Glad to be glum...

[Gob]

A Point of View: The advantages of pessimism

Incompatibility between our big aspirations and the reality of life is bound to disappoint unless we learn to be a bit more gloomy, says Alain de Botton.

Today I want to advance the unusual idea that we'd be a great deal more cheerful if we learnt to be a little more pessimistic.

And, from a completely secular point of view, I'd like to suggest that in the passages before they go on to promise us salvation, religions are rather good at being pessimistic. For example, Christianity has spent much of its history emphasising the darker side of earthly existence.

Yet even within this sombre tradition, the French philosopher Blaise Pascal stands out for the exceptionally merciless nature of his pessimism. In his book the Pensees, Pascal misses no opportunities to confront his readers with evidence of mankind's resolutely deviant, pitiful and unworthy nature.

In seductive classical French, he informs us that happiness is an illusion. "Anyone who does not see the vanity of the world is very vain himself," he says. Misery is the norm, he states: "If our condition were truly happy we should not need to divert ourselves from thinking about it." And we have to face the desperate facts of our situation head on. "Man's greatness," he writes, "comes from knowing he is wretched."

Given the tone, it comes as something of a surprise to discover that reading Pascal is not at all the depressing experience one might have presumed. The work is consoling, heartwarming and even, at times, hilarious.

For those teetering on the verge of despair, there can paradoxically be no finer book to turn to than one which seeks to grind man's every last hope into the dust. The Pensees - far more than any saccharine volume touting inner beauty, positive thinking or the realisation of hidden potential - has the power to coax the suicidal off the ledge of a high parapet.

If Pascal's pessimism can effectively console us, it may be because we are usually cast into gloom not so much by negativity as by hope. It is hope - with regard to our careers, our love lives, our children, our politicians and our planet - that is primarily to blame for angering and embittering us.

The incompatibility between the grandeur of our aspirations and the mean reality of our condition generates the violent disappointments which rack our days and etch themselves in lines of acrimony across our faces. Hence the relief, which can explode into bursts of laughter, when we finally come across an author generous enough to confirm that our very worst insights, far from being unique, are part of the common, inevitable reality of mankind.

Our dread that we might be the only ones to feel anxious, bored, jealous, perverse and narcissistic turns out to be gloriously unfounded, opening up unexpected opportunities for communion around our dark realities.

We should honour Pascal, and the long line of pessimistic writers to which he belongs, for doing us the incalculably great favour of publicly and elegantly rehearsing the facts of our sinful and pitiful state. This is not a stance with which the modern world betrays much sympathy, for one of its dominant characteristics and - in my opinion - its greatest flaw is its optimism.

Despite occasional moments of panic, most often connected to market crises, wars or pandemics, the secular contemporary world maintains an all but irrational devotion to a narrative of improvement, based on a quasi-messianic faith in the three great drivers of change - science, technology and commerce.

Material improvements since the mid-18th Century have been so remarkable and have so exponentially increased our comfort, safety, wealth and power, as to deal an almost fatal blow to our capacity to remain pessimistic - and therefore, crucially, to our ability to stay sane and content.

It has been impossible to hold on to a balanced assessment of what life is likely to provide for us when we have witnessed the cracking of the genetic code, the invention of the mobile phone, the opening of Western-style supermarkets in remote corners of China and the launch of the Hubble telescope.

Yet while it is undeniable that the scientific and economic trajectories of mankind have been pointed firmly in an upward direction for several centuries, you and I do not comprise mankind. None of us as individuals can dwell exclusively amidst the ground-breaking developments in genetics or telecommunications that lend our age its distinctive and buoyant prejudices.

We may derive some benefit from the availability of hot baths and computer chips, but our lives are no less subject to accident, frustrated ambition, heartbreak, jealousy, anxiety or death than were those of our medieval forebears. But at least our ancestors had the advantage of living in a religious era which never made the mistake of promising its population that happiness could ever make a permanent home for itself on this earth.

The secular are at this moment in history a great deal more optimistic than the religious - something of an irony given the frequency with which the religious have been derided by the non religious for their apparent naivety and credulousness. It is the secular whose longing for perfection has grown so intense as to lead them to imagine that paradise might be realised on this earth after just a few more years of financial growth and medical research.

With no evident awareness of the contradiction they may, in the same breath, gruffly dismiss a belief in angels while sincerely trusting that the combined powers of the IMF, the medical research establishment, Silicon Valley and democratic politics will together cure the ills of mankind.

The benefits of a philosophy of pessimism are to be seen in relation to love. Christianity and Judaism present marriage not as a union inspired and governed by subjective enthusiasm but rather, and more modestly, as a mechanism by which individuals can assume an adult position in society and thence, with the help of a close friend, undertake to nurture and educate the next generation under divine guidance.

