Pessimism

The reason I am pessimistic is not because of what Bush has done, but because the people in my country somehow found reason to vote him into office again 2 years ago despite it being done.

I am also pessimistic because the main opposition party seems to share many of the same key flaws. At least most of them want to get the heck out of Iraq.

In the last 20 years or so, both parties have headed in directions that are severely anti-liberty, and the very policies of each that I consider most abhorrent are some of the most cherished reasons that people quote in support of them. I am pessimistic because I believe the vast majority of people no longer do enough thinking about issues to have a reasonable opinion, or even to know when their intuitive sense should be considered suspect.

It’s not that I don’t believe in the efficacy of applying human reason to the world’s problems. I’m having trouble imagining such a radical idea getting any popular support.

Actually I find the blogosphere far more depressing with regard to the future of reasoned analysis than anything Bush has done (although I conceed that many bloggers are simply apeing Ann Coulter so we might be able to track it back to Bush in the end).

I often wonder if people see Bush’s message as having a tone of optimism about it. When he talks about transforming the Middle East and making the world safe for democracy – it sounds like optimism, but I think once people stop believing what he says they turn towards a more pessimistic attitude.

Of course it all depends on the goals that one has for this administration. For the strident pro-life people there is a reason to be optimistic with the recent supreme court appointees. For the corporate types and the ultra-wealthy there is the reduction of their tax burden with further reductions possibly on the way. There is more political power being given to a fewer number of people as well. They are surely optimistic about that as well.

I suppose if you’re looking forward to a nation of oppressed poor people ruled by a thin class of elites in the name of god then there is much to be optimistic about.

I am grateful you linked to the sample chapter, which I am finding quite enjoyable, even tho you gave it little credit.

“While pessimists may posit a decline, it is the denial of progress, not an insistence on some eventual doom, that marks out modern pessimism. Pessimism, to put it precisely, is the negation, and not the opposite, of theories of progress.” …Dienstag

Progress is divisible:material,economic,moral,political…etc.One might imagine the problems of “war, nuclear proliferation and unchecked global warming” completely solved yet remain pessimistic. Orwell and Huxley gave us scenarios that apparently would fulfil your optimism.

My spin is that elections matter and even marginal differences between parties and candidates can have major impacts on the world.

That is the lesson of ’00 for me. (Claims that Gore would have also gotten us into a war in Iraq are such fantasy that no one even bothers to make them.)

So the lesson of Bush is not all pessimism because elections make a difference and leaders are important (no I am not a neo-Carlylist) and that “there is no difference between Republicans and Democrats” is nonsense.

“Rousseau, Leopardi, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Weber, Unamuno, Ortega y Gasset, Freud, Camus, Adorno, Foucault, and Cioran—to name just a few in what could become a very long list. It could be said to have precursors in figures like Montaigne, Lichtenburg, Pascal, and La Rochefoucauld. And it could be said to have close associates in writers like Sartre, Arendt, Benjamin, Wittgenstein, and Weil. The list would grow considerably longer, of course, if one included poets and fiction writers (e.g., Dostoevsky, Thomas Mann, et al.)”

Like home it was, like mother’s milk, these are my homies, this article speaks to me and for me.
Just Monday I asked in a comment:”But is knowledge good?” I have dared to question the Renaissance and Enlightenment as liberations. I have expressed sympathy with some of the most reactionary elements, in both the Christian and Islamic traditions. I have tried to explain why opposition to Evolution and support for ID or even more extreme ignorings could be plausible, supportable choices with predictable responses. I have tried, weakly, to explain my skepticism that liberal capitalism will necessarily create Utopia.

Only pessimism is a full-flavored universal humanism. Every other philosophy is simple ressentiment.

Thank you, Professor Quiggin.

Pessimism? As if a largely ignored alternate path isn’t staring us right in the face …

When will intellectuals start taking seriously the idea of non-violent conflict resolution, applying the same academic rigor towards new methodologies of peace for peace, instead of war for peace?

When, in politic theory classes, will the professors, instead of merely questioning the decisions and motives of the powerful governments of the world and their lust for wars, begin to question the very need for such powerful governments in the first place?

I am thankful that there is a growing worldwide movement of pro-active peacemakers, motivated by the liberating promise of a world governed by its occupants, instead of by an elite group of men who are defined by greed.

