What is the goal? Avoiding any deception at all costs, or living to see your grand-kids?

Let's assume we begin from a neutral standpoint. What advantage is there in being pessimistic versus optimistic? Pessimism is inherently restrictive, optimism is inherently open-ended. Pessimism assumes that something bad is going to happen and can't be avoided. Optimism assumes that something good could happen.

Cards on the table. I am a melioristic-optimist.

I think that it is both one of avoiding deception and of reaching our goals in life. My query is about the whole way of finding a balanced perception from which we are able to live.

I find pessimism as rather limited and prefer optimism. However, it seems to me that so much philosophy is biased in favour of pessimism. I would be interested to know more about your position of being a meleoristic-optimist.

I have to admit it. I am negative/pessimistic and sometimes I jump so easily to the nihilistic pit. But I guess these are the right points to start the act of thinking. Positivism or romanticism can drive us a painful situation where we except everything but we end up having nothing or something we did not except.
So despite pessimism can be sometimes tired, at least we have a more realistic figure of our life not expecting so much and then if we reach it the satisfaction is even better.

Pessimism is inherently restrictive, — Pantagruel

Why is restrictive? You still acting but not as the motivation of a motivational/romanticism person.

To me, it is all about agency and choice. It is a choice whether to take a pessimistic or an optimistic stance.

Naive optimism might be construed as the belief that "things might improve" but I think this is an unsophisticated argument. I believe a true optimist is someone who interprets a situation optimistically in concert with the belief that his actions contribute materially to that possibility. Hence, why I characterize myself as a melioristic-optimist.

Conversely, naive pessimism assumes "things will get worse." However there is no other version of pessimism. If one is a pessimist, then one necessarily believes that there is nothing he can do to preclude things getting worse. Hence, pessimism is really simultaneously a denial of agency. And hence a denial of the meaning of choice, an invalidation or disclaimer of free-will. In that sense, pessimism is self-contradictory and absurd. Which is probably why pessimists are unhappy. Or maybe it is the other way around. Unhappy people are pessimists?

I guess, following that line of reasoning, pessimism could be seen as the experience of the "failure of agency." That I'd believe.

So despite pessimism can be sometimes tired, at least we have a more realistic figure of our life not expecting so much and then if we reach it the satisfaction is even better. — javi2541997

This is not pessimism but stoicism.

This is not pessimism but stoicism. — Pantagruel

This is not stoicism but scepticism

Scepticism does not preclude optimism. Nor does it have anything whatsoever to say about expectations.

Yes, because scepticism doesn’t provide expectations at all. It is similar to nihilism.

Sorry but I guess I am confused and I am making a big knot between pessimism, negativism and scepticism plus nihilism.

Nothing is funnier than unhappiness, I grant you that… Yes, yes, it's the most comical thing in the world. And we laugh, we laugh, with a will, in the beginning. But it's always the same thing. Yes, it's like the funny story we have heard too often, we still find it funny, but we don't laugh any more. — Samuel Beckett, Endgame

Pessimism, yes – Assume the worst, plan and proceed accordingly; and whether or not the worst happens, roll with those anticipated punches when they fall and keep moving forward, or as Winston Churchill purportedly quipped, "When you're going through hell keep going." The pessimistic stance, which Does Not Entail 'miserabilism' 'cynicism' or 'futilism', cultivates courage – sing the blues and dance! – at the expense of hope (to wit: “There is an infinite amount of hope in the universe ... but not for us.” ~Franz Kafka); only optimism repeatedly disappointed, or under duress & traumatized, loses hope and 'falls' into despair.

Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man. — Freddy Zarathustra

Re: "Pandora's Box" ...

That said, I'm an absurdist interpreting both pessimism and optimism dialectically, or against themselves (as above), and thereby live by improvisation, adapting on-the-fly as joyfully as I can to chaos & catastrophe, to loss & betrayal, to sorrow & boredom ...

https://youtu.be/TWNgzbgrDe0 (The Mud)

:death: :flower:

Just wondering, how do you accept an answer and get the 'view answer' box?

