> Pessimism, from the Latin pessimus (worst), is the decision to evaluate
> something as a negative when it is uncommon to do so. Value judgments may
> vary dramatically between individuals, even when judgments of fact are
> undisputed. The most common example of this phenomenon is the "Is the glass
> half empty or half full?" situation. The degree in which situations like
> these are evaluated as something good or something bad can be described in
> terms of one's optimism or pessimism respectively. Throughout history, the
> pessimistic disposition has had effects on all major areas of thinking.[1]
>
> Philosophical pessimism is the similar but not identical idea that life has
> a negative value, or that this world is as bad as it could possibly be.
>
> Historical account of pessimism
> The first idea of an apocalypse has been traced back to 1400 BC.[2] Because
> the first world war was followed by another, our collective ability to learn
> moral lessons from history begins to seem suspect. Operating on the premise
> that morality is empty rhetoric, game theory and its political complement
> political realism appear as a model for understanding and prescribing
> behavior. The post war fifties saw the rise of dystopian literature. Books
> such as T. S. Eliot's wasteland (novel), Kafka's the trial (novel), Huxley's
> Brave New World, George Orwell's 1984, and plays such as Samuel Beckett's
> waiting for Godot expressed a deep pessimism during this time. The utopian
> promises of communism revealed themselves as false or unlikely during the
> collapse of communism. Reason itself, which once held on unquestioned status
> of perfect objectivity, as humanity is access to the truth, and it's
> understanding of progress, so widespread and unprecedented criticism in
> postmodernism and post structuralism. Likewise, nature, whose power and
> purity could at one time not be denied, is now the victim of problematic
> population growth and environmental decline.
>
> Upon broad analysis of history, some have determined that things in general
> are bad, and seemed to be in decline.
>
>   "I can only see emergency following up on another as wave follows up on a
> wave"
>
> -- HAL Fisher
>
> [edit] Pessimism by individual
>
> [edit] Arthur Schopenhauer
> Arthur Schopenhauer's pessimism comes from his elevating of Will above
> reason as the mainspring of human thought and behavior. Schopenhauer pointed
> to motivators such as hunger, sexuality, the need to care for children, and
> the need for shelter and personal security as the real sources of human
> motivation. Reason, compared to these factors, is mere window-dressing for
> human thoughts; it is the clothes our naked hungers put on when they go out
> in public. Schopenhauer sees reason as weak and insignificant compared to
> Will; in one metaphor, Schopenhauer compares the human intellect to a gay
> man who can see, but who rides the ass of the blind giant of Will.
>
> Likening human life to the life of other animals, he saw the reproductive
> cycle as indeed a cyclical process that continues pointlessly and
> indefinitely, unless the chain is broken by too limited resources to make
> continued life possible, in which case it is terminated by extinction. The
> prognosis of either pointlessly continuing the cycle of life or facing
> extinction is one major leg of Schopenhauer's pessimism.
>
> Schopenhauer moreover considers the desires of the will to entail suffering:
> because these selfish desires create constant conflict in the world. The
> business of biological life is a war of all against all. Reason makes us
> suffer all the more, in that reason makes us realize that biology's agenda
> is something we would not have chosen if we had a choice, but is helpless to
> prevent us from serving it, or allow us to escape the sting of its goad
> (compare this to the role of desire in Buddhism).
>
> [edit] Schopenhauer's Proof
> Instead of asserting a personal opinion or viewpoint about the appearance of
> this world being the worst possible, such as a glass being half full or half
> empty, Schopenhauer attempted to logically prove it by analyzing the concept
> of pessimism.
>
>   But against the palpably sophistical proofs of Leibniz that this is the
> best of all possible worlds, we may even oppose seriously and honestly the
> proof that it is the worst of all possible worlds. For possible means not
> what we may picture in our imagination, but what can actually exist and
> last. Now this world is arranged as it had to be if it were to be capable of
> continuing with great difficulty to exist; if it were a little worse, it
> would be no longer capable of continuing to exist. Consequently, since a
> worse world could not continue to exist, it is absolutely impossible; and so
> this world itself is the worst of all possible worlds.
>
>   - Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, Vol. II, Ch. 46.
>
> He claimed that a slight worsening of conditions, such as a small alteration
> of the planet's orbit, a small increase in global warming, loss of the use
> of a limb for an animal, and so on, would result in destruction. The world
> is essentially bad and "ought not to be".[1] These are disputable
> assertions, considering that the planet's orbit is not wholly consistent to
> begin with, global temperature fluctuates over time, and animals can still
> live after losing a limb. However, taking into respect the fact that major
> fluctuations in global temperature have typically resulted in mass
> extinctions in the past and an animal that loses a limb will only rarely
> survive long in the wild, they may appear reasonable.
