Hello everyone. I'd like to inform you that optimism is dumb. Like, really dumb.
Optimism is essentially a yielding to the most basic temptation - to
want things to be better than they are because of attachment, and to then
adjust your worldview, to the exclusion of contradictory facts, in order to accommodate this viewpoint. Among those in the trenches this tendency could be forgiven; among westerners, not actively engaged in combat, merely offering analysis, this tendency is unreasonably stupid. It's not wrong for those at a distance to be attached to the fates of others; this is correct.
However, it is wrong for those who are at a distance to align their projections with those who are experiencing war up close when those at a distance have an opportunity to detach their analysis from emotion and be more objective.
In essence, if your family and friends aren't being killed around you right this very minute, you don't have to make your projections based on a
faith that justice will come. In fact, if you are in the west, it's imperative that you
don't make your projections based on a faith that
some other will overcome the destructive power of US empire. You don't have to be totally stoic, but your analysis should
strive to be stoic rather than being shaped by your emotional attachment to a certain cause. Again, the sin here is not the acceptance that some outcomes are better than others, the sin is not to be attached to the creation of better outcomes,
the sin is to allow that attachment to create in you a delusion that the best outcomes are the most likely ones. To combat this sin, it is best to be pessimistic, to presume that the worst outcomes are the most likely ones, to acknowledge that bad things are happening constantly and that this is the reality on which you must shape your worldview.
Pessimism should not be confused with defeatism; this conflation is, frankly, also very stupid. Pessimism is a recognition of reality, a baseline perspective from which being wrong can only be
good, and this viewpoint prepares the individual to go up against the worst of odds, understanding without fear that by
not doing so failure & death would be the only certain outcomes. By accepting
how bad it really is, by accepting that failure is the
most likely outcome of anything and death is
the only certain outcome, a rational
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