Let’s look at this big question again - should people be optimistic or pessimistic?

This seems like a ridiculous question - of course one should pursue optimism, how could anyone pursue pessimism?

Maintain pessimism?

This greatly underestimates the appeal of pessimism.

The reason pessimists love pessimism is that they feel pessimism is safe. If I’m pessimistic and my prediction of misfortune comes true, then I’m prepared; if I’m pessimistic but it surprisingly doesn’t happen, then I gain a pleasant surprise out of nowhere.

So as long as I strictly maintain pessimism and learn to dance with pessimism, I will only have calmness and surprise as my two emotions, isn’t that wonderful?

The calculations make perfect sense.

A scientist looking at a weather map and predicting that a hurricane is likely to make landfall next week.

Yet we can’t entirely blame them either. Many of them - even the vast majority, have fallen from an optimistic position to pessimism. In their early years everyone tried optimism, but the world repeatedly dealt heavy blows to my optimism. Wherever I felt “although there is a probability of something going wrong, it probably won’t happen”, those were precisely the points where fatal problems occurred leading to my downfall. It was as if providence contained a kind of black malice, deliberately taking away whatever I looked forward to, destroying whatever I relied on, every single time.

It’s not that I don’t want to be optimistic, it’s just impossible to be optimistic. Optimism is like making an appointment with disappointment and despair, and because you had expectations the blow is doubled when the unexpected happens.

If I’m optimistic, then even if expectations are met it’s nothing special; if expectations are not met, then I have to suffer the torture of disappointment. Compared to pessimism, isn’t the experience of life objectively more painful this way?

So where is there any room for choice?

Optimism is just a kind of immaturity that one has yet to depart from; pessimism is the mature steady state.

For those reading this, 99% have come down this same path, am I wrong about you?

Having come this far, having learned pessimism, haven’t you also discovered that pessimism is not a way out, that it leads nowhere?

In theory pessimism can help you calmly face the high probability of failure tomorrow, avoiding serious injury from failure.

The problem is, maintaining a pessimistic attitude makes today already unbearably bleak. The pessimism of today has already robbed me of happiness today; what I gain tomorrow is not the promised “calmness despite setbacks”, but having to grit through yet another today in order to cope with the fears of tomorrow.

I sacrifice today every day to cope with the fears of tomorrow. Perhaps I did really save that so-called tomorrow by continually destroying todays, but isn’t my life made up of a string of todays?

Always using today’s gloom to exchange for slightly less disappointment tomorrow, what meaning does that have?

The only logically sound path turns out to be a meaningless path. That’s why you’ve read this far, am I wrong about you?

Unless there are cracks in these walls of logic, how can there be a way out?

Let’s re-examine this problem -

what exactly is optimism, what exactly is pessimism?

Let me give an example. When I discover huge cracks have appeared in a dam, and after calculation I expect the dam is about to collapse. Is my attitude of “expecting the dam to collapse soon” considered pessimistic?

Conversely, I’m playing cards with others, right now I still have two cards left, a pair of 3s and a 4. It’s my turn to play, and everyone else only has one card left. At this point I expect that as long as I play the pair of 3s first, I will win.

Is my attitude of “expecting to win soon” considered optimistic?

A person who believes that the hurricane will not make landfall, even though the scientist has predicted that it will. A person who believes that the hurricane will cause widespread damage, even though the scientist has said that it is likely to be a weak hurricane.

Do you see the problem?

The first mistake most people make is putting these two attitudes into the categories of pessimism and optimism. Their classification goes like this - any conjecture of possible unhappiness, regardless of the method or reliability, belongs to “pessimism”, and the opposite belongs to “optimism”.

But in fact, this kind of attitude is neither pessimistic nor optimistic, it is seeking truth from facts. When the reliability of a judgment exceeds the degree that personal preferences can distort, your attitude at that time is called “seeking truth from facts”.

The situation is just so. You may not like it, but it will probably happen that way; you may like it, but it will probably still happen that way. Whether you realize you like it or not makes no difference to how things will actually unfold. When you realize your own preferences do not affect the actual course of events, if I may be so bold, this kind of attitude can barely be described as “objective”. - Neither pessimistic nor optimistic, but objective.

Objective assessment is just the starting point for you to take various actions.

Remember, it is neutral.

I know sometimes the objective assessment reveals a situation that makes you afraid and terrified, stimulating all kinds of anxious thoughts. But this emotional state is still not called “pessimism”, it is called anxiety.

You are anxious, not “pessimistic”.

Sometimes it’s the opposite, a pleasant surprise that makes you delighted, but this feeling of delight is just “happiness”. This feeling itself is not called “optimism”.

So what exactly is pessimism? What exactly is optimism?

It is when evidence is insufficient, judgement unclear, based on incomplete evidence and imperfect theories, the direction of speculation defines optimism and pessimism.

Optimism and pessimism specifically refer to the area where evidence cannot reach and theories cannot cover.

Only when this corner is exposed do we start talking about optimism and pessimism.