Stop whining and start doing! There is much to be done, and there is even more to be hopeful for.

J.L. — I have to disagree. There is way, way too much doing, and way, way too little whining. Whining should be universal. Whining and wailing should greet the complete inability to meet the really amazingly big environmental threats coming our way (many of which have to do with the too much doing — too much driving, too much pumping out CO2s, too much production of junk, too much fishing, etc., etc.). Whining and wailing should meet every evening of tv, which actively tries to cretinize the viewer, make prepubescents into sex objects while stirring up moral panics about pedophiles, and which definitely tries to create — too much doing. Whining should be more than about the poor choices in the last election or the last one, but the horrifying destruction of the constitutional system in favor of perpetual, unblocked aggression at the whim of the president. As the New Yorker financial guy, James Surowieki, casually stated in his last column, the Defense Deparment’s auditors admitted last month they don’t know what happened to 1 trillion dollars — it just disappeared. I would think that deserves at least, oh, a hundred thousand manhours of whining — and more if you are the population that the weapons bought by that trillion are used against.

Let’s not have any petty whining, but choruses of it, millions of mouths of wailing. Lets have street demonstrations of it. Let’s have whining for months in malls, in public places, everywhere. Because we really are fucked.

…we need more reasoned analysis…

I don’t think ‘reason’ alone is a panacea, you probably also want a bit of decency and common sense.

Mr. Bush himself is, of course, quite mad, but a lot of his mouthpieces and allies do reason and reason skillfully. They write long articles reasoning for wars, for brutality, for social darwinism, for American empire, for torture, etc.

“Reasoned analysis” doesn’t necessarily mean “analysis we like”.

“Life is short, live it up, celebrate!”

Read the linked article. This is not necessarily incompatible with philosophical pessimism, which is not an disposition. Or to quote the lead epigram by Camus:

“The idea that a pessimistic philosophy is necessarily one of discouragement is a puerile idea, but one that needs too long a refutation.”
—Albert Camus

I would be too polite to use the word “puerile” to describe some of the above commenters.

“proceed through a series of propositions that pessimists subscribe to in greater or less degrees. These propositions, which to some extent build on one another, are, in their bluntest form, as follows: that time is a burden; that the course of history is in some sense ironic; that freedom and happiness are incompatible; and that human existence is absurd. Finally, there is a divide between those pessimists, like Schopenhauer, who suggest that the only reasonable response to these propositions is a kind of resignation, and those, like Nietzsche, who reject resignation in favor of a more life-affirming ethic of individualism and spontaneity.” …Dienstag

The experience of the last half of the 20th century seemed on the whole to support an optimistic account. The threat of nuclear annihilation that was ever-present for much of the century receded with the end of the Cold War, and we managed a positive response to environmental problems that would have been catastrophic if we had continued with ‘business as usual’.

But that’s just nuts. The second half of the 20th began with the images of piles of emaciated corpses from concentration camps and nuclear bast victims in Hiroshima and Nagasaki fresh in the mind of the world. While Stalin had already killed most of his tens of millions, Mao was only getting going. Also just beginning was the nuclear arms race and cold war. This was the era of backyard bomb shelters, ‘On the Beach’, and ‘Dr Strangelove’ (The threat of nuclear annihilation was a feature of the 2nd half of the 20th century, not the 1st half). And that’s leaving aside the wars in Korea and Vietnam, the genocides in Cambodia and Rwanda, and environmental damage that reached its nadir (burning rivers, dead Great Lakes).

We might be able to make the case that the last decade of the 20th century gave reason to be optimistic (but only if we avert our eyes from Bosnia, Kosovo, Rwanda, and pretty much the rest of Africa, from the Taliban’s Afghanistan, from the terrorism of Al Queda, from Chechnya).

The 21st century so far has given support to the pessimistic view, with war, nuclear proliferation and unchecked global warming. But the only conclusion to be drawn is that we need more reasoned analysis and a willingness to act on it.

Also nuts. Global warming is no more unchecked now than it has been since the industrial age began. We’ve been trying to do something about it for less than a decade (during much of which the science was less than conclusive), and doing something meaningful is likely going to require global cooperation on an unprecedented scale. The idea that this is going to happen quickly and smoothly is completely unrealistic (think, rather, of the time scale of the cold war).

