i'm not a pessimist, and you shouldn't be one either
believing in the inherent selfishness of people is individualistic propaganda that only serves to reinforce capitalistic and conservative ideology.
I will be blunt. This article is a response to
’s i'm a pessimist and you should be too.The personal inspiration for his piece is clear. Some way or another, it seems that he’s grown frustrated with optimism. Less so ‘optimism’ as it’s defined as being hopeful, but more so optimism as a stand-in for the belief that there is more good in the world than bad. His thesis is the subtitle of the piece, “the world is a shitty place home to selfish people, and claiming to be an optimist is an act of privilege”.
I can empathize with a resentment of toxic positivity or a frustration with a naive unwillingness to recognize the darker shades of the world, but unfortunately, you cannot just log onto Al Gore’s internet and claim that everyone should just accept that humans are inherently selfish. There are a plethora of unintended, unsavory implications that come along with that. It’s a terrible call to action.
I will admit there was an original version of this post that was snarkier. Wordier. Pre-emptively defensive, in the way people raised on Twitter often are. There is something very disconcerting about watching a privileged white man in America cite the suffering of those in the global south to reinforce a misanthropic worldview. But, I think, my goal with this piece is not to reject or tear apart. It is to transform. Often, it is when we are faced with the ugliest truths about ourselves, we must decide to be better. Timshel.
The Audience
Though it is not stated, I must assume that Dylan Joseph is addressing a very specific type of person. I do not think this article would go over well if he walked into a war torn country where people were fighting for their basic human rights and freedoms and argued against optimism, officially defined as “hopefulness and confidence about the future or the successful outcome of something”.
Ironically, Joseph is not addressing the intentionally selfish person. He is operating under the assumption that the audience is as disgusted by the atrocities of the world as he is. He is not addressing those who steal the $20, but more so those who fail to recognize how the $20 thief exemplifies a larger issue.
This is a little jarring to me. I am not surrounded by oblivious people. Most of my friends feel the pain of the world very deeply, and we often discuss its issues. To my friends and I, optimism is necessary, else we risk losing ourselves to despair. I’ve written extensively about the danger of despair, especially in the face of political annihilation, and you can read more about it here.
That being said, oblivious people do exist, and Joseph’s issue is with the audience’s comfort and privilege. And I do agree, comfort and privilege do insulate a person from the difficult realities of the world. We must recognize the hurt in the world if we’re to do anything about it.
But recognizing that hurt should not come at the cost of giving up one’s hope. It should not come at the cost of turning one’s back on humanity. And we should not operate under the assumption that pessimism (or misanthropy) is the natural conclusion of those who recognize, or even live under, the worst of what the world has to offer.
Pessimism, as an ideology, is not an act of solidarity with those in the world who suffer. You are doing nothing for them by acknowledging their suffering. Solidarity is an action. If you wish to stand with the oppressed, you must act.
Everyone Get Pessimistic NOW
Let’s pretend, for a moment, that I sincerely believe in all that Joseph has laid out in his article. The world is an ugly place, people’s inherent selfishness is the cause of most strife, and their selfishness begets more selfishness.
If that is the case, why would the solution be to also become a pessimist? If you can’t beat them, join them?
It is stated, as if fact, that optimism is to reject the cold, hard reality of the world. It is a choice of naivete, and hence, passivity. Pessimism is to accept the realities of life.
But, how is that better? Is it better for the individual to stew in misanthropy? To go around, assuming the worst of his fellow man, his friends? Is it better for him because it absolves him of the guilt of his own selfishness? It explains away his own terribleness, his own inaction, his own crulety? Who benefits from pessimism?
Is it better for society if we accept its cruel realities? Accepting the status quo, the inevitability of a cruel world, is the true ideology of passivity.
Who Actually Benefits from Pessimism?
I use “pessimism” here as a shorthand for the belief that there are more bad humans in the world than good, and that the world is inherently selfish.
Joseph, in his article, refers to an idea of “fractures” in society. This fracturing, as I understand it, is the fracturing from a community to the individual. It is how we have become separated and estranged from one another.
But, I would argue, this issue of “fracturing” is not exacerbated by the human condition of selfishness as much as it is accelerated by an individualistic American culture. A culture that relies on the accepted assumption that all people are inherently selfish.
America was founded on a declaration of personal freedoms (for a very specific in-group). Over time, these sets of values have evolved into a highly individualistic culture. “Personal freedom” does not mean the freedom of all people to live equally, but personal freedom for the individual to do whatever he wishes. Selfishness is, partly, bestowed upon you by the country you live in and nurtured by your peers. It is an entitlement inherited from the superpower in which you were raised.
With the rise of industrialism, individualistic culture has strengthened, and with it, the rise of capitalism and the free market. If everyone focuses on themselves and their own self-interests, the invisible hand of the free market will right itself into well-being for all.
Capitalists need people to believe in the inherent selfishness of others.
