A Pessimist’s Dilemma 

I used to think I was a born pessimist, but that’s not really accurate. My schooling in becoming a pessimist came about when I was six or seven at a boarding school outside Tucson, Arizona where we young ones weren’t treated so well. And thus  began lesson Number 1: don’t trust authority figures. 

The next education I got in pessimism was during regular school life from second grade through high school – the usual bizarre, confounding, tragi-comic years. But then in my pessimist’s journey, along comes an assigned book in the eighth grade – Richard Hofstadter’s “The Complete Book of U.S. Presidents.” This dandy mind-opening tome brought to life the true histories of our acclaimed rulers, to be seen as the real and flawed persons they were. And it came as a shock to find out that in many respects a good deal of the world history we’d been taught was a lot of crap. And the heroes we worshipped had clay feet, including the vaunted conquerors of the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries. 

Even in my college years in the early 1960s not much accurate information trickled down to us, not even on the history-making times we were living in, the revolutionary upheaval for civil rights. Some people my age at the time got hip to it and became involved; many not so much. My interest was mostly grabbed by the expanding war in Vietnam and what would be my fate in that enterprise. Even the truth regarding that government-manipulated human slaughter for seven years, didn’t come about until 1971 with the publishing of the “Pentagon Papers” and it continued for three more years. Cause for a dash of pessimism? 

Between the 60’s civil rights uprisings, the accompanying assassinations, the birth of the counter-culture and Nixon’s calumny, I found myself further lured to the wellspring of doubt and pessimism.  

For me the master’s class in hard-rock skepticism – and its big sister, cynicism – was landing in Northern California and discovering the unique, non-corporate, listener-supported radio station, KPFA, and it was gangbusters for this full-throttle pessimist. The thing with pessimism is, it’s real, it isn’t paranoia. It arises from recoil to the fumes of mendacity, cover-ups and leadership manipulation of the public, be it political, corporate or otherwise, driven by self-interest and not a thought about its victims.  

But where does the dilemma come in, you may ask, as well you should? After all it’s in the title of this palaver. Okay, here it comes. 

There is another side to the reality of life, probably many, but I’ll stick with one. Yes, we humans are selfish, hedonistic and barbaric creatures. At the same time, we display the capability and even an attraction for empathy, selflessness, sacrifice and compassion. The town of Sonoma, and the community of people living in the Valley, are rife with examples of these traits. For that matter, there are similar such communities across the world. Humans do remarkably good things for one another, and yet, on the flip side, there’s the slaughtering, persecuting and exploiting that remain. In fact, not as much as there once was, but certainly far too much. 

And then along lopes a pessimist like me, convinced humankind is despicable and cannot ever be trusted. But then this same dude cruises head-on into the evidence that displays a nobility in the human make-up, a true brother/sisterhood toward all, and that actual life is a far more complicated deal than we imagine. The human container holds many elements, components and even some mysterious forces of which we’re not fully aware. 

Look at the ultimate conundrum: All of humanity is under the shadow of a ticking doomsday clock. Enough nuclear weaponry to send the world back tens of thousands or more years stands stockpiled, but at the ready. Along with that, there’s the slow death by global warming. And who do we have to blame for this?

So, good old pessimism has its place, but it needs be tempered with realistic idealism, and the strength not to give up, that there are right and positive ways of living and it’s incumbent upon us all, for the sake of us all, to find and live them. 

By Will Shonbrun