Why I'm Not A Pessimist

 I'm sure longtime readers need to take a minute to put their eyes back into their heads so take a minute.

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I'm not a pessimist. I clearly seem like a pessimist to most people who know me, and most of what I have to say is pessimistic to people whose natural mind bends toward optimism, but optimism is just one half of the human equation, and it's a 'very small half.'

If this next paragraph sounds like gibberish or bullshit, don't worry, you can skip it at any point, but here's the point: existence can only be defined by two states: it either 'happens' or it 'doesn't happen.' If you effect an eventuality, you either 'choose' to do something, or you 'choose to not' do something. On the basest most technical level: everything that exists could not exist, and everything that could not exist could exist. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. It's the dialectic, it's yin and yang, eros and thanatos, will to life and death drive, phenomenal and noumenal worlds, being and becoming, growth and decline, Hillel and Shammai, "on the one hand" and "on the other hand." It's even the way genetics works. Most things of this life are inconsequential, but by some infinite degrees of separation, they all have some chain of impact on everything else in existence. Existence is the sum total of everything in existence, and everything that doesn't exist exists in a world of nothing.

We can get into quantum states and ten-dimensionality another time...

But the point is, nature hits back. Everything evolves, and everything meets its opposition. Change, however necessary, is a terrible ordeal because it confronts us with undiscovered countries of existence. Even the best change for the better is more anxiety provoking than staying in the worst circumstances, because there is no guarantee that better will result, and the worse things already are, the more terrible things you can imagine. So with every change for the better, the people who fight it hardest are the millions of disadvantaged who would benefit most.

This is not something Americans are programmed to understand, and it goes without saying, no country is better programmed to understand that than the country of Dostoevsky and Lenin.

But we're Americans, !@$#$%#%^it, and part of our social contract is to resolutely determine, as a country, that we will do everything in our power to see the bright side of things. I don't know if it's deliberate or accidental, but Old Europe was the world of pessimism. Until the early 1700's, Europe ordered the world by a strict mental diet of millenarian apocalyptism for 1400 years. By 1750, France came up with the Enlightenment, which resulted in a generation of optimism. After less than forty years, this optimism devolved into the French Revolution and a continent of war, which resulted in making pessimism the continental religion. And Europe's pessmism, whether it was self-fulfilling or an accurate view of the world, was amply borne out by their experience of the 20th century.

But during that brief, one-generation religion of optimism, a European colony founded a country of optimism; and for a few centuries, that optimism's been self-fulfilling. Of course, an optimistic country in a world of powerful pessimists has enormous advantages. They are the continent of Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, we are the continent of Emerson and Jefferson. We swallowed whole the beliefs that hard work will be rewarded, imperial conquest brings the prosperity we long for, and that a new continent brings a new birth of freedom:

Whatever the troubles in your old life, America erases them, again and again. For 225 years, America existed as a giant reset button for whenever you screw up your life. If you were foreign, you come here, and there's a whole continent on which you can begin again. If you're American and life's not working out? You move to a different part of the country and start over.

That's obviously not the whole bill of goods, but that's the story of millions of Americans, of color as well as white (though white much more often...), that is the Great American Myth. And like all great myths, if it isn't true, it resonates with a deeper truth, which is that the belief that America gives you opportunity to remake your life gave people the fortitude to remake their lives they probably should have had anyway.

But the internet erases that ability. Contrary to popular beliefs today, there may have never been such a thing as a 'system' before the internet, but there is no invention in the history of the world more systemic: Whoever you are, whomever you were, you are now your past and future prospects are determined by it. We call the internet the 'Wild West' but it's the exact opposite of wild. It's so domesticated that you can fling insults on the internet like monkeys throw feces and there is no physical repercussion. But there is an increasingly long bill of data about everything you've done, and if the data paints a picture less than flattering, opportunities that might have been yours close forever. Those whose records have dark marks have no recourse but to empty their frustrations in torrents of bile designed to bring knock lighter beings into their darkness. The result is that productive outlets are closed to people whose behavior might turn destructive, and they only can find recourse in destroying whatever opportunities our new world might create.

The internet is likely the end of the long American road of opportunity and freedom, just as movies and newsreels were the end of European honor. Both technologies further equalized the world, let through voices that were previously marginalized, and those who once existed to serve the world may become their own masters. But the price is this: the newly liberated may live now in a small island of dignity, but their opportunities close as they close for everybody else - economic, educational, and in the age of pandemic, even social and physical.

