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Pessimism
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Pessimism, from the Latin pessimus (worst), is
a painful state of mind which negatively colours the perception of life, specially with regard to future events. Value judgments may vary dramatically between individuals, even when judgments of fact are undisputed.
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Encyclopedia
Pessimism, from the Latin pessimus (worst), is
a painful state of mind which negatively colours the perception of life, specially with regard to future events. Value judgments may vary dramatically between individuals, even when judgments of fact are undisputed. The most common example of this phenomenon is the "Is the glass half empty or half full?" situation. The degree in which situations like these are evaluated as something good or something bad can be described in terms of one's optimism or pessimism respectively.
Throughout history, the pessimistic disposition has had effects on all major areas of thinking.
Philosophical pessimism is the similar but not identical idea that life has a negative value, or that this world is as bad as it could possibly be.
Historical account of pessimism
The first idea of an apocalypse has been traced back to 1400 BC.
Because the First World War was followed by another, peoples' collective ability to learn moral lessons from history begins to seem suspect. Operating on the premise that morality is empty rhetoric, game theory and its political complement political realism appear as a model for understanding and prescribing behavior. The post-war fifties saw the rise of dystopian literature. Books such as T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land, Kafka's The Trial, Huxley's Brave New World, George Orwell's 1984, and plays such as Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot expressed a deep pessimism during this time. The Utopian promises of communism had revealed themselves as false or evil by the collapse of communism. Reason itself, once valued as a beacon of objectivity, truth and progress, was criticized in post-modernism and post structuralism. Likewise, nature, whose power and purity could at one time not be denied, fell victim to problematic population growth and environmental decline. Upon broad analysis of history, some have determined that things in general are bad and seem to be getting worse.
Pessimism by individual
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer's pessimism comes from his elevating of Will above reason as the mainspring of human thought and behavior. Schopenhauer pointed to motivators such as hunger, sexuality, the need to care for children, and the need for shelter and personal security as the real sources of human motivation. Reason, compared to these factors, is mere window-dressing for human thoughts; it is the clothes our naked hungers put on when they go out in public. Schopenhauer sees reason as weak and insignificant compared to Will; in one metaphor, Schopenhauer compares the human intellect to a lame man who can see, but who rides on the shoulder of the blind giant of Will.
Likening human life to the life of other animals, he saw the reproductive cycle as indeed a cyclical process that continues pointlessly and indefinitely, unless the chain is broken by too limited resources to make continued life possible, in which case it is terminated by extinction. The prognosis of either pointlessly continuing the cycle of life or facing extinction is one major leg of Schopenhauer's pessimism.
Schopenhauer moreover considers the desires of the will to entail suffering: because these selfish desires create constant conflict in the world. The business of biological life is a war of all against all. Reason makes us suffer all the more, in that reason makes us realize that biology's agenda is something we would not have chosen if we had a choice, but is helpless to prevent us from serving it, or allow us to escape the sting of its goad (compare this to the role of desire in Buddhism).
Schopenhauer's proof
Instead of asserting a personal opinion or viewpoint about the appearance of this world being the worst possible, such as a glass being half full or half empty, Schopenhauer attempted to logically prove it by analyzing the concept of pessimism.
He claimed that a slight worsening of conditions, such as a small alteration of the planet's orbit, a small increase in global warming, loss of the use of a limb for an animal, and so on, would result in destruction. The world is essentially bad and "ought not to be". These are disputable assertions, considering that the planet's orbit is not wholly consistent to begin with, global temperature fluctuates over time, and animals can still live after losing a limb. However, taking into respect the fact that major fluctuations in global temperature have typically resulted in mass extinctions in the past and an animal that loses a limb will only rarely survive long in the wild, they may appear reasonable.
Freud
Sigmund Freud could also be described as a pessimist and he shared many of Schopenhauer's ideas. He saw human existence as being under constant attack from within the self, from the forces of nature and from relations with others. The following quote, from Civilization and its Discontents, is perhaps the best example of his pessimism:
Oswald Spengler
The source for this is Oswald Spengler's The Decline of the West (1918 - 1923), often cited in the years following its publication.
Oswald Spengler once declared, "Optimism is cowardice." His description of the western civilization is where the populace constantly strives for the unattainable—making the western man a proud but tragic figure, for while he strives and creates he secretly knows the actual goal will never be reached.
Arnold J. Toynbee: Toynbee wrote a similar comparative study of the rise and decline of civilizations, A Study of History, somewhat concurrently with Spengler, which was released much later, around the conclusion of World War II.
Other prominent pessimists
The term has also been used to describe the position of the Norwegian philosopher Peter Wessel Zapffe, although he clearly states in his philosophical treatise Om det tragiske that pessimism is a term which cannot describe his philosophy.
Some works of popular literature may also exhibit pessimism, such as Stephen King's Pet Sematary. King later expressed his reservations about the work: "It seems to be saying nothing works and nothing is worth it, and I don't really believe that" (Bare Bones 144-5).
Pessimism by subject
Moral pessimism
Narratives of decline can be identified in morality: Friedrich Nietzsche's amorality, Freud’s description of co-operation as sublimation, Stanley Milgram shock experiments, the continued presence of war and genocide despite global interconnectedness, and the inherent exploitation of market fundamentalism.