I am out at the moment, so plan to respond to comments when I get home, but I can respond to yours quickly while outside. I don't think that you should concern yourself with getting the answer come up, as I think that is just a feature of the software. I don't think that the one that shows up saying 'Answer' means that it is the definitive one. After all, it is about debate...

I see pessimism as a leading to a problem for choices. I once had a tutor who said that it was a mistake to try to give people a sense of hope. I see false hope as a problematic, because it can lead to a sense of futility. However, to discourage any sense of hope at all, taken to the maximum, would seem to imply that it is not worth bothering to try to make any improvements or changes to make one's own situation, or even that of others, any better. It would seem to me that it would be saying that the situation is hopeless and amount to the position of giving up all together. That would be the ultimate logic of nihilism, in its most negative form.

Hope you don't mind, I just came across a bit in the Introduction to Metaphysics where Heidegger talks about the grasp which modern consciousness has of its own being in a world exploding with and exploded by technology. It seemed appropriate:

The spiritual decline of the earth has progressed so far that peopies are in danger of losing their last spiritual strength, the strength that makes it possible even to see the decline [which is meant in relation to the fate of "Being"] and to appraise it as such. This simple observation has nothing to do with cultural pessimism - nor with any optimism either, of course; for the darkening of the world, the flight of the gods, the destruction of the earth, the reduction ofhuman beings to a mass, the hatred and mistrust of everything creative and free has already reached such proportions throughout the whole earth that such childish categories as pessimism and optimism have long become laughable.

I see pessimism as a leading to a problem for choices. I once had a tutor who said that it was a mistake to try to give people a sense of hope. I see false hope as a problematic, because it can lead to a sense of futility. However, to discourage any sense of hope at all, taken to the maximum, would seem to imply that it is not worth bothering to try to make any improvements or changes to make one's own situation, or even that of others any better. It would seem to me that it would be saying that the situation is hopeless and amount to the position of giving up all together. That would be the ultimate logic of nihilism, in its most negative form. — Jack Cummins

Yes, this is essentially my perspective as well Jack.

It seems to me that pessimism and optimism are like the psychology optical illusion picture, which show a vase or two face profiles. — Jack Cummins

Optimism and pessimism seem complementary to me. Part of optimism is recognizing problems and facing them without shrinking away from the occasionally depressing truths, the only starting point from which the world can sometimes be made better. And part of pessimism is acknowledging that we might as well keep optimistically trying because giving up is the ultimate void of futility. Its sad some individuals have a combination of brain chemistry and conditioning that makes it so hard to remain stable as modern education leads everyone to inhabit this knowledge of good and evil perspective.

Your reference to Heidegger is very apt to the topic because my whole thinking around the idea of the question of pessimism and optimism was not meant to be about personal life. I do see it as applying to social and political issues. The fears about the destruction of the world are such that the spirit of people may become broken to the point where humanity on a mass level believe that we are on the brink of collapse and give up trying to make changes for the better. The whole rise of technology and the mass media is affecting people's perception of the world. We have means of mass destruction through nuclear weapons and the whole ecological threat are so apparent in the information available to us. The whole impact of this information is such that it could have a self fulfilling prophecy on the mass consciousness and unconscious of humanity.

This may have already been ushered in partially through the millennium belief in fear of the apocalypse. There have been many times when people thought that we were at the end of time already. However, the situation has become one which is not dependent on any set of religious beliefs, but on a very real possibility of a possible extinction of the human race, or of such environmental conditions that people may really begin speculating that the situation is beyond all possibility of remedies. Even the politicians and other leaders in the world may be affected in a negative way by a whole underlying perspective of the end of the human race. So, we are talking about a situation in which despair could engulf the mass psyche of humanity, and leading to people losing strength to achieve the best possible ways forward

very real possibility of a possible extinction of the human race, or of such environmental conditions that people may really begin speculating that the situation is beyond all possibility of remedies. — Jack Cummins

The big question is, will the spirit of humanity continue to grow and blossom somewhere, despite the decay of its body? Or will a complete spiritual, moral, and intellectual bankruptcy long precede the eventual disappearance?