The marginalized have notified us, correctly, that our opportunities were not the opportunities they seemed; they were also pacts to trade our own advancement at someone else's degradation. But whether in America or all the America-influenced countries, the world has not come up yet with a promise tempting enough to replace it.

Was it worth the tradeoff? Is the promise of a better future worth risking the destruction of the present? It doesn't matter. It was going to happen. Decay comes for every era, and just as old age dispels the delusions of youth, so too does old age dispel the illusions of every society. But wherever comes next, freedom and prosperity will continue somewhere, and likely will emanate from a completely different part of the world. One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh; but the Earth abideth forever - Ecclesiastes 1:4 KJV. The age of humanity is not over: we will overcome global warming, at least some of us, and the world will find ever new ways to thrive. But the new world will be as unrecognizably different from us as we are from the people of 1905.

So yeah, I guess I'm a pessimist about us, but I'm not a pessimist about existence. Life is meaningless without death. The only way to gain meaning in life is to struggle with it. Eras in history when people do not feel perpetually threatened are extreme exceptions. But through all that death, there have always been new generations. We exist for the people after us, we exist to help our children thrive so that they can help theirs, so that we can take our small place in the great chain of the human story. And those who are paying attention (and there are always a few) can tell the stories about the meaning of our chapter - conjuring for the future all our aspirations, our hopes, our disappointments, and our best efforts. There are always new generations, and however much or little they realize it, our efforts are what make them come next.

You cannot exist as an American in 2022 without hearing about weighting the world's privileges by identity every day. Do not mistaken what this means. Whether doing so is morally right or not, to do so would be the most drastic change to America's self-conception since the emancipation of slaves. It is a death sentence for everything and everyone we know in this country, just as class overthrowal was for Old Europe, as decisions by reason were for monarchical France, and salvation by faith was for medieval German city states.

And like the good Americans these progressive anti-Americans are, they expect that their demands will have only good effect, and no conservatives will fight back to destroy most everything they (and I too) believe in. But, of course, conservatives are fighting back, and the only answer they come up with for why conservatives fight back is that conservatives are vermin. Well... there are worse things than thinking conservatives are vermin, they obviously think we're vermin too, but if they have all the guns, the end of a real conflict with them is foregone.

But even if American conservatives never fought back and a critical mass realized the error of their ways, conservatives abroad see the success of liberal ideas, and nothing scares them more. The arc of history does not bend towards justice. Justice, tolerance, equality of opportunity, these are severe exceptions in human history.

White or Islamic conservatives may view minorities with disgust or contempt, but their contempt is the disgust of people who know minorities do not truly threaten their way of life. What they hate, no matter their protestations to the contrary, is American liberalism, French secularism, British pragmatism, social equality, political freedom, open societies; what they hate is any system that gives equal footing to minorities, and makes their time-honored way of being into the marginalized minority, because somewhere deep down, they know that marginalization might be what they deserve.

Conservatives in America hate progressives, socialists, intersectionalists, but conservatives abroad know little about America's provincial fights. What they know is the success of American cold war liberality, which believes that showing mercy to the countries it defeats is in everybody's interests, that it's in the interests for no one party or person to grow too powerful, and that people should choose representatives to speak for them rather than elite members of parties and religions dictating how their followers should choose to speak.

And yet they see common cause with American conservatives, because the end result of unlimited liberty is the unlimited liberty of a small few at the expense of all others, just like the unlimited liberty of Stalin and Ayatollah Khomeni to shape the lives of millions with a flick of their wrists. The end of the American road is exactly the same as the end of the road for all ancien regimes: in place of a Soviet Premier, a CEO, in place of Mullahs, a street of lobbyists, in place of secret police, a rifle association.

At its best, liberalism takes from all sides, and in addition to guaranteeing the best notions of 19th century British liberalism: freedom of speech and private ownership for all , it took the best ideas of pre-Soviet socialism too while leaving Lenin behind: a state that guarantees welfare and a social safety net. In this new era, it is so past time to extend those benefits to everything Franklin Roosevelt outlined before his death: guarantees for good housing, medical care, and wages for food, shelter, and recreation. Not to mention, god forbid, seeking sources of alternative energy...

It is not, however, time to tack privileges to demographic, because demographic preference is so easily exploitable, regardless of what demographic exploits it. Between those two notions lies a dimensional gulf: on one side, an expansion of liberalism to accommodate the 21st century, on other other, a 21st century exactly like the 20th. And since the basic story of history rarely changes, we know what's going to happen...

