Humans Rely On Both Optimism And Pessimism — But One Is Far More Useful

–OpEd–

BERLIN — Most of us are obviously rather pessimistic. But if we could choose, we’d prefer to be optimistic.

Evidence for this can be found in the numerous self-help books that aim to teach readers how to become optimists. They sell well. Just look at the bestseller lists, or Google “books on optimism” if you don’t believe it. You can also try “positive thinking,” which is pretty much the same thing.

Books that teach pessimism are rare. There’s no market for it.

Yet pessimism has a few undeniable advantages. For example, you never get an unpleasant surprise if you were expecting a negative outcome anyway. You may even have been prepared for the worst in some way. That’s why the catastrophe doesn’t hit you quite as hard as someone who hadn’t planned for the worst.

For our ancestors, it was an advantage if they expected a bad harvest or an attack by their enemies and were prepared for it. A certain amount of pessimism is therefore inscribed in our genes. Even today, pessimists are supposedly healthier on average than optimists. This is what the gerontologist Frieder Lang believes he has discovered. Why might that be? Because pessimists place greater value on prevention.

Optimists tend to enjoy the day more. They eat what they like, they might smoke and they don’t bother with boring morning exercises. Pessimists have long foreseen the ailments of old age, so they’re prepared for it and find it easier to bear when they, as former CEOs, have to move out of their nice apartment or need a walker.

This is referred to as “realistic pessimism.” Realistically speaking, things don’t always turn out well.

Downsides of pessimism

Pessimism shows its dark side when it becomes a general attitude toward life. Then, it has a paralyzing effect. Its motto: No matter what I do, it won’t make any difference anyway.

If realistic, reasonably dosed pessimism isn’t such a bad thing, why do so many people want to become more optimistic and think positively? Why do these self-help books sell so well?

It simply feels better to be in the warm bath of optimism than in the icy wind of pessimism.

On the back cover of Laura Depping’s book How Optimism Makes Everything Possible, the teaser reads: “After all, we all just want to be happy.” Well, that sums it up. Of course, there’s no book titled How Pessimism Makes Everything Possible with the subtitle “We all just want to be sad.”

Besides resignation and fatalism, the downsides of pessimism include bad moods, fear of the future, denial of pleasure (which is unfortunately often unhealthy) and fear of change, which usually brings disadvantages along with advantages. Since pessimists tend to consider the worst possible outcome as the most likely, they sometimes overreact.

Downsides of optimism

Optimism is also stored in our genes. It too has brought our ancestors some advantages in evolution.

Neuroscientist Henning Beck surprisingly cites reproduction as one of the most important. It’s true. Those who enter into relationships and bring children into the world generally believe that there is a future, and one that will be worth living.

Optimists also believe that problems can be solved, if they arise. Very often, they can be. Pessimists might not even try. It may sound boring, but when it comes to optimism, if we are to judge it, it’s all about the dosage. Because optimism also has a dark side: naivety.

Naivety often has to do with confusing one’s wishes with reality. Here are two examples from current world events.

In Germany, many firmly believed that Russian President Vladimir Putin was a man in whose hands one could safely place a large part of our energy supply. Why bother with safeguards, why be cautious? There were indications that this view of him might be overly optimistic, but Russian gas was temptingly cheap and flowed abundantly. It was just a damn good deal. What could possibly go wrong?

In Israel, overconfidence mixed with naive optimism before the Hamas massacre on Oct. 7. The border with Gaza was only relatively weakly protected on the Israeli side. Israeli female soldiers in their observation posts had noticed in time that something was happening on the opposite side that looked very much like attack preparations, and they reported it.

The government ignored their warnings and didn’t send reinforcements. They thought Hamas was neither willing or able to carry out larger actions. A catastrophic misjudgment. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confused his wishes with reality.

Divided on climate change

On the issue of climate change, the difference between pessimists and optimists is particularly stark.

