I will readily admit that I am the eternal pessimist. I used to say that the chances of some bad thing happening in my lifetime which were as big as the Great Depression or the two World Wars, was 1. As a student who is prepared to listen to the lessons of history, history as a schoolmaster teaches that the world frequently goes through upheavals, wars, plagues and other unpleasantries.
If I consider the world in which my grandparents grew up in, all four of them lived through the Great Depression and through the Second World War and were born during the First World War. My parents were alive during the Korean and Vietnam Wars, and the 1970s Oil Crisis. I have been alive during the 1987 Stock Market Crash, the 1990s Recession. The First and Second Gulf Wars, and the war in Afghanistan. There has also been the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, and now this.
Covid-19 is not necessarily an unexpected thing, it just happens to be the particular unpleasant thing in which we currently find ourselves.
Speaking as the eternal pessimist, there is a comfort in knowing that things will at some point turn to total calamity and also that unless you happen to live in a period of longish terribleness, that the calamity will pass. The kosmos is simply too dynamic and chaotic to remain static for very long. I do not think that pessimism is a bad position but rather, a realistic position from which to give a very hard stare to the future.
Nobody sensible goes out on the road without car insurance. Insurance in principle is an gamble against a thing from happening. It is a gamble that you really do not want to win as that would mean that the bad thing has happened and you have suffered some kind of loss, which you are now collecting winnings for. Expecting a bad thing to happen, is the mark of prudence. Expecting a thing and then taking defensive action, is wise.
Precisely because of this pessimists tend to experience higher levels of self-confidence than optimists. There's probably also a higher degree of superbia which might occur but when you also include yourself in the domain of things that can be unreliable and also turn to calamity, then expecting the worst ironically creates a better payout when things turn out better than expected.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jclp.10094
This study that followed a group of university students found that defensive pessimists seemed to have higher self-confidence as compared to those who experienced anxiety and that some pessimists had higher self-confidence scores than the typical optimist.
Being constantly worried though is mentally taxing. This is why I do not want to dismiss mental health issues like anxiety disorders and what not. That is where pessimism and worry ultimately has no place to land. There is something to the analogy of the flight or fight response, where defensive pessimism says that you are best being hunkered down in a storm but anxiety always wants to fly on and fight. It's okay, you have permission to land.
There is also a case to be made that being angry, disappointed, saddened, or frustrated at the storms of life, is a rational, logical, and reasonable response.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9PSg0sQyfs
David Mitchell's rant about poor customer service is excellent because it's so very very true.
“Why have a cheesy grin on your face if you are working in an awful supermarket?”
"Well, it’s the sign either of a liar or a moron.”
In both instances here, both with the imaginary person who is having an awful day and David Mitchell's reply, is the recognition that life sometimes throws up unpleasantness. What's also being recognised is the humanity of someone else who is going through unpleasant times and permission being given to demonstrate a rational response. Being angry, disappointed, saddened, or frustrated, is the proof that all of the instruments are switched on and that they are in fact functioning properly.
Aside:
If you do not want to think about religion, exit now.
Why, Lord, do you stand far off?
Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?
- Psalm 10:1
How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever?How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I wrestle with my thoughts
and day after day have sorrow in my heart?
How long will my enemy triumph over me?
- Psalm 13:1-2
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from saving me,
so far from my cries of anguish?
My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer,
by night, but I find no rest.
- Psalm 22:1-2
O God, why have you rejected us forever?
Why does your anger smolder against the sheep of your pasture?
- Psalm 74:1
Being pessimistic, angry, disappointed, saddened, and frustrated with the world is not only a rational response but I think an expected one.
I really think that in the aftermath of the unpleasantness of the earlier half of the twentieth century with the two World Wars and the Great Depression, that somehow in an attempt to scrub out the unpleasantness of what life can throw at us, that we've sanitised our response to it, beyond the point of stupidity.
I think that we need to regain the importance of lament.
If one of the base assumptions of Christianity is that the world is messed up and God himself provided a solution to it being messed up, then why would He not want to hear from us about that same subject?
Read through the Psalms and you'll find that not only are the Psalms of lamentation shouting at God, I think that they are giving us permission and an invitation to do so.
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