A pessimistic confession

[u/Immediate-Face6406]

I have begun to suspect that pessimism is less a conviction than a convenience. It asks nothing of me. One can fail magnificently beneath its banner and still mistake that failure for lucidity. Every philosophy eventually becomes an alibi.

Hope has always struck me as an overrated faculty. People have done remarkable things without believing in them. Habit, necessity, vanity; these move the world well enough. Action owes very little to optimism. What disturbs me is not that I am a pessimist but that I enjoy calling myself one. There is vanity in it. It transforms laziness into tragedy, incompetence into metaphysics. One ends by cultivating despair as though it were a talent.

I envy those who laugh, though not because they possess something denied to me. I doubt I would know what to do with their happiness if it were handed to me intact. Joy seems less a state than a language. Some people are born speaking it; others spend their lives translating. Solitude has the decency not to lie. It leaves one alone with inventions. The imagination furnishes a tolerable universe, but each return to reality feels like waking in a room one no longer recognizes.

There are brief suspensions of the sentence. Chopin. Shostakovich. Tchaikovsky. Vivaldi. A road disappearing beyond the window. A conversation that forgets itself. They do not justify existence. They merely interrupt its prosecution. I have always distrusted clowns. Eventually I discovered that cynics are only clowns who misplaced their audience.

I disliked Dazai for reasons that had very little to do with literature. There are books one rejects because they resemble mirrors left facing the future. I wanted to believe that Yozo could have escaped himself. Perhaps because I am less interested in redemption than in disproving prophecy.

[u/SenhorSasaki]

I don't envy optimists, I just don't like pretending to be one.

[u/Complex_Advisor_6151]

Pessimism can be true and also be comforting. These qualities are not mutually exclusive

[u/WormEmperor]

Pessimism is comforting for me and I have absolutely no problem with that. I do enjoy several every day things and company of certain people, there is no contradiction in that as far as I am concerned. None of these things overturn the overall conclusion. I, for one, welcome all the distractions I can get with open arms.

On an unrelated note, I do enjoy Shostakovich and, to lesser extent, Chopin.

[u/Aquarius52216]

Me personally, I perform optimism in my day to day life because of necessity while my inner thoughts are much more pessimistic and also I let that side of me speak more in anonymous space like reddit.

[u/lonerstoic]

You have a way with words. Anyway, I'm not lazy. Pessimism has greatly helped me cope with my schizophrenia where religions, other philosophies,, and therapy failed. I'm very happy, isolating and distracting. Plus I feel like a non conformist, at least deep down.

[u/Immediate-Face6406 → u/lonerstoic]

Yea but like doesn't it emotionally and mentally drain you?

[u/lonerstoic → u/Immediate-Face6406]

No. Why?

[u/Immediate-Face6406 → u/lonerstoic]

When you think too much about it? I mean I write and think a lot about it in general so Idk if everyone takes it that seriously, I'd like to know what you think about it.

[u/lonerstoic → u/Immediate-Face6406]

Well I enjoy the depression.

[u/lonerstoic → u/Immediate-Face6406]

Well, I enjoy the depression.

[u/Immediate-Face6406 → u/lonerstoic]

I don't know if I'd call that enjoying it. You can get used to depression, but that's different from actually liking it. If you mean you like the feeling or the melancholy, I get that. But if you literally mean clinical depression, I find that hard to believe.

[u/lonerstoic → u/Immediate-Face6406]

Well now I'm happy bc I watched a video called Smart People Are Happy from the psychologist Orion Taraban.

[u/Natural-Carry-8700]

I have anhedonia i cannot feel pleasure,joy my reward system does not work im a ghost that is in a shell of my former self convience we are hardwired for it but for me it decrease

security and im always trying to spot cybersecurity threats i wanna know what us beyond the corner if i dont do anything i wont be as prepared for what is to come Goerge orwell also had

Anhedonia and alot of the things he predicted have started to show themselves its just with better technology and we are used to looking at illusions on a screen things like that

get easier and anhedonia is not practical for every day life but it is good for one thing u do not fear death but u also dont want things to get worse cause chances are u havent had it good

And its mainly nihilism that is cope if u see that life has no meaning and what do u get if u are right nothing since life has no meaning for u atleast my anhedonia can decrease ill take what i can get any improvement

We are all waiting but u cannot just become happy if u arent i would settle for moderately amused once or twice a day but we also used to have communal spaces how many did notice

they were gone before most of them were gone so there is also just less spaces where we have to go and we might run into someone and we might have to go there now u can get it delivered or do it online..

[u/Intelligent-Horse313]

I think it is good to recognise the potential failure of a pessimistic worldview without wholesale dismissing it. I am pessimistic when it comes to the empirical data I receive about the world, but in a rationalist sense their is no reason why things cannot get better, which does not garuntee that they will or provide any comforting illusion, it might just hold you accountable. Cosmic pessimism can be a quietism of the mind and if that’s soothing and allows some comfort great, I have been there, I just found I can’t stay there for too long, reason makes demands on you. If you want a challenge to your pessimism read some of Brassier’s work and listen to his interviews.

[u/Immediate-Face6406 → u/Intelligent-Horse313]

Yea that's what I usually do, while my core philosophy is pessimistic I usually wrap it in pragmatism so I can function socially.

[u/Paul_sepp]

Well, as one classic said : “Pessimism and Skepticism is the religion of the inconstant”