These limited expectations tend to forestall the suspicion, so familiar to secular partners, that there might have been more intense, angelic or less fraught alternatives available elsewhere. Within the religious ideal friction, disputes and boredom are signs not of error, but of life proceeding according to plan.

These religions do recognise our desire to adore passionately. They know of our need to believe in others, to worship and serve them and to find in them a perfection which eludes us in ourselves. They simply insist that these objects of adoration should always be divine rather than human.

Therefore they assign us eternally youthful, attractive and virtuous deities to shepherd us through life while reminding us on a daily basis that human beings are comparatively humdrum and flawed creations worthy of forgiveness and patience, a detail which is apt to elude our notice in the heat of marital squabbling.

Why can't you be more perfect? This is the incensed question that lurks beneath a majority of secular arguments. In their effort to keep us from hurling our curdled dreams at one another, religions have the good sense to provide us with angels to worship and lovers to tolerate.

A pessimistic world view does not have to entail a life stripped of joy. Pessimists can have a far greater capacity for appreciation than their opposite numbers, for they never expect things to turn out well and so may be amazed by the modest successes which occasionally break out across their darkened horizons.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14506129

[dales]

Stock up on the benzo's, and anti-depressants.

[oldr_n_wsr]

Stock up on the benzo's, and anti-depressants.

Alcohol WAS my first choice.
Now I fix the things I can and leave the rest.

[oldr_n_wsr]

You this brings up something I hear a lot in AA meetings which is:
A life beyond your wildest dreams.

Every time I hear this, I want to scream, but I don't. I do however vioce my opinion that my sober life is not beyond my wildest dreams and if someone elses was/is, then they are not dreaming "high" enough. If their wildest dream is only to remain sober, they are missing out on a whole pile of things that make life great and one of them is to reach farther than ones arms. Sure being and remaining sober is a great "dream" but attempting things that are a little outside of our grasp or comfort zone is what makes life great and being sober to appreciate the effort and sometimes the reward of actually grasping that which is out of reach are the things of dreams.

[The Hen]

So you wouldn't be in the 'glass half full" fraternity then?

[Gob]

Nicely phrased O-n-W.

[dgs49]

Knowing several alcoholics personally, I have heard that one of their biggest disappointments is finding that even after they sober up, all of the problems that fed their addiction are still there.

Another lesson on life (in addition to a bit of pessimism/realism) that ought to be taught more often is, "LIFE ISN'T FAIR. DEAL WITH IT."

Some people are born rich, some poor, some brilliant, some stupid, some beautiful, some ugly. Very significantly, some people are born to good parents and some are born to irresponsible idiots - you might refer to these people as "losers in the Parent Lottery."

But many of our public policies are based on the very dubious assumption that peoples' circumstances are ALWAYS just the result of life's various lotteries, and the policies and programs try to compensate for the unfairness of life. Give food, money, and housing to the poor, give a free education to the uneducated, give a job to the unqualified, give a scholarship to the marginal student.

And as a result, many of the people who live on the short end of the stick EXPECT some sort of un-earned gift, benefit, or advantage; they take it as a RIGHT, and are resentful when it doesn't come, or if it does come and doesn't work, they get pissed off. Isn't this what is happening in London? The English have provided a cornucopia of freebies to people who have done nothing to earn them, but instead of being grateful and using those freebies as a springboard to a productive life (which, in fact, was the whole premise of providing the benefits), they are resentful that the freebies are not enough to bring them into the middle class (and higher). They want MORE!

Life ain't fair. MOST people have to work for what they get, and they rightly resent it when government takes away what they have earned in order to provide some un-earned benefit to someone else - regardless of life's lotteries.

If you accept the fact that life isn't fair, then you can realistically set your goals and aspirations to those which are possible, and work toward them. It may not be possible for everyone to go to Harvard or to invent something that will make them Rich, or to play in the NBA. But people who are ugly, stupid, fat, and/or smelly have been successful in various aspects of life, so there is always something to work for.

As opposed to living your life in a constant state of resentment because your parents couldn't afford to send you to a private college, or buy you a new car when you turned 16, or whatever.

Life ain't fair. Deal with it.

[loCAtek]

Yup, I was studying this last year with a Monk, and that's been the meaning behind my sig line. Take the good, with the BAD. Yin and yang are the natural state of things.

[rubato]

Knowing several alcoholics personally, I have heard that one of their biggest disappointments is finding that even after they sober up, all of the problems that fed their addiction are still there.
... "

One of the problems of alcoholism is that the alcoholic avoids dealing with the normal problems of life and thus is stunted in his/her emotional and mental development.

