At this point in history, should we embrace pessimism?

Optimism is good for you. Optimists live longer, have more friends, and are more satisfied with their lives than their more lugubrious counterparts. And in any ambiguous situation over which we have no control, pessimism does seem a bit pointless. If we do feel compelled to interpret something a certain way, why not be optimistic? The alternative seems almost like a kind of masochism.

You will notice that the benefits of being optimistic, at any rate as they tend to be sold to us, are markedly individual. And though it goes without saying that our individual wellbeing can and often does correspond to the wellbeing of those around us, to what extent does the expectation that things will turn out well truly serve the common good? Do we not risk, while we luxuriate in our dreams of a picture-perfect future, neglecting the present? Maybe we become a little like Voltaire’s Candide: a bit naive, easy to unhorse.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine, the arrival of Covid – we can hardly condemn ourselves for having been taken by surprise by these events. And yet equally, they were not truly that surprising; they were predictable, or at least predicted. We were warned, in other words, one way or another.

Expecting things to remain more or less as they are now is one kind of optimism. Another is expecting things to get better and better. Cast your mind back, if you will, to when Francis Fukuyama proudly announced “the end of history” in 1992. Consider how Tony Blair said debating globalisation was like “debating whether autumn should follow summer”.

In retrospect these declarations, and the confidence with which they were delivered, seem risible, if not a little arrogant. They were certainly optimistic; even if it did seem that history was headed inexorably in one direction.

Reality has its own plans; but we do have some say in what it looks like, and we certainly have some say in whether what we cherish here, in the present, will exist in the future. Just as a friendship tends to decay without the effort of the parties involved, good things have a way of deteriorating if there is no one around to ask the simple question: what if this no longer existed? There is some value in working on the basis that less-than-ideal scenarios might just play out. Staying on your toes is not the worst thing in the world.

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We do not have to be thoroughgoing professional pessimists, but just to cultivate a little pessimism where the things that matter most to us are concerned. I am not saying, in other words, that we should all resemble the incomparable Marvin the Paranoid Android of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – undoubtedly the best robot character ever created, by the way – who, asked if he has any ideas, responds: “I have a million ideas. They all point to certain death.”

All I am saying is those aspects of our common life that we value most need defending from those who would abolish them in pursuit of some ideal, or some whim, or out of resentment or some innately destructive quality. This is not to suggest for a moment, however, that we cannot be hopeful. “Hope is not optimism, which expects things to turn out well,” wrote Seamus Heaney, “but something rooted in the conviction that there is good worth working for.”