There are two very different meanings of pessimism. One believes that things will happen which most people would class as bad. The other has negative feelings about current or future situations.

The first kind can subsequently be shown to be right or wrong. For instance they may be convinced that a war between China and the US is inevitable within the next fifty years. If no such war occurs, they will have been wrong.

The second kind can be neither right nor wrong, accurate or inaccurate, as feelings are primary and not subject to judgements of correctness.

I suspect there's a strong correlation between the two types in personalities, but I like to think of the two contrary combinations

• the person who thinks all sorts of objectively harmful things will happen, but is usually cheerful about it; and
• the person who thinks very few objectively harmful things will happen, but views life morosely

I can't say I know many people of either type, but I'm sure they exist. There's a memorable character of the first type - 'the cheerful pessimist' - in some novel I've read, but the name of the character and the novel is eluding me.

But these aren't pessimists. Optimists and pessimists alike have experiences which leave them in extreme states of emotional upheaval, which they are expected (by themselves and/or others) to keep a lid on. We don't like it when people emote too much because it destabilizes the shaky social structure. If the shaky social structure should fall apart, then WE would have to deal with unpleasant realities, and wouldn't that be awful. People are afraid of change.

So, let me close with an annoyingly optimistic quip: Therapy means change, not adjustment. — Bitter Crank

Well, let's see what we have against the individual:

1) Individual people's wills and group's will.. Constant jockeying for power plays on when, what, where, hows, social status, social recognition, approval, respect

2) Impersonal wills... Institutions whose management and bottom-line dictate when, what, where.. ranging from oppressive dictatorships to the grind of organizational bureaucracies in liberal democracies.

3) Cultural necessities.. clean-up, maintain, tidy, consume, hygiene

4) Existential boundaries...boredom/ennui, loneliness, generalized anxiety, guilt

5) Survival boundaries..hunger, health, warmth

6) Being exposed to stressful/annoying/harmful environments and people

7) Accidents, natural disasters, nature's indifference (e.g. bear attacks, hurricanes, storms, earthquakes, etc.).

8) Diseases, illness, disabilities, including mental health issues (neurosis/psychosis/phobias/psychosomaticism/anxiety disorders/personality disorders/mood disorders)..

9) Bad/regretful decisions

10) Unfortunate circumstances

11) After-the-fact justifications that everything is either a learning experience or a tragic-comedy.

12) The good things are never as good as they seem

13) How fleeting happy things are once you experience them

14) How easy it is for novelty to wear off

15) The constant need for more experiences, including austerity experiences that are supposed to minimize excess wants (meditation, barebones living, "slumming it").

16) How easy it is to have negative human interaction, even after positive human interaction

17) Craving and striving for more entertainment and "flow" experiences

18) Instrumentality- the absurd feeling that can be experienced from apprehension of the constant need to put forth energy to pursue goals and actions in waking life. This feeling can make us question the whole human enterprise itself of maintaining mundane repetitive upkeep, maintaining institutions, and pursuing any action that eats up free time simply for the sake of being alive and having no other choice.

19) Any hostile, bitter, stressful, spiteful, resentful, disappointing experiences with interperonal relationships with close friends/family, acquaintances, and strangers

20) The classic (overused) examples of war and famine

21) The grass is always greener syndrome that makes one feel restless and never satisfied

22) The need for some to find solace in subduing natural emotions in philosophies that mitigate emotional responses (i.e. Stoicism) and generally having to retreat to some program of habit-breaking (therapy, positive psychology exercises, visualizations, meditations, retreats, self-help, etc. etc.)

The flux from the sturm and drang, why should it be? The Human Project, why continue it? Variations on themes of happiness and self-actualization seem to me a thin veneer for "I ain't got shit..". People screw and create new people out of cultural necessity in "traditional" cultures and people don't know what to do with themselves so they figure children are the answer in modern cultures. So unquestioned cultural ques and lack of existential reflection bring about a situation where new people are created which, if research is correct, bring about measurably less happy parents anyways.

Hartmann may have been onto something too regarding the future. As technology makes it so there are less jobs people actually need to do, perhaps some of those things listed become diminished while the existential boundaries become more pronounced.. Perhaps the end game is the culmination of the ennui of existence itself as we get tired of each other and our own existential condition. Granted, you do not need to buy into 19th century notions of "the Absolute", or "Unconscious" for this to make sense.

Human life labors under three illusions: (1) that happiness is possible in this life, which came to an end with the Roman Empire; (2) that life will be crowned with happiness in another world, which science is rapidly dissipating; (3) that happy social well-being, although postponed, can at last be realized on earth, a dream which will also ultimately be dissolved. Man's only hope lies in "final redemption from the misery of volition and existence into the painlessness of non-being and non-willing." No mortal may quit the task of life, but each must do his part to hasten the time when in the major portion of the human race the activity of the Unconscious shall be ruled by intelligence, and this stage reached, in the simultaneous action of many persons volition will resolve upon its own non-continuance, and thus idea and will be once more reunited in the Absolute. — Hartmann, Karl Robert Eduard Von Hartmann article from IEP website

Given suffering and limits to growth (which impedes efforts to minimize suffering), it is generally accurate.

Given suffering and limits to growth (which impedes efforts to minimize suffering), it is generally accurate. — ralfy

The project of life makes no sense when looked at as a whole. You have to focus on micro-goals and all the benchmarks on the way.. Getting lost in goals and flow are ways to distract the brain from realizing that the project as a whole is just one day going into the next, navigating the cultural avenues of survival and finding ways to entertain our brains.. Boredom, angst ennui, and especially instrumentality, are what we get when we see the bigger picture. It is like a syntax error but on the existential level.

I think it's the other way round.

I think it's the other way round. — ralfy

How so?

“The splinter in your eye is the best magnifying-glass available.”

- Theodor Adorno

The drive to seek entertainment unknowingly stems from the realization of that "bigger picture," which leads to angst.