Much like being a Republican.


yrs,
rubato

[Crackpot]

Or Rubato

[oldr_n_wsr]

Yes, lifes problems are still there whether one is drunk (stoned, high, whatever) or not. And that's the way we (alcholics and those not alcoholics) have to face it. The difference is "we" alcoholics, have been avoiding those life situations (as not everyhitng in life is a problem) by getting drunk. Even "good" times were altered by being drunk.
while it may not be a "new" experience dealing with "life things" sober (as many of us went through at least parts of our loves sober) it probably has been a while since we did deal with life sober.

[Gob]

Couldn't resist...


The British Police are the best in the world
I don't believe one of these stories I've heard
'Bout them raiding our pubs for no reason at all
Lining the customers up by the wall
Picking out people and knocking them down
Resisting arrest as they're kicked on the ground
Searching their houses and calling them queer
I don't believe that sort of thing happens here

Sing if you're glad to be glum
Sing if you're happy that way

Pictures of naked young women are fun
In Titbits and Playboy, page three of The Sun
There's no nudes in Glum News our last magazine
But they still find excuses to call it obscene
Read how disgusting we are in the press
The News of The World and the Sunday Express
Molesters of children, corruptors of youth
It's there in the paper, it must be the truth

Sing if you're glad to be glum
Sing if you're happy that way

Don't try to kid us that if you're discreet
You're perfectly safe as you walk down the street
You don't have to mince or make bitchy remarks
To get beaten unconscious and left in the dark
I had a friend who was gentle and short
Got lonely one evening and went for a walk
Queerbashers caught him and kicked in his teeth
He was only hospitalised for a week

Sing if you're glad to be glum
Sing if you're happy that way

So sit back and watch as they close all our clubs
Arrest us for meeting and raid all our pubs
Make sure your boyfriend's at least 21
So only your friends and your brothers get done
Lie to your workmates, lie to your folks
Put down the queens and tell anti-queer jokes
Glum Lib's ridiculous, join their laughter
'The buggers are legal now, what more are they after?'

Sing if you're glad to be glum
Sing if you're happy that way

[Gob]

What role does negative thinking have to play in the corporate world? A crucial one, says Lucy Kellaway of the Financial Times.

In business, optimism is good and pessimism bad. Optimists have a monopoly on success, on happiness and even on longevity.

Pessimists, with their long faces and dark thoughts are pariahs, thought fit for nothing in the gung-ho corporate world except possibly careers in journalism (where bad news is good news).

But now pessimism may be coming back to the mainstream. The turn came recently when management guru Tom Peters tweeted enthusiastically about a book that extols negative thinking.

This is an extraordinary turnaround for a man whose logo is a colourful exclamation mark and who for decades has been relentlessly, exhaustingly upbeat.

Unlike Mr Peters, I was born pessimistic. I expect a sudden downpour to spoil every summer party; I am confident that every initiative will end in failure; at least half the dresses in my wardrobe are grey.

So I've dashed to look up the book Mr Peters recommends, which turns out to have a brainlessly upbeat title, The Positive Power of Negative Thinking: Use Defensive Pessimism to Harness Anxiety & Perform at Your Peak.

Still, Rome wasn't destroyed in a day, and perhaps this book has softened up the market for negativity sufficiently to prepare it for the book I'd like to write myself (if Mr Peters doesn't get there first).

I might call it, Pear-shaped: Why Things Always Go Wrong at Work, and How Not to Cope When They Do.

The trouble with optimists is that they don't do well in a pear-shaped world.

In prisoner of war camps in Vietnam, the people who died first were the positive thinkers - they fully expected to be back home by Christmas and fell to pieces when they weren't.

Admittedly, the world of business isn't exactly like a prisoner of war camp, in that you can nip out for a latte and you can sleep in your own comfy bed at night.

But it can be grim and relentless and one bad thing can happen after another and being always prepared for the worst seems to me the only wise course of action.

Woody Allen put it best: "Confidence is what you have before you understand the problem."

Despite the pessimism revival it is stupid to argue about which view of the world is best, when both views are clearly needed all of the time.

Every organisation and every partnership should be carefully balanced to include both optimists and pessimists.

A marriage also needs both - my own experience has taught me that it's good to have an optimist to come up with endless wild schemes for picnics and outings and a pessimist to swash the maddest ones and temper the rest with paracetamol and umbrellas.

Businesses need both even more to have just the right mix of daring and caution.

Diversity of optimists and pessimists is the most important sort of diversity there is and should be actively sought at board level and every level below.

Corporate pessimists should be de-stigmatised and beckoned out of the closet. Above all, they should stop having to pretend to see the glass half full just to suit the fashion.

They should be proud to declare that for them, it has been half empty all along.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14768974?print=true