On Half-Full, In Half-Empty

I have often been labeled as a pessimist and even though that's probably a fair label, it carries unfair connotations about what pessimism really is. The common misconception about pessimists is that they are typically negative people who predict negative outcomes in most situations that they encounter and by doing so, they prevent or inhibit positive things from happening. The last part is important because it is a widely-accepted fallacy that divides people and we need to eliminate it from our social protocol.

For example, any dilligent and responsible worker, regardless of their stance on optimism or pessimism, will take precautions to account for both positive and negative outcomes in the work they are doing. If the individual in question happens to be some guy doing electrical work on power lines, he already knows that there have been enough safety precautions taken that the likelihood of an accident is very low. He may have disconnected and re-connected hundreds of power lines without incident. All signs point to a positive outcome, but because he is responsible, he will still follow every standard safety procedure that he knows to be tried and true.

An optimist and a pessimist in this position will likely do everything in exactly the same way up to this point. However, when he goes to re-connect the line and finds that there is no electricity flowing, then you begin to see who's the pessimist. The problem he has encountered is not a safety issue, it is a technical one related to the repair itself and an optimist who has succeeded in completing this repair hundreds of times before in exactly the same way will not be prepared for this. He will likely review his steps and make sure he did it all correctly, maybe eventually concluding that the problem isn't on his end, but for a period of time, the optimist is confused because he predicted a positive outcome based on experience and received a negative one.

A pessimist in this position who repairs the line and finds that there is still no power reacts differently. Someone who has successfully repaired hundreds of lines but also happens to be a pessimist will always anticipate a negative outcome, regardless of the variables. The optimist dismissed negative outcomes early in the repair, citing the many safety precautions employed and the rational fact that every other identical situation had resulted in a positive outcome. This allows an optimist to maintain a positive outlook and simultaneously be comfortable with the knowledge that he has already accounted for the possibility of failure--when really, he hasn't. When the pessimist repairs the line and finds that it's still broken, there is certainly a moment of confusion, but before questioning himself, he has already snapped to reality and concluded that there is something wrong and that he doesn't yet understand what it is. An optimist who expects the positive outcome unfailingly will spend more time confused about it than a pessimist because the unexpected outcome just doesn't sit right with them. A pessimist expecting a positive outcome who doesn't get it is almost immediately assessing the problem with a clear head. After all, the power line should be working--but it's not, so deal with it. In the end, the problem still needs to be fixed and it will regardless, but I'll betcha that pessimists are more efficient at completing the job and optimists are more likely to electrocute themselves while scratching their head in a state of confusion.

You may not agree and maybe as a pessimist, I'm not qualified to talk about how an optimist behaves--but I'm not totally uninformed either because although we can generalize, nobody is optimistic or pessimistic 100% of the time and we constantly interact with a healthy mixture of both in our day-to-day lives. In my scenario above, the job still gets done and ultimately, optimists and pessimists aren't all that different after all in terms of what they can and cannot achieve in the world.

The trouble is, pessimists piss people off. And some people have money. When people with money get pissed off, they tend to exchange some of their money for power and then use that power to effect a change that will theoretically make them less pissed off. This can be both noble and selfish, but in either case, it is a reality. Pessimism is a product of misfortune and hardship that is frowned upon in today's world because we are in a world controlled by money--people with money like optimistic thinking because they can identify with it. They dislike pessimistic thinking because they worked hard to build and keep their fortune and anyone who is not as successful as they are should just work harder instead of complaining.

At a higher level, it is the people with the money that control our jobs, our government and a significant portion of the media. As a result, "positive thinking" is something that you want to put on your resumé, and "I am a pessimist" is not. As a result, we elect people who promise impossible dreams from the government instead of someone who talks only about the real problems and ways to solve them. As a result, television commercials, public banner advertisements, workshops and exhibits are all blanketed in positivity--everything's about looking on the bright side, filtering out bad thoughts and smiling for no reason. If you still think that these things are actually good for you, that's okay, it's not your fault--like I said, the people with the money control so much that their wishes quite often come true. That's why smiling for no reason actually really does makes a lot of people feel better. That's why thinking positively makes people feel better--we are conditioned to believe that it works. And that's great. But something that makes you feel good isn't always good for you.