A capitalistic system can only operate if the individual centers his self-interests. Then, of course, the capitalist should not feel bad if his choices harm those beneath him. In this society, everything is a choice, and they are choosing to stay. They are as free and as selfish as he is. This is the best economic framework on Earth because it is the most true to human nature.
Because, you see, the inherent selfishness of others is what makes socialism bad. It’s what makes social security programs impossible. We can’t have medicare or food stamps because people will just abuse the system. People are not going to work if we give them a way out. Because people are self-serving. And the only way to protect you and your capital and your investments is by centering yourself. It’s only natural.
Pick yourself up by your bootstraps.
Pessimism, or rather, the belief that humans are inherently selfish, is the ideology of incel misogynists on Reddit who believe that their skull size and other biological features have predetermined their loser status in life. It’s the ideology of both school shooters and those who believe that school shootings are a conspiracy. It’s the ideology of those who own for-profit prisons. It’s the ideology of the United State’s 800 military bases spread over 70 countries. It’s the ideology of pro-life lawmakers. It’s the ideology of those who cut social services.
Believing that the world is an inherently bad place is the ideology of those who commit suicide. Taken to its logical end, pessimism breeds nothing but resentment. It only works to benefit the most selfish, those who exploit an already ugly world.
Optimism is the Call to Action
To combat the worsening of the world, we must believe that people are capable of better. We must foster empathy. We strengthen our communities. We must be the change we wish to see.
None of this is possible without hope. It is not possible without optimism.
Am I being naive? I don’t think so.
I am fundamentally an optimist. Whether that comes from nature or nurture, I cannot say. Part of being optimistic is keeping one’s head pointed toward the sun, one’s feet moving forward. There were many dark moments when my faith in humanity was sorely tested, but I would not and could not give myself up to despair. That way lay defeat and death.
Long Walk to Freedom: Autobiography of Nelson Mandela, Nelson Mandela
It is simply:
1) ahistorical to pretend that the world has gotten worse over time. There are ebbs and flows, but the world is a much better place overall than it was one hundred years ago.
2) ahistorical to pretend that this upwards trajectory was not the work of hope or empathy or optimism. The world is better because there were people who organized and fought to make it better.
Hope is not a product of naivite. It’s a product of both courage and vulnerability, knowing that the world is against you and still believing in better.
If you refuse to see optimism as an act of resilience, consider it, at least, an act of defiance. The world was only ever changed by those who refused to accept its reality.
War. Famine. Injustice. Environmental collapse.
Many of the causes of these fractures in our lives and world are solely rooted in human selfishness. We’re incapable of seeing the other side, especially now as shadow-oligarchic intolerance has continued to be highlighted in the modern era. And at times, I don’t believe it is a matter of an incapability of seeing the other side of our actions or problems because incapability insinuates there is an inaccessibility. Most humans simply don't care to view the world outside of their selfishness.
i'm a pessimist and you should be too, Dylan Joseph
This quote is not a dismissal of optimism, but betrays the need for it. The ability to see “the other side” is empathy. It is seeing those who are also victims of the same oppressive structures as a comrade instead of a competitor. It is rejecting exploitation and encouraging collaboration. Optimism is the seed, that when nurtured, blooms into a better tomorrow.
And how are we meant to be empathetic when we assume the worst of others?
Psychological Egoism
“Are humans inherently selfish?” is a philosophical question as old as questions themselves. It has been studied. It has been debated. And it would be silly to pretend that there’s a clear-cut answer.
Psychological egoism is the belief that humans are motivated by self-interest. The argument in Joseph’s article is that since the world is riddled with so many issues, and most of these issues come from human selfishness, then it is because most humans don’t care to see the world outside of their own selfishness.
Joseph quoted Talia Varley’s ‘age of selfishness’ to cite how COVID-19 has caused an increase in selfishness in young teens. Interestingly, the full title of the piece is “The ‘age of selfishness’ is making us sick, single, and miserable. It’s because our brains are hardwired for both self-interest and altruism”.
It is helpful to understand the neurobiology of the selfish–selfless spectrum and how we can refocus ourselves to maximize our well-being. Rather than rigidly defining humans as “universally selfish” or “universally altruistic,” both reflect extremes on the selfish–selfless spectrum across which we slide back and forth over time. Both individuals and populations at scale can shift in the behavioral spectrum over time. And this spectrum can be influenced by factors like cognitive therapy, mindfulness training for introspection, and broad-based social and cultural influences. Many of these approaches that reward-activate compassion are even entering mainstream clinical care to help manage depression and stress.
Varley sums it up best. People are not just selfish or just altruistic. They are both.
Since the dawn of time, humans have relied on community. We are incapable of living solely individualistically; we seek out connection, and there are psychological repercussions to breaking that trust. The human desire to protect what we value is just as real and immediate as the human desire to destroy what threatens us.
Human selfishness is a weak motivation when considering the full breadth of human conflict and catastrophe. An in-group/out-group framework is much more comprehensive. Altruism is extended to an in-group, selfishness to an out-group.