Naive optimists often make their classic mistake here too, ignoring or downplaying a reality that doesn’t match their wishes: It won’t be that bad. Pessimists also make their classic mistake, considering the worst possible outcome as the most likely. The most radical among them even prophesize the end of the world, which very few climate scientists go along with.

But isn’t climate change an example of why we should listen to pessimists in case of doubt, perhaps after deducting some percentage due to their tendency towards panic and seeing things in a negative light?

Pessimists project humanity’s problems into the future without considering that humanity evolves.

German neuroscientist Henning Beck advises against this in an interview with the ARD television network, saying “Pessimists project humanity’s problems into the future without considering that humanity evolves and will come up with new solutions for problems. If someone had said 40 years ago that we would have found solutions for many problems today, probably few would have believed it.”

So pessimists don’t rely on the progress of science. This progress is undoubtedly a reality. Unfortunately, it can never be predicted in detail. In this respect, the optimistic argument “just leave climate change to science, they’ll find something against it” doesn’t sound very convincing. Although in the end, the optimists could be right. Too bad you’ll only find out in the end.

Hope vs optimism

An optimist who isn’t naive acknowledges problems and doesn’t deny them. An optimist tries to solve them, and believes they can be solved. I don’t believe that any of humanity’s great inventions would have been possible without optimism.

Hardly anyone knows the magic power of optimism better than soccer fans. They know that even if their team is trailing by three goals, they can make a comeback — as long as there’s time. But the team has to believe in itself. If they give up, the match is decided.

Jonas Grethlein, a classical philologist born in 1978, was diagnosed with cancer at the age of 27. Doctors told him he had less than a 20% chance of survival. Grethlein fought and overcame cancer. Recently, he published a book titled Hope, which is subtitled “A Story of Confidence.”

The opposite of hope is not pessimism but fear.

Hope and optimism are not quite the same thing. The opposite of hope is not pessimism but fear. Fear rarely motivates; like pessimism, it tends to paralyze, or you may suppress it.

Although hope is a source of strength, surprisingly, some people reject it. These individuals believe that despair is necessary for people to act decisively. Grethlein quotes the motto of climate activists from Extinction Rebellion: “Hope dies, action begins.” Soccer coaches would disagree, and Grethlein sees it differently as well.

Hope can be unrealistic, such as when someone believes in a miracle cure that grants immortality. It can be an illusion, like the hope of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny that he might ultimately be stronger than Vladimir Putin. Hope can also be associated with criminal goals, as in the case of a murderer hoping to remain undetected.

Hope and optimism can also be entirely self-centered, disregarding the rest of humanity. Those who hope are neither omniscient nor saints. But who really is?

Fears of the future

An incomplete, unordered list of fears currently prevalent in Europe includes: fear of war, fear of climate catastrophe, fear of economic collapse and inflation, fear of migration, terrorism, antisemitism, fear of a new dictatorship, fear of a deadly plague…

Elsewhere, the mood is less bleak. When asked whether the world will be better or worse in 15 years than it is today, 49% of respondents in China responded optimistically while 21% were negative; in Peru, the ratio is 36 to 36; in Germany, it’s 11 to 63. In Africa, the majority of young people believe they will fare better than their parents.

Pessimism is something one acquires when one already has everything. One must be able to afford it.

Moreover, pessimism can be linked to ignorance. Panic over climate change is particularly widespread among those in Germany who know relatively little about the subject, as a survey published in the journal Climatic Change among 2,000 Germans revealed. Respondents who were well-informed about climate issues were less likely to anticipate an apocalypse.

In fact, poverty, child mortality and hunger have been steadily declining worldwide in recent years, largely due to economic growth. Not even wars seem to have halted this global trend. Gradual positive developments rarely make headlines; natural disasters and wars dominate news coverage. This distorts our perception.

History of hope and fear

When West Germany was poorer during the early post-war decades, optimism flourished there; this is recounted in Michael Miersch’s book Once Freedom and Back, who is from my baby boomer generation.

