In Praise of Pessimism
What are the downsides of optimism?
Posted February 18, 2025 | Reviewed by Abigail Fagan
This post is a review of Hopeful Pessimism . By Mara Van Der Lugt. Princeton University Press. 255 pp. $24.95.
In an episode of The Simpsons called “The Good, the Sad, and the Drugly,” Lisa gives a presentation at her school about global warming and the bleak future it portends for her generation. Her outburst, the principal declares, “is either a sign of deep emotional imbalance or a passionate response to a sobering truth. Luckily the treatment for both is intensive therapy .”
Lisa is put on a new drug, “Ignorital,” which suppresses despair by disconnecting her from reality. But when Marge takes her off the pills, Lisa remains convinced that she should “face things as they really are.”
In Hopeful Pessimism , Mara Van Der Lugt (a lecturer in philosophy at St. Andrews and author, among other books, of Dark Matters ) reimagines optimism and pessimism, hope and despair, in the context of the existential threat posed by climate change . Drawing on philosophers from the Stoics to Arthur Schopenhauer, literature from The Lord of the Rings to The Plague , and her hero, Greta Thunberg, Van Der Lugt makes a provocative and compelling argument that it is possible to be pessimistic about the future without being fatalistic; and be a forceful activist “without any certainty of success.” History, she points out, has shown that “despair of a better future may be the precise point at which resistance takes place.”
Van Der Lugt recognizes that hope is a powerful emotion . But it is not necessarily a virtue: tyrants hope to stay in power; assassins hope to get away with murder. Hope, Schopenhauer pointed out, “distorts the intellect’s correct assessment of probability.” In a process Van Der Lugt calls “hope-washing,” a go-to rhetorical strategy of politicians including Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama, hope has been used to sell unpopular policies, disguise inadequate action and business as usual, and/or make people feel better. As Thunberg often emphasizes, hope can become a cliché when used indiscriminately or too often: “If you say we ‘love’ or ‘like’ to everything, are we saying it to anything?” Most importantly, perhaps, hope can cede control to others or to fate.
Hope, Van Der Lugt declares, “must stand the test.” Its value depends on whether the desired end is worth investing in; whether it leads to action And, as unrequited lovers and novice poker players (sometimes) learn, whether true hope can be distinguished from false hope. The best version of hope, a variant of philosopher Cornel West’s “blues-inflected hope,” which might also be called “hopeful pessimism,” embraces uncertainty.
Blue hope “compels the will” to act for a cause that is just, meaningful, and worth fighting for. With the endurance of long-distance runners, activists, unlike optimists, are undeterred by the realities of setbacks and defeats. Although, of course, blue hopers care about results, they are motivated by “a different kind of certainty, the certainty of having done the right thing.”
Intent on countering pessimism’s “bad rap,” Van Der Lugt insists that it can be empowering, especially when pessimists have the ability to be surprised by and celebrate victories while retaining an unflinching understanding of “how bad things are.”
Van Der Lugt also complicates the concepts of grief and despair. Accessing “a passionate commitment” to a cause like climate change, she suggests, may not be possible “without an element of grief” at who and what has already been lost. But she distinguishes between grief that is experienced when the loss is ongoing, and informed by an understanding that the implications of one versus two degrees of global warming are enormous, and mourning, which usually involves acceptance and resignation.
And Van Der Lugt partially reclaims despair, which she defines as “the shape hope takes in dire straits.” To despair, she claims, does not require giving up. It can – and for some climate activists has – condensed itself into “something harder and fiercer, like a balled fist.”
Nothing if not a hopeful pessimist herself, Mara Van Der Lugt points out that despite psychologists’ claims that Thunberg’s “focus on fear and urgency” was ill-advised, she and Fridays For Future “mobilized millions of people, not by offering hope or inspiration but by serving up the stark and scary facts undiluted.”
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Glenn C. Altschuler, Ph.D. , is the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Emeritus Professor of American Studies at Cornell University.
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This article is part of the Bringwise Psychology Journal — daily insights on human behavior, mental health, and personal growth.