expectations. You’ll feel bitter, resentful, and angry.
If you are a pessimist, you were already prepared for the worse. The tension that comes with expectations doesn’t exist in your life. You won’t be disappointed and offended all the time. In fact, you will learn to find humour in misery. Bad things happen in everyone’s life.
As Alain de Botton puts it, “Existence is a continuous series of crises.”
If you master pessimism, people will call you an optimist. At the end of the day, the glass contains the same amount of water no matter how empty or full you perceive it to be. Ultimately, constructive pessimism makes people feel better than blind optimism as with pessimism, there’s nowhere to go but up.
Do me a favour, listen to Elton John’s Sad Songs Said Say So Much.
When ever little bit of hope is gone, Sad songs say so much… When ever little bit of hope is gone, Sad songs say so much… When all hope is gone, Sad songs say…
This is Binati Sheth, signing off.
Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.