Pessimism should not be confused with complaining. More accurately, pessimism is about expecting a negative outcome so as to surrender yourself to the fact that the world is larger than you understand. It is the firm belief that you cannot control everything in your life, but it is not the same as believing that you control nothing at all. It is knowing that you can change some things to find a solution, but also knowing that if it weren't for the elements outside of your control, the solution could not exist in the first place. It is not a defeatist attitude, but a realistic and pro-active one, and that's the hardest part to convince anyone of. It seems like every time I sit down to write anything, I find myself in an ideological war with the world comprised entirely of fighting losing battles and this attempt to clarify that pessimists are just as valuable as optimists is no different. Trying to put together a convincing argument to separate negativity from pessimism is like trying to separate wet from water and I wouldn't even bother thinking about it if I didn't think it was important. Then to come out and say that pessimists are actually better workers, more efficient thinkers and exactly the type of people you want in your life is an even tougher argument but I'd better give it a whirl.

Optimists believe in things like a majority vote. "If the majority of people agree, then it must be right." They are the people who will tell you that you should "make your own luck" or "if you believe in yourself, you can accomplish all your goals." They believe that thinking positively is the best way to think constructively and that their positive thinking is directly related to the positive outcomes that they achieve. What they fail to do is consider attributing a negative outcome to a positive initiative. Usually, the negative outcomes are attributed to the inherent random nature of life itself and most optimists have no problem admitting that nothing's perfect and that "shit happens." This is what I don't like--the selfishness of some optimists. They are keen to take credit for thinking positively when something goes right, but when something goes wrong, they attribute it to chance and then use those incidents to identify with other hard luck people.

It's difficult to prove, but a critical thinker should be able to see that too much optimism can result in poor planning, unrealistic expectations and naive perspectives on the world at large. But still, it's the pessimists who get the shaft in the social world--besides, nobody likes a party pooper, right? It's the pessimists who are the pricks and always end up on the receiving end of sarcastic remarks like "would it kill you smile once in awhile?" or worse, their personality traits are criticized and lambasted behind their backs--always in a negative context. Nobody talks positively about pessimistic traits and that's just not fair.

There are so many variables in the world that it is almost guaranteed that fewer things are going to go your way in life than those that do and thus, pessimism both pre-dates optimism and is the very reason positive thinking exists at all. People had to confront the fact that shit happens and to make themselves feel better, began wishing for the opposite. The luckiest ones had most of their wishes come true, became successful and began to purport that positive thinking is the whole secret of life. The majority of the people who tried positive thinking did not have their wishes come true; the optimists of the bunch chose to cling to the belief that if you just think positively like all the successful people, you too will one day succeed. The pessimists of the bunch become disenfranchised with how little their positive thinking has gotten them and through experience, they learn to expect negative outcomes.

Over time, the division between these two types of people has grown to downright religious levels of misguided belief--the pessimists believe that the optimists are naive for thinking optimistically and the optimists think the pessimists are naive for thinking pessimistically. It becomes a conflict of ideology where people are judged based on their belief without the judge understanding exactly what they believe in. If you were to meet ten people that all had a nametag that said either "Optimist" or "Pessimist", you would be wrong to read them any differently from each other. A pessimist is likely to assume that all the Optimists are naive and out of touch with reality. This is not the case. An optimist is likely to assume that all the Pessimists are cynical people who brings themselves down and others down with them. That is also not the case. Listen, we're all the same here. Optimistic thinking does not make people naive--it makes them "hopeful," I would say, but not necessarily naive. Pessimistic thinking does not make the pessimist unhappy--but it forces them to think harder about solving problems and better prepares them for a crisis. Nobody wants bad things to happen to them and nobody intentionally brings it on themselves--that should never be assumed about someone who is pessimistic and nobody should want bad things to happen to other people anyway. Ironically, pessimists are about the only thing that optimists are pessimistic about!!

I don't know where the hell I'm going with this. But the point is, don't discriminate against pessimists, positive thinking is over-rated and no matter what we do in life, we're all DOOMED!(?)