Nuclear proliferation is a mixed bag. N Korea is a problem carried over from the 90s. Libya got out of the game, and Iraq has been taken out of it. But Iran probably will not be stopped. I’m not terribly optimistic, but overall, there’s no more reason for pessimism than in the 90s. (Five years ago, I’d have predicted that the sanctions against Iraq would ultimately collapse and Saddam would ultimately have his bomb).

And war? I’m assuming you mean Iraq (and maybe a bit of Afghanistan). But as wars go (and, yes, keeping in mind all wars are horrible), these are just not very calamitous — not only by the recent historical standard of Vietnam, but by the contemporary standards. Somehow, Iraq robs us of our optimism, but our optimism was untroubled by a war in the Congo that killed roughly 50 times as many people in the years immediately preceeding.

C’mon, let’s have some perspective.

John Quiggen argues rightly that Cohen misses the point. Michael Sullivan shows very nicely that John Quiggen went to far and also fell of the path of logic. If half the country voted for Bush, where is the evidence that enough of us are using the noggin to justify optimism?

I will just embellish on Sullivan’s point. Few if any of the trends that Quiggen finds pessimism-inducing in the 21st century find their origin in this century. Our ability to deal with the threat of nuclear war and global poisoning was laudable in itself, but we had reason to understand global warming prior to Kyoto’s rejection or Katrina’s arrival. We had reason to understand that nuclear proliferation needed more attention back when Kissinger warned that we might not like the world better after the Cold War ended – and the idea was not original with Kissinger.

The Hudson Institute has recently published an article in “Policy Review”

(http://www.policyreview.org/137/mcginnis.html)

that makes Albert’s point painfully obvious, too. The author claims that the internet and education will allow for a flowering of empiricism, that we will stop getting things wrong so much and start making better choices, so that partisans and demagogues will lose their grip. All along the way, the author is disproving his own point, citing only those cases in which rightwing causes are shown to triumph due to the flow of facts, claiming that cases in which the right has not prevailed are not vulnerable to empricism, and I suspect, claiming victory where the result is in dispute. The author is a walking advertisement for pessimism, as defined here.

Imagine, the American people were so gullible to elect Bush the second time around. But I believe the American people deserved Bush from the beginning. People picked him on the flimsiest of reasons, because he was more likable than Gore.

During the 2000 campaign people felt so complacent about America’s premiere status in the world that they gave little thought to the idea that America still had to be run by responsible and capable people. Many thought that America didn’t need running, it ran itself.

Perhaps America got too optimistic about itself during its salad days and its winning the Cold War. That is why this bout of pessimism, because of a laziness and a arrogance that developed, which didn’t translate into utopia.

America has to go through these episodes now and then because it has to relearn the lessons of its past, lessons it forgot, what works and doesn’t work. In electing Bush it got lazy and complacent. But Bush and his antics is now reawakening America.

Dienstag’s attempt to reappraise the contributions of “pessimistic” philosophers is surely not without merit. Nevertheless, I have a problem with the whole premise. The criterion of philosophical classification he applies lends itself to all the fluff that is associated with the optimism/pessimism dichotomy to begin with.

Riffing on the opposition between Darwin-influenced taxonomy and the pre-eminence of teleology in the Aristotelian study of living beings, I’d say that the distinction between “pessimists” and “optimists” is not nearly “morphological” enough, and too “functional”.

Now, Aristotle had a keen eye for the morphological traits of animals, and the “ghost” of teleology will never be exorcized completely from the language of biology. And separating mood from discourse in philosophy is far more difficult and far less useful. However…

According to Dienstag, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, say, are both pessimistic “land-dwellers”, distinct from and opposed to optimistic “flyers”. That’s perfectly fine, but when you try to delve a bit further you’ll be tempted to say that pessimists are furred and optimists feathered, and then you’ll be frustrated by the hen, the bat and the penguin. Schopenhauer’s metaphysics have a lot in common with Berkeley’s, whom I wouldn’t rate as pessimistic on a number of issues.

To study the relationship between Schopenhauer and Nietzsche you get more mileage in the traditional fashion (i.e. Wille/Vorstellung vs. Dionysus/Apollo and all that) than with references to their pessimism. First you notice the morphological similarities and differences between elephants and rhinos. Then you mention that they both live in the savannah.