Unless they live here, Western Europeans cannot fathom how deeply the squabbles of identity have scrambled the recent years of American discourse; but Russians can, because they continue to live with the discontents of the last battle to create a world of justice beyond liberalism. The world of social justice doesn't just destroy liberalism from the inside, it drives conservatives so mad with threats to everything they hold dear that it turns conservatives into authoritarians overnight, who then maltreat radicals, and transform peaceable, idealistic socialists into the most hardened, violent communizers.

Whether there's enough division on its own to create a civil conflict between these two sides is immaterial. We live in a much larger world and the larger world demands interaction. If the Ukraine conflict lasts more than three months, if Taiwan does, if any number of others do, we will grow less and less able to pursue sane courses of action. Russia or China will have ripped us from the inside because we have no united front. If Germany's economy is taken down along with Russia's, and in turn Britain's, and in turn ours, what would happen? If we start going to the grocery store five times a week to see if basic necessities are in stock, what would happen? If getting gas becomes a four hour line, what would happen? If every necessity goes up to three times its current price, what would happen? How much of the country would think that the way forward is anything even remotely resembling liberalism? If ever there becomes a perpetual one party rule in this country, the resumption of liberal democracy is almost a non-starter. Liberal democracy will be seen, incorrectly, as the progenitor of this dictatorship in all but name, and those who resist it will merely demand a dictatorship of the other party, which will be unrecognizable from today's democrats except for those who already demand revolution.

Both revolution and reaction are political wormholes, warping us away from the vital center that comprises all the difference in quality of life. How they differ from liberalism is in their inability to see the world as complex. Liberal pragmatism does not presuppose any total explanation, merely that by being open to many explanations, we can take the best of all of them and find solutions that work pretty well.

But underestimate the pull of the total explanation at the peril of us all. We only believe that we're fighting for a piece of this world, they believe they're fighting for everything, and once you've let them into the mainstream of discourse and entertained that maybe their opinion is legitimate, you've already lost the war with them.

I could continue on this rant for a long while... and yes, it's obviously clear that in many senses, I'm a deep pessimist. But here's the tradeoff: the more tragedy we've undergone, the more cause for optimism there is. Unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds - John 12:24 NIV. It took the death of Old Europe to create modern America, and I don't know where the next great flowering of human civilization will be (maybe India or Brazil? maybe Canada with a huge influx of refugees from the equator?...), but I do know that if modern America dies, it will be to the benefit of some other part of the world, where the greatest benefits of living go on. Great prosperity always moves somewhere; the death of Troy produced the founding of Rome, Rome gave way to the Byzantines, the Byzantines gave way to the Caliphates, the Calphates gave way to the Gothic kingdoms, the Gothic kingdoms gave way to the Ottomans, the Ottomans to the Rennaissance city-states, the Renaissance city-states to the Holy Roman Empire, the Holy Roman Empire to France, France to Britain, Britain to the US, the US to.... (and yeah, it's a loooot more complicated....). Was life truly great for everybody in these countries? Of course not. Was life truly terrible for everybody elsewhere? Of course not. We don't even know how to define a great life or a bad one. Believe it or not, so many wealthy people live miserable lives, and believe it or not, so many poor people are the happiest people on earth. But whatever is true about human beings, life goes on. Existence goes on. Survival is always hard, but it muddles through every age, as the circumstances of existence forever change and evolve.

So we may or may not be fucked as a country, but even if global warming hits with unprecedented destruction, humanity will continue. I would much rather prosperity would fall to me and even moreso to people I love. But even if a billion or many more of us may not be in the world soon, the world goes on, and the human story will be by no means finished. There are just too many of us for us all to die out. Existence goes on, it always changes. Life is a cruel, bitter, brutal thing, but it's through the brutality that human beings prove their greatest magnificence. The more unendurable the tragedy, the more new opportunities present themselves. Blood waters the fields, bodies fertilize through their decomposition, and whether the new success comes to us or people we have nothing to do with, the human story keeps writing its new chapters.

So yeah, I'm sure most of you would read that and think I'm a pessimist. It's certainly pessimistic from the standpoint of modern America, the modern West, and most friends of mine; but science would probably call this view pretty accurate, the ancient religions would probably call this view pretty wise, I would call this view practical, and we will ultimately see for ourselves... If prosperity comes to us all, no one will be more relieved than I. If it doesn't, I've done my best to be prepared. Come what may, we will all hopefully be there to help each other, and some version of us will endure.

Amen. And fuck you.