Did you know barbarian was originally the Greek word for “foreigner”? How quickly “those unlike us” can become synonymous with “uncultured, brutish”.
The question becomes, then, who is in your in-group and who is in your out-group? Empathetic people extend their in-group as far as it can reach. Selfish people operate in a world where most are the out-group.
The most exclusive group is, of course, the 1%. Remember, the majority of power is consolidated in a very few number of people. And, well, those who get to the top are power hungry and self-serving. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. Why should the majority of people be morally convicted by the decisions of the worst of us?
But, what about common selfishness? Joseph claims that small acts of everyday selfishness are what breed his pessimism. He even brings up the selfishness of pocketing $20 that fell out of a pedestrian’s pocket.
Well. What if I told you that a global study found that most people return a wallet to its owner if there’s money inside? And researchers found that the more money there was inside, the higher the likelihood of return?
Does that change anything? The researchers suspect it’s because most people who found the wallet did not want to feel like a thief, but can that be classified as an act of selfishness when they only have to answer to their own conscious?
A False Dichotomy
Something particularly striking about Joseph’s article to me was the way he discussed the “good” people in the world. As if the world can be cleanly divided into “good” people and “bad” people. In reality, it is a spectrum.
As we’ve established, the capacity for both altruism and selfishness lives within all of us. Selflessness is not a state of being. It’s a choice.
Nothing is stopping you from doing a selfless act. Nothing is stopping you from returning the wallet. Nothing is stopping you from waking up tomorrow morning, looking at yourself in the mirror, and signing up to volunteer in your community. It’s much easier to see the good in the world when you seek it out, when you contribute to it, when you surround yourself by others who also believe in the good.
That is how change is created. We build a better future by rejecting a destructive reality.
This is where, perhaps, pessimism may become its own comfort. It absolves us of the difficult choice to be better. It explains away our selfishness as a reality of the world.
Well, fuck that.
How do I know that people are not inherently selfish? Because I try my best to be selfless, to do good in the world. I know that if I am capable of good, others must be as well. Am I a good person? Is anyone? All I have are the choices I make every day. And I am not going to rob my fellow man of their autonomy because it makes for a neater worldview. I’m not going to give up on them, either.
How can I believe that there is good in the world? Because I know there is good in myself. I see it in the faces of those around me. I see it in small kindnesses even in the face of atrocities, outside of the bubble of my privilege. I refer to resistance against oppressive regimes against the threat of violence. I refer to neighbors sharing food during an artificial famine. These are not “exceptions” to the rule. Community is how humans have survived hardship since the dawn of time.
Vonnegut
Joe, a young man from Pittsburg, came up to me with one request: “Please tell me it will all be okay.”
“Welcome to Earth, young man,” I said. “It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, Joe, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of: Goddamn it, Joe, you’ve got to be kind!”
A Man Without a Country, Kurt Vonnegut
I know, with absolute certainty, that Kurt Vonnegut is grateful that he’s dead right now.
I recently finished A Man Without a Country. In many ways, it was Vonnegut’s end-of-life spiral. He hated George W. Bush so much that he found it in himself to write one more book, and in it complained at great length about the state of the world and how he’s tired of it. It spent 8 weeks on the New York Times Bestseller list.
There is something very refreshing about seeing a man recognize just how awful his government was at the beginning of the Iraq War, especially in an age when it has been rebranded as a touchstone of cultural unity. Isn’t it so nice how the world came together after 9/11?
In case you haven’t noticed, we are now as feared and hated all over the world as the Nazis once were.
And with good reason.
A Man Without a Country, Kurt Vonnegut
Everything Vonnegut touches on as an issue in A Man Without a Country has gotten worse. Fossil fuels, dehumanization, wars, violence, religion in politics. Everything. He would really, really have hated to be alive right now.
Yet, his call to action is not to just accept that the world is a bad place.
Chapter 8 is my favorite. He talks a little about humanism. A little about how a few bad guessers shift the course of human history. About how Washington, D.C. rejects intelligent people. About how Abraham Lincoln and Mark Twain gave up on humanity at the end of their lives. About war as a form of entertainment.
And at the end, he offers something to offset all the tragedy, a story about his hero, Ignaz Semmelweis.
Semmelweis was a physician and scientist who theorized that washing hands when treating post-partum patients reduced infection. Though his theory produced results, his findings conflicted with scientific theory at the time, and he was mocked. Then he suffered a nervous breakdown, was committed to an asylum, and died from an infection caused by a beating from the guards.
A pessimist would accept that what happened to Semmelweis was a natural consequence of the crulety of the world he lived in. An optimist would see him as proof that the world can become better. Doctors do wash their hands now, after all, thanks to him. He’s saved many lives.
Me, I just hope that one day I might do half the amount of good that he did. You should, too. That’s the only thing that really matters.
If there’s anything they hate, it’s a wise human.
So be one anyway. Save our lives and your lives, too. Be honorable.
A Man Without a Country, Kurt Vonnegut