>
>   Thus throughout, for the continuance of the whole as well as for that of
> every individual being, the conditions are sparingly and scantily given, and
> nothing beyond these. Therefore the individual life is a ceaseless struggle
> for existence itself, while at every step it is threatened with destruction.
> Just because this threat is so often carried out, provision had to be made,
> by the incredibly great surplus of seed, that the destruction of individuals
> should not bring about that of the races, since about these alone is nature
> seriously concerned. Consequently, the world is as bad as it can possibly
> be, if it is to exist at all. Q.E.D.
>
>   - Ibid.
>
> Freud
> Sigmund Freud could also be described as a pessimist and he shared many of
> Schopenhauer's ideas. He saw human existence as being under constant attack
> from both within the self, from the forces of nature and from relations with
> others. The following quote, from Civilization and its Discontents, is
> perhaps the best example of his pessimism:
>
>   We can cite many such benefits that we owe to the much despised era of
> scientific and technical advances. At this point, however, the voice of
> pessimistic criticism makes itself heard, reminding us that most of these
> pleasures follow the pattern of the "cheap pleasure" recommended in a
> certain joke, a pleasure that one can enjoy by sticking a bare leg out from
> under the covers on a cold winter's night, then pulling it back in..... What
> good is a long life to us if it is hard, joyless and so full of suffering
> that we can only welcome death as a deliverer?
>
> Oswald Spengler
> The source for this is Spengler's The Decline of the West (1918 - 1923),
> often cited in the years following its publication. Oswald Spengler once
> declared, "Optimism is cowardice."[3] His description of the western
> civilization is where the populace constantly strives for the
> unattainable-making the western man a proud but tragic figure, for while he
> strives and creates he secretly knows the actual goal will never be reached.
> Arnold J. Toynbee: Toynbee wrote a similar comparative study of the rise and
> decline of civilizations, A Study of History, somewhat concurrently with
> Spengler, which was released much later, around the conclusion of World War
> II.
>
> Others
> The term has also been used to describe the position of the Norwegian
> philosopher Peter Wessel Zapffe, although he clearly states in his
> philosophical treatise Om det tragiske that pessimism is a term which cannot
> describe his biosophy.
>
> Some works of popular literature may also exhibit pessimism, such as Stephen
> King's Pet Semetary. King later expressed his reservations about the work:
> "It seems to be saying nothing works and nothing is worth it, and I don't
> really believe that" (Bare Bones 144-5).
>
>   a.. Cassandra
>   b.. José Saramago
>   c.. Woody Allen
>   d.. Luis Buñuel
>   e.. Roman Polanski
>   f.. Emil Cioran
>   g.. Giacomo Leopardi
>   h.. Richard Wagner
>   i.. Thomas Malthus
>   j.. Edward Grey
>   k.. Karl Barth
>   l.. Dietrich Bonhoeffer
>   m.. Martin Heidegger
>   n.. Marcus Junius Brutus
>   o.. Marcus Castillo
>   p.. Arnold J. Toynbee
>   q.. Tsar Nicholas II
>   r.. Oswald Spengler
>   s.. R. Abraham Edwards
>   t.. Marcus Buckle
>   u.. H. P. Lovecraft
>
> Pessimism by subject
>
> Moral pessimism
> Narratives of decline can be identified in morality. Friedrich Nietzsche's
> amorality, Freud's description of co-operation as sublimation, Stanley
> Milgram shock experiments. The continued presence of war and genocide
> despite global interconnectedness. The continual rise of political apathy.
>
> Intellectual pessimism
>   Main article: skeptical hypothesis
>   postmodernism, Max Weber, Nietzsche and Schopenhauer.
> Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (1743 - 1819), characterized rationalism, and in
> particular Immanuel Kant's "critical" philosophy in order to carry out a
> reductio ad absurdum according to which all rationalism (philosophy as
> criticism) reduces to nihilism, and thus it should be avoided and replaced
> with a return to some type of faith and revelation.
>
> Political pessimism
>   Main article: Political realism
> Political realists assert that states always have and always will be amoral
> wealth-seekers. With the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and the shifting
> balance of power, we may be entering the most dangerous political times ever
> encountered.
>
> Environmental pessimism
> peak oil, water shortage, the depletion of the ozone layer, bioaccumulation
> of toxins, the population problem, the loss of biodiversity. These problems,
> though and not simply and knowledge but pessimists, contribute to the the
> belief that things are in decline, perhaps irreparably.
>
> Cultural pessimism
>   Main article: Cultural pessimism
> Cultural pessimists feel the Golden age is in the past, and the current
> generation is fit only for dumbing down and cultural careerism. Some
> significant formulations have gone beyond this, proposing a
> universally-applicable cyclic model of history - notably in the writings of
> Giambattista Vico.
>
> Eschatological pessimism
>   Main article: Eschatology
> Apocalypse predictions and the low likelihood of alien contact lead to
> pessimistic ideas in eschatology.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pessimism