The opposition between optimism and pessimism is (rightly) deemed to have moral implications, yet the differences in the moral philosophies of e.g. the above two pessimists (re: Mitleid) are arguably far more profound.

The debased use of the term “optimism” (mostly, but not exclusively, by Americans) does not make me want to rehabilitate its less cheery vis-à-vis. I don’t take issue with Thomas Friedman’s optimism. I take issue with the fact that his are the musings of an overblown simpleton.

The rejection of utopianism has both “pessimistic” (people are just too recalcitrant) and “optimistic” overtones (people are too complex, too “big”, to fit into your ideological narrative).

And so on.

Seems to me that the distilled version of Dienstag’s work and Cohen’s analysis of it is that reason has got us into more trouble that it has gotten us out of.

The Luddite spin on this is that reason gives us all those splendid technologies like nukes, life-extending medicines, and global communications that extend our reach into places they don’t belong.

The nihilist-pessimist political spin on it seems to be that humans lack the political and moral capacities to deal with the effects of our reasoning. Among these failings are that we choose inept leaders because they reflect our own sense of frailty. We are less interested in canny problem-solvers.

On this basis, pessimists understand that the mass of humanity is self-deluded, and wants to remain that way, despite the consequences.

The irony is that ‘pessimist’ is the word chirpy Pollyannas use to describe anyone with a considered (cf. ‘reasoned’) perspective on the situation. (As pointed out above, ‘reason’ is subject to politics, where the Rush Limbaughs and Ariel Sharons, the proponents of ID and opponents of abortion all have their reasonings set out in the supermarket of ideas.) Pessimists are disadvantaged because they’ve already lost the labelling game. Better that we be known as pragmatists, or post-Enlightenement rationalists, or bloody-minded people who care enough to change our ways.

If holding that “the absurdity of human existence” is philosophically pessimistic, then philosophical pessimism is a good cure for dispositional pessimism.

In my experience people feel bad when things don’t go how they like. One the other hand, if one like things absurd, one is rarely disappointed.

I mean have you ever met someone who really, truly believed that things are SUPPOSED to be absurd, that wasn’t having a grand time in life?

Slocum, a hint. Attempts to bolster weak criticisms by calling the argument you are criticising “nuts”, don’t usually work. Show, don’t tell.

Which is why I supported the statement with a rather lengthy (for a blog response) explanation for why I think the theory is ‘nuts’.

A second hint. Lists of events don’t work as a criticisms of claims about trends.

There were two points to the lists of events — first to show that the idea of the last half of the 20th century as a unique time for optimism is unsupportable. The second point was that even with respect to trends it doesn’t work as the 1990s was rather full of dismal, pessimism-inducing events — to recap:

The 1990s featured the wars/genocides in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Rwanda. The extraordinarily deadly war in the Congo also started in that decade (in 1998). And it’s hard to remember them all, but didn’t the brutal Algerian civil war also take place in the 1990s? Yes it did (a side effect of which was terrorist attacks in France — one thwarted plot was to crash a jetliner into the Eiffel Tower). Throughout the decade Al Queda grew in reach and lethality. The Taliban took over Afghanistan (which, of course, was closely intertwined with Al Queda). Clinton’s failed ‘Blackhawk Down’ intervention in Somalia was in 1993 (a failure that emboldened Bin Laden).

The 1991 Gulf War, initially a reason for optimism in the ability of the international community to respond to aggression turned sour with first, Saddam’s wholesale slaughter of Shia opponents and then a sanctions regime that did not weaken Saddam’s grip on power but caused a great deal of misery for Iraqis and produced the corrupt ‘oil for food’ program. In the U.S. the 1990s featured Waco, Oklahoma City, and the rise of the militia movement. The stock market boomed, but the boom was, even at the time, known to be frothy with absurd market valuations that defied all logic. The question was not if but when the bubble would burst (as, of course, it did). Or we could look at Russia where initial dreams of liberal democracy couldn’t stand the ‘shock treatment’ and we saw nationalist authoritarian politics, oligarchs, and the brutality in Chechnya. There’s plenty more (we could talk about currency crises, or in the U.S., about “don’t ask, don’t tell”, the “defense of marriage act”, and impeachment), but I think what we have so already is probably overkill.

abb1,

But Kafka (and Faulkner) are so much more fun once you realize that they are realist writers.

Life is Beautiful.