The Ironies of Optimism and Pessimism

I’m much more pessimistic than the average gal. The typical pessimist sees the whole world as “bad.” But this very position opens up a secret hope, a hidden optimism: if everything is bad, then the very disappearance of everything must be good, and its vanishing would reveal itself as the ultimate utopia: this is precisely why revolutionaries never come off as all that much different from cynics.

But, again, my pessimism is much more wicked: what if the whole world is bad, but its disappearance is still bad (and potentially even worse)? The true, radical pessimist should therefore be the most indifferent to the happenings of the world and therefore, in a grim twist, the most content, the most pleased, even more optimistic than the optimist!

This is related to the story of the twin sisters who can tell the future, the one only foreseeing future events which were pleasing to her, the other only having visions of imminent disaster. Of course, the first twin falls into a depression because of the fact that the very experience of a pleasant surprise has been stolen from her (she is only ever aghast), while the second twin becomes an extreme optimist since even the smallest bit of good news brightens her day (she feels that she has more luck).