Jul 142011
When I was young, I was an optimist. Then things didn’t go so well. In time, perhaps because things didn’t go so well, I became a pessimist.
Things don’t go any better now that I am a pessimist, but I can at least say that now that I am a pessimist I am rarely unpleasantly surprised at how things go. Curiously, this fact makes life easier to bear, rather than harder.
7 Responses to “The Paradox of Pessimism”
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Perhaps the thing that sets you (and me and other like-minded people) apart is the fact that you don’t adjust your standards when things don’t go well. Most people do, as described in Illusion and Well-Being. So for most people, unpleasant surprises are short-lived, soon forgotten and/or recontextualized as less unpleasant (or maybe even pleasant; see unintended pregnancies), so pessimism would not offer them any advantages. Nonetheless, since I sucked at being an optimist, I find the lack of unpleasant surprises to be a welcome relief.
I might have sucked at being an optimist because of a weird psychology. My life — like most human lives — has had its share of both happy and unhappy events. But whereas I find my recollection of happy events is usually sort of fuzzy, that of unhappy events is at once quite vivid and detailed — down to where I was, what I was doing, who used what words to say what, and so on. (I wouldn’t necessarily claim that all that detail is veridical, just that it’s there in my consciousness.)
Hey! Rafael Melo means something very different by pessimism!
Srikant — I find this reply slightly cryptic. Could you elaborate?
I think this is what Srikant is referring to.
Thank you, CM. That makes it clear.
Sorry, I didn’t know how to put in a url. =$ CM got it right, though. =)