Decay of the body is one which we face individually. It is interesting to think of this in relation to the global crisis. Perhaps Gaia, or mother earth is reaching her menopause, but we have exploited her body and will have to live with the consequences. I do believe that we need to make changes in order to try to find ways for the potential future generations, and the biggest danger may be if we just view ourselves as the final inhabitants to the earth.

I do believe that it is possible to blend optimism and pessimism. Perhaps it can even be seen as a continuum.

You speak of brain chemistry and I think that this comes into it because depression comes into the picture. In some ways, negative thinking can set off the process of clinical depression. Or, the experience of depression may lead to negative thinking. It may be hard to determine which is the cause, or it may involve a complete feedback loop.

There are productive and counter-productive versions of both optimism and pessimism. Pantagruel's answer above is correct given the counterproductive version of pessimism ("something bad will happen") and the productive version of optimism ("something good could happen"), but one could instead think of pessimism as "something bad could happen" (which is productive) and optimism as "something good will happen" (which is counterproductive).

Assuming that either something good or something bad definitely will happen no matter what you do, or equivalently that either something good or something bad could not happen no matter what you do, is counterproductive, as it leaves you no apparent reason to try to make things turn out better, whether that's because it's all gonna work itself out or because there's no hope. And if you don't try, then there is less likely to be any hope.

I call the productive types of both optimism and pessimism the "broad" forms of them, and the counter-productive types the "narrow" forms (because the counter-productive types are a subset of the productive types). And I advocate embracing the broad, productive forms of both, because that's the only pragmatic way to look at things:

Pessimism or optimism? I think which one is best depends upon the toll your choice takes on your mental health.

Talking of a blend. Cellist Pablo Casals had a great quote - 'The situation is hopeless, we must take the next step.'

It is interesting that you bring in the topic of romanticism because the whole movement of romanticism came with very different views. Perhaps the most interesting was that of Nietzsche's nihilism. It was a philosophy of despair but in some ways it was a romantic one rather than the conventional form despair. In a way it created a glamour of despair and I do believe that this is an aspect of the philosophy of despair in our culture.

I do think that it is true that repeated attempts to strive for hope do give way to a more ultimate collapse into despair. It may be that the person keeps getting knocked down, gets knocked down and this can happen repeatedly. So, I wonder if the way of embracing the absurd is one way of finding a pathway of acceptance of futility without becoming broken by it.

Pessimism and optimism definitely seem to be partly a consequence of the states of mind we experience. Some people become depressed and some even develop manic defences, or fragment into psychotic states.

However, pessimism and optimism also operate on a cultural level. The professionals within mental health care come with their own values and attitudes. So, in a way pessimism can even be contagious as an underlying factor permeating social life and perhaps the ones who experience the profound states presenting in mental health care do so because they are the most sensitive ones.

but one could instead think of pessimism as "something bad could happen" — Pfhorrest

But is this really what is meant by pessimism? I understand the desired symmetry, but I think your construction is misleading. "Be prepared for the worst but hope for the best" really doesn't fit what anyone means when they describe someone as a pessimist. Pessimism and optimism are meant to be understood as polar, I would argue. Hence what you are really advocating is just a brand of optimism, cautious optimism, I would say. Which I fully endorse!

So, in a way pessimism can even be contagious as an underlying factor permeating social life and perhaps the ones who experience the profound states presenting in mental health care do so because they are the most sensitive ones. — Jack Cummins

Sure. There is also a difference between pessimism and hopelessness.

But is this really what is meant by pessimism? — Pantagruel

I have been called "pessimistic" by people who want to engage in what I call "narrow optimism", just for calling attention to the possibility of bad things happening. They complain that I "always focus on the negative", by being on the lookout for things that could go wrong. Some people really really just want to believe that everything is going to be fine no matter what and ignore the possible pitfalls because thinking about that makes them feel bad. Those are the counterproductive "narrow optimists" I mean, and the thing that they call "pessimism" (which you rightly call just caution) is what I mean by "broad pessimism".

Of course, there is a difference between pessimism and hopelessness but, surely, pessimistic thoughts can give rise to a sense of hopelessness.