I’m Actually Making An Effort To Temper My Innate Pessimism

A few days ago, I watched a talk that explored a concept called “the fault-finding mind.” Or, as the Buddhist monk giving the talk put it, an addiction to negativity:

People get negative. And this is one of those addictions which no-one can see. […] When I came across this in Buddhism, in the teachings of the Buddha, I thought, ‘Wow, what a great concept! It’s like a mind that gets addicted always to finding faults in things.’

In my article, Something Terrible Is About To Happen, I talk about a growing tendency to absorb the worst possible interpretation of whatever event passes across our news feeds. Partly because there are endless pundits and bloggers committed to presenting the worst possible interpretation of events as fact.

Right on cue, Patrick offers a perfect example of the fault-finding mind in action. He begins with a quote from the article.

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Patrick:

The truth is that we live in the safest, fairest, least bigoted world that has ever existed

Any history buff will tell you that’s a low bar. And a trend easily reversed.

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Steve QJ:

😅 Haha, good man. Let's dismiss millennia of progress and stay focused on the possibility for it all to go wrong.

The safest, fairest, least bigoted world ever is a low bar?! Come on, isn't it okay to look at the positive for just a little bit.

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Patrick:

Clearly, you haven’t read my stuff : ).I’m actually making an effort to temper my innate pessimism.

The low bar is because human history is generally a shitshow, and while it’s nice that most modern societies have given up publicly burning people alive or flaying them for entertainment, I don’t see it as that grand of an achievement.

I also don’t see history so much as a rising trendline from ignorant poverty to enlightened wealth as a few predictable cycles that repeat, with only the scale of the thing changing. There have been societies as open and fair as whatever is going on now, they just eventually got crushed by bad luck or internal and external assholery.

I also think that the premise we’re better off than ever is an economist’s view, and only holds true until we outstrip our resource base and the trucks stop pulling into Costco. Peaceful, prosperous, open-minded societies are just as prone to collapse as brutal dictatorships. Probably more so.

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Steve QJ:

I’m actually making an effort to temper my innate pessimism.

This is a good instinct.😅

And yes, I agree that human history is a shit show. But that's the point; it's a shitshow to us. Because we're judging it from the perspective of our comparatively wonderful world. In a hundred or a thousand years (hopefully), future generations will look back and think the same about us. Twas always thus.

If it's simply repeating cycles, can you point to any period in history that can even come close to matching today's world for wealth or fairness or justice or safety? Can you point to a society that upheld these values even close to as diligently as we do?

We should aim for perfect. But never make it the enemy of good.

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Patrick:

I like what you say, and would like to believe it but remain skeptical. I'm actually reading a really interesting book called "The Dawn of Everything" which posits that before the emergence of states and kings, there existed large urban societies -- notably in MesoAmerica, but also elsewhere-- which appear to have been collaborative, and prosperous without the need for centralized authority. And which of course were overtaken in time by more aggressive societies. It's a hypothesis at this point, of course, because the evidence remains limited, but interesting to speculate on.

I do feel the environmental crisis we've brought on ourselves is soon going to subsume our social issues as the main problem we have to deal with.

I will, however keep reading your work and consider greater optimism :).

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The scourge of toxic positivity looms large in the modern world. Pretending that life is perfect when it isn’t doesn’t help anybody. But it’s worth noting that mindless negativity doesn’t help anybody either. Knee-jerk cynicism is not a form of insight.

Yes, the world is far from perfect. This fact should animate us all. As Patrick mentions, the environment, in particular, should concern us more than 90% of the things we’re at each other’s throats over.

But more and more, it feels as if people are focusing on the negative because they enjoy it, rather than because of any desire to do something about it.

Given that we can’t change the world with a wave of our hand, the best most of us can do is be the change we hope to see in the world. Are any of us hoping to see more people who do nothing but complain?