Pessimism is often mistaken for a characteristic of the "clever" and confused with intelligence. This is an illusion. However, pessimism has nothing to do with either foresight or reality. Rather, pessimism can be explained by intellectual short-sightedness, a lack of imagination and mental sluggishness. The pessimist perpetuates and generalises the darkness of the present moment, making temporary situations permanent and darkening the future with the shadow of the present. This view is not intelligence, but a state of indirect surrender that lives in fear.
Optimism, on the other hand, is not passive naivety, but an active and questioning thought activity. An optimist is not deceived by the darkness that appears on the surface; he/she analyses in depth, looks for ways out and evaluates alternative possibilities. He/she understands hope not as a rosy dream, but as the dynamic that underlies life. The flow of life tends towards optimism, because nature does not stand still, it changes and renews itself. An optimist is a person who moves in harmony with this change. And he does this without limiting himself to conventional ways and forms of thinking.
The pessimist transforms his state of mind into a universal principle. He believes that today's depression is tomorrow's truth. He seals the future with the traumas of the past. Since he can see no light in the darkness, he becomes silent; when he becomes silent, he becomes passive, and when he becomes passive, he accepts things as they are. This surrender is an act that leads not only him but also those who believe in him to despair.
Moreover, the dogmatic pessimist relies on his own narrow perception of reality, in which the sources that feed his ideas are exhausted. Instead of arriving at the truth, he reconstructs it according to his own fears. He argues in his own way, but in reality he disguises his fear. This is nothing other than a sabotage of reality that goes by the name of "realism".
Intellectual "thinking", which has a linear character, makes us depressed because it confronts us with our mortality, our biological limits and our loneliness as "I". The result of thinking is that we do not necessarily find definitive answers to our questions and thinking in its advanced stage remains a fruitless process (1). However, non-linear and non-ego-based thinking -for example, the state that Daoists call "Wu Wei"- is a kind of "non-linear thinking" that proposes to trust the inherent flow of life. Moreover, Wu Wei is one of the known natural ways of dealing with coincidences (2).
The pessimist often unconsciously produces what he fears. In order to be prepared for bad situations, they produce the conditions for these situations step by step. In this way, the pessimist becomes an extra in the bad scenario that he has written himself. He excludes good possibilities and ignores them on the grounds that they are not "realistic". With this attitude, the pessimist does not realise that he is committing murder against the future. The pessimist devalues hope, belittles dreams and tries to destroy the new by belittling it. For example, when pessimists refer to optimists as "Pollyannists" (3), this is not only a trivialisation, but also an active attempt to hinder optimists. But a mind that cannot dream, that cannot imagine anything better, is doomed to live only with the remnants of the past and wallow in the mire of the past. The pessimist undermines both his own originality and that of others.
As in Turkey today, where people have overcome the walls of fear and taken the initiative into their own hands, listening to the pessimists and participating in their fearful darkness will only lead to delays. Courage is not fearlessness, but acting in spite of fear. And only then does life have meaning. In times of great change/upheaval, it is necessary not to listen to pessimists who wear the mask of "realism", but to optimists who know how to dream courageously.
(1) George Steiner, “Warum Denken traurig macht” 2005
(2) Theo Fischer, “Wu Wei, Die Lebenskunst des Tao” 1991
(3) The Turks call optimists "polyannaists" because it goes back to the main character of the novel "Polyanna", a young girl who always finds something positive even in the worst situations. The book was written by Eleanor H. Porter (1913).