Intellectual pessimism
In ~400bc, pre-socratic philosopher Gorgias argued in a lost work, On Nature or the Non-Existent:
- Nothing exists;
- Even if something exists, nothing can be known about it; and
- Even if something can be known about it, knowledge about it can't be communicated to others.
Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (1743 – 1819), characterized rationalism, and in particular Immanuel Kant's "critical" philosophy in order to carry out a reductio ad absurdum according to which all rationalism (philosophy as criticism) reduces to nihilism, and thus it should be avoided and replaced with a return to some type of faith and revelation.
Richard Rorty, Kierkegaard, and Wittgenstein challenge the sense of questioning whether our particular concepts are related to the world in an appropriate way, whether we can justify our ways of describing the world as compared with other ways. In general,these philosophers argue that truth was not about getting it right or representing reality, but was part of a social practice and language was what served our purposes in a particular time; to this end Poststructuralism rejects any definitions that claim to have discovered absolute 'truths' or facts about the world.
Political pessimism
Political realists assert that states always have been and always will be amoral wealth-seekers. Due to nuclear proliferation and the shifting balance of power, humankind may be entering the most dangerous political times ever encountered.
Anti-globalization activists understand economic development as the expansion of markets for the interests of ruling elites. These unprecedented large-scale changes have been characterised as "turbo-capitalism" (Edward Luttwak), "market fundamentalism" (George Soros), "casino-capitalism" (Richard Longworth), "cancer-stage capitalism" (John McMurtry), and "McWorld" (Benjamin Barber). Pessimists in this subject have various concerns with the growing power and influence of this global marketplace.
The suggested restrictions on free trade (see Tobin Tax) have been proposed to induce a restructuring of the capitalist network, but such measures are typically rejected by proponents of self regulation of capitalism through free trade. Other political pessimists see signs of an approaching stock market crash.
Conservative thinkers, especially social conservatives, often perceive politics in a generally pessimistic way. William F. Buckley famously remarked that he was "standing athwart history yelling 'stop!'" and Whittaker Chambers was convinced that democracy and capitalism were doomed to fall to communism, though he was himself violently anti-communist. Social conservatives often see the West as a decadent and nihilistic civilization which has abandoned its roots in Christianity and/or Greek philosophy, leaving it doomed to fall into moral and political decay. Robert Bork's Slouching Toward Gommorah and Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind are famous expressions of this point of view.
Many economic conservatives and libertarians believe that the expansion of the state and the role of government in society is inevitable, and they are at best fighting a holding action against it. They hold that the natural tendency of people is to be ruled and that freedom is an exceptional state of affairs which is now being abandoned in favor of social and economic security provided by the welfare state.
Environmental pessimism
Environmental pessimists often believe that environmentalism is inconsistent with capitalism, and are not short of examples: depletion of resources (notably oil and water), depletion of the ozone layer, bioaccumulation of toxins, the population problem, land degradation, the loss of biodiversity, and climate change. These problems contribute to the belief that things are in decline, perhaps irreparably (see List of environmental issues).
Cultural pessimism
Cultural pessimists feel the Golden age is in the past, and the current generation is fit only for dumbing down and cultural careerism. Intellectuals like Oliver James correlate economic progress with economic inequality, the stimulation of artificial needs, and affluenza. Anti-consumerists identify rising trends of conspicuous consumption and self-interested, image-conscious behaviour in culture. Post-modernists like Jean Baudrillard have even argued that culture (and therefore our lives) now have no basis in reality whatsoever.
Some significant formulations have gone beyond this, proposing a universally-applicable cyclic model of history — notably in the writings of Giambattista Vico.
Eschatological pessimism
Apocalypse predictions and the low likelihood of alien contact lead to pessimistic ideas in eschatology.
Psychology of pessimism
The study of pessimism has parallels with the study of depression. Psychologists trace pessimistic attitudes to emotional pain or even biology.
Aaron Beck argues that depression is due to unrealistic negative views about the world. Beck starts treatment by engaging in conversation with clients about their negative thoughts. Pessimists, however, are often able to provide arguments that suggest that their understanding of reality is justified (pessimistic realism).
Criticism of pessimism
As a self-fulfilling prophecy
Pessimism is sometimes understood to be a self fulfilling prophecy; that if an individual feels that something is bad, it is more likely to get worse.
Pragmatic criticism
Through history, some have concluded that a pessimistic attitude, although justified, must be avoided in order to endure. Optimistic attitudes are favored and of emotional consideration. Al-Ghazali and William James have rejected their pessimism after suffering psychological , or even psychosomatic illness.
As decay
Nietzsche believed that the ancient Greeks (c. 500 B.C.) created Tragedy as a result of their pessimism. "Is pessimism necessarily a sign of decline, decay, degeneration, weary and weak instincts ... Is there a pessimism of strength? An intellectual predilection for the hard, gruesome, evil, problematic aspect of existence, prompted by well-being, by overflowing health, by the fullness of existence?"
Nietzsche's response to pessimism was the opposite of Schopenhauer's. " 'That which bestows on everything tragic, its peculiar elevating force' " – he (Schopenhauer) says in The World as Will and Representation, Volume II, P. 495 – " 'is the discovery that the world, that life, can never give real satisfaction and hence is not worthy of our affection: this constitutes the tragic spirit – it leads to resignation.' " How differently Dionysus spoke to me! How far removed I was from all this resignationism!"
See also
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