Why Pessimism Sounds Smarter
Notes on Optimism
Deep Life Notes | Optimism
Pessimism often sounds serious and useful, while optimism can sound naïve. That doesn’t mean pessimism sees the world more clearly.
On December 29, 2008, at the close of the worst year for the global economy in modern history, Russian professor Igor Panarin predicted the disintegration of the United States. He estimated there was a “45-55%” chance America would break into six pieces in 2010, controlled by a combination of Russia, China, Mexico, Canada, and the EU. This doomsday scenario wasn’t confined to some obscure corner of the internet. It was on the front page of the most prestigious financial newspaper in the world, The Wall Street Journal.
It’s understandable why stories like this get published on front pages every day, and why we’re drawn to them. Stories of doom and negativity command our attention. People listen with exam-level intensity to outrageous tales of pessimism, yet no-one is buying outrageous tales of optimism. If pessimism sounds like someone trying to help you, optimism feels like someone trying to sell you something.
There’s nothing wrong with a healthy dose of pessimism to help keep us sensible and realistic. Expecting less and getting more can be a pleasant surprise. But too much pessimism can stunt our character, creating and then reinforcing negative beliefs and a negative self-image. This has consequences.
A more optimistic outlook does not mean denying reality. It simply gives us a better chance of seeing reality in fuller proportion.
Why we’re drawn to pessimism
We can define pessimism as a tendency to see the worst aspect of things or believe that the worst will happen. Part of why we’re drawn to pessimism is instinctual. It’s an evolutionary shield to guard against threats. Our ancestors treated threats as more urgent than opportunities to give themselves a better chance to survive and reproduce.
That aversion to loss is still as powerful today.
On average, people tend to experience the pain of losing something about twice as strong as the pleasure of gaining something of equal value. For example, losing $100 feels twice as bad as winning $100 feels good. As psychologist and economist Daniel Kahneman wrote, “When directly compared or weighted against each other, losses loom larger than gains.” There’s an evolutionary element to being more naturally disposed to something negative.
Another reason we are drawn to pessimism is that progress happens too slowly to notice. Take extreme poverty. According to the UN, more than one billion people have been lifted out of extreme poverty since 1990, around 80,000 people every day. This positive trend and optimistic narrative requires looking at an extended period of history, which people tend to forget and find hard to piece together. In contrast, disasters, setbacks, scandals, and catastrophes happen quickly. It’s easier to create a story around pessimism because the pieces are fresher and more recent. News organisations know this well.
Psychologist and writer Steven Pinker has written about the distortion of reality by the way media exaggerates negative news and excludes the positive, citing the news policy, “If it bleeds, it leads.” This creates an availability heuristic: people estimate the probability of an event by the ease with which instances come to mind. If, for example, the news reports a plane crash just before you are due to fly, you’ll overestimate significantly the chances of your plane crashing, despite your odds of dying in a plane crash remaining unchanged at eleven million to one. (Car crashes kill far more people than plane crashes, yet almost never make the news.)
Pessimism also just sounds more plausible than optimism. Optimism often requires believing in an unspecified, unknown future situation, which can seem naïve. Returning to The Wall Street Journal story example, imagine if a similar academic article had appeared in Japan at the end of the Pacific War in 1945 when the country lay in ruins. But this article is wildly optimistic, not pessimistic. It predicts the Japanese economy to grow to almost fifteen times the pre-war size, life expectancy to nearly double, unemployment to stay below 6% for more than 40 years, and the country to become a world leader in electronics, admired by the United States as its closest ally.
No-one would print it. It wouldn’t seem plausible.
But this actually happened in Japan.
The consequences of pessimism
Pessimistic stories, perpetuated and reinforced by both the media and our wider society, especially in the age of 24-hour news cycles and social media, have negative consequences. Far from being better informed, those who become saturated with negative stories or engaged in constant online battles with strangers can start to see a distorted version of reality.
This can lead to impaired decision-making, a reduced ability to cope with stress and adversity, and a general downturn in one’s mental state. It can also impact relationships and social interactions, with increased contempt and hostility towards others, and a sense of helplessness and fatalism, leading to isolation and alienation.
Pessimism, then, may be instinctive and seductive, but it still needs watching. It is not always as clear-eyed as it sounds.
Optimism, by contrast, may deserve a more serious hearing.
What optimism actually means
Optimists don’t believe everything will be great. That’s not reality. Optimists believe that the odds of a good outcome are in their favour over time, even when there will be setbacks along the way.
In his book, The Rational Optimist, Matt Ridley highlighted three reasons optimism is a rational and reasonable outlook. He based them on historical evidence and human nature.
Human Progress. Despite occasional setbacks and crises, human progress has been steadily improving over time, with massive strides in areas such as health, education, technology, and wealth creation. This trend is often something we lose sight of because it’s not typically what is reported.
Innovation. We have a natural ability to come up with new ideas and fixes to problems, helping us overcome future challenges and continue to improve our quality of life. Writer David Brooks further expanded on this theme in The Atlantic: “The pessimists miss an underlying truth—a society can get a lot wrong as long as it gets the big things right. If a society is good at unlocking creativity, at nurturing the abilities of its people, then its ills can be surmounted. Creative energy is one thing [we] have in abundance.”
Resilience. Humans are resilient and adaptable, and we can rebound from the most daunting of setbacks and challenges. Problems correct and people adapt, and our optimism and creativity help us find new ways forward.
Optimists are hopeful and confident about the future because they often recognise these patterns, trends, and capabilities, and build them into their approach to life.
An optimist may follow an approach something like this:
Noticing what they consume.
Letting better material in.
Questioning anything that feels suspect.
Your world reflects what you put into it
Pessimism sells. It’s attractive, it’s plausible, and there’s an instinctual element because of our in-built aversion to loss. But overexposure to pessimism, particularly in our modern environment of 24-hour news across multiple media and social media formats, is not good for maintaining our health and sanity. That pull is real, worth noticing, and worth keeping in proportion.
The reality is bad things happen, but so do many good things.
Good news stories are all around us, yet are rarely reported. Most of these good news stories are right here in our day-to-day lives. Small, simple moments we sometimes miss, like taking a walk in nature, celebrating a milestone birthday with a friend or family member, completing a professional development course to open a new door at work, or running a 5K for a local charity.
Optimism is the refusal to let bad news become the only story. It can be learned, practised, and protected by paying closer attention to what we repeatedly put into our minds.
The world is not only what happens to us. It’s also fashioned by what we keep allowing in.
Now, about that Wall Street Journal front page.
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