Starting around the 1970s, dystopias became more popular than utopias, and the now wealthier country gradually moved away from the optimism still found in relatively poor Africa today. In conversation with science journalist Axel Bojanowski, Miersch states: “The ‘We can do anything’ has been replaced by ‘We destroy everything.'”

Thus, the future is no longer seen as a place of hope as it was decades ago. The remnants of hope hardly revolve around a better tomorrow but instead focus on successfully warding off numerous threats. It resembles a soccer team playing defensively whose only goal is to somehow make it to penalty shootouts.

Without optimism, nothing will improve; things will only get worse by themselves.

For centuries, people’s hopes were directed toward the afterlife where salvation awaited them. Later on, hope for most — not just boomers — shifted toward progress that would conquer diseases and bring prosperity to all. This did happen to some extent; however, paradise on earth has yet to arrive.

Faith has been pushed to the margins in Europe by ideologies that assigned the role of savior to groups of people: the working class, women, long-oppressed colonial peoples — someone among those who previously stood in shadows would bring forth the sun and redeem everyone; yet paradise still has not come. And AI will not deliver it either.

Nothing happens on its own; no one will redeem us. We must keep going, arguing with each other, hoping for the best and remaining optimistic. Without optimism, nothing will improve; things will only get worse by themselves. We must tend our garden diligently as French philosopher Voltaire wrote in Candide.

This metaphorical statement seems to be gaining traction again; I have read it several times recently. Tending to the garden sounds good — but how does one do that?

Two factors

Whenever the phone rings, I always expect bad news. I’m surprised by good news of any kind because I wasn’t expecting it. I initially hesitated to write this article when my editorial team suggested it because I felt like a dedicated cat owner asked to praise dogs.

While researching, I stumbled upon an old column I had written and forgotten about concerning life expectancy. The National Cancer Institute conducted a long-term study with 650,000 participants revealing two factors particularly extend life expectancy — statistically even more important than regular exercise or whether someone smokes or not: a high income extends life by an average of 10 years — primarily due to lifestyle choices available to wealthier individuals.

The second factor contributing another 10 years is “happiness and satisfaction.” Optimism undoubtedly plays a significant role here as well. Frieder Lang’s thesis that pessimists live longer stands on shaky ground.

There is often a correlation between wealth and satisfaction but not an absolute one; there are dissatisfied rich individuals and satisfied average earners. The lower life expectancy among optimistic Africans compared to pessimistic Germans could relate to healthcare access.

There is always tomorrow

In my life, pessimism has often held me back. This realization hit me was I was contemplating optimism in recent weeks. I’m sharing this because others may have experienced something similar, too. Sometimes I have stayed too long in jobs or relationships where I felt uncomfortable because I did not believe anything better would come afterward — which has always proven mistaken.

At times I refrained from sending applications because I thought: Spare yourself disappointment; they won’t choose you anyway. Who knows what opportunities I missed because of this? Pessimism also relates to cowardice; optimists have the courage to venture into the unknown. The same courage European explorers needed when sailing into uncharted waters is also found among researchers or artists or politicians who confront what is deemed an undeniable truth or how things ought to be done simply because that’s how it’s always been done.

The more often things turn out well enough overall.

Perhaps my pessimism has lessened over time; experience tends to do that. The older one gets without suffering shipwrecks along life’s journey, the more often things turn out well enough overall.

Throughout history, optimists have ultimately always been proven right because there has always been another tomorrow and always opportunities for learning from mistakes and starting anew. There has been suffering, destruction, murder and annihilation — yet afterward, new children came into this world laughing as if nothing had happened.

For me Voltaire’s statement “we must tend our garden” means: act every autumn as though there will be another harvest and another summer ahead — that can never be wrong. If one day that comes to an end, you won’t notice anyway — that’s what I’ve learned while reflecting on optimism.