Fereling somewhat better today. I guess venting my pessimism and/or worries for the future yesterday did me a lot of good.

I am not, by nature, a pessimist. I consider pessimism to be a waste of time that only gets in the way of making things better.

The way I see it, both pessimism and optimism are logically unspoortable. They both assume that life has some kind of underlying, predictable nature that conforms to the highly subjective categories of “good” and “bad”.

And that’s utter nonsense. Where could such a unifying force come from? What would its enforcement mechansm be? What are the fundamental physics at work here?

The way I see it, both are merely subjective points of view. As such, they can be useful as a reflection of our mood, but to suppose ithat it goes any further than that is laughably arbitrary and subjective.

The very idea of being able to judge life in general based on the single data point of one’s own life makes no sense to me. Even judging one own’s life as good or bad is logically iffy. Most people have had times when their life seemed good to them, and other times when it seemed bad.

So what is the point of making a grand generalization about your life when you know damned well that you will feel differently later on?

So both optimism and pessimism are illogical and unsupportable. That does not mkake them equal, however, because the optimist, at least, is happy most of the time. Maybe they have unrealistic ideas about the world and maybe their optimism leads them unto error sometimes,. but at least they feel good.

Pessimism, on the other hand, leads to an unhappy person whose only pleasures in life come from the “I told you so” moments they crave in order to validate what they know is not a sensible logical position.

“Ha! See, life DOES suck and you WERE wrong to be happy when I am incapable of it and that makes me so much smarter, wiser, and tougher than you! .”

It’s pathetic, really.

The way I see it, if you have to pick one, you might as well pick the one that leads to the better outcomes. That is clearly optimism. Study after study shows that optmimistic people life longer, happier, healthier lives than sad sacks.

Ideally, one would reserve judgment entirely. That’s more or less my attitude. Whatever the nature of life (if it even has one), might be, I sill strive to make things better and to embrace the pragmatically optimistic view that we must always act as if things can get better because tha’s the only way things ever do get better.

No matter what your goals are, optimism will get you there faster than pessimism and make the trip a ;lot more fun too.

I understand where some pessmism comes from, though. The kind I call “reactive pessimism”. That is pessimism formed as a reaction to the excesses of the sort of optimism that causes people to ignore unpleasant truths and fall victim to easily avoidable disasters as a result.

On a case by case basis, this doesn’t lead to pessimism. But over time, it can make a person very bitter and misanthropic from the feeling that you are constantly rescuing idiots from theie own stupiditty.

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Time skip! I was having trouble thinking so I took a nap.

To sum up : Not a pessimist. That might surprise some people, given my depression. But it’s not the conflict it sounds like.

Actually, let me refine the statement : I’ve never been a pessimist in general. I am definitely a serial pessimist when it comes to myself personally.

That’s the depression part. And even that is slightly wrong because, to be honest, depression often keeps me from thinking about the future at all.

I’ve been pondering that barrier lately : the obe between “thoughts related to myself” and “thoughts relating to everything else”.

As befits my senselessly cerebral self, I am quite sane when it comes to matters impersonal. Excessively son, perhaps, at least according to some. The sort of people who find my hardcore clearheaded enlightened rationalism a tad unsettling.

And I get why. It can be harrowing to be around someone who… how do I put this without sounding like a raging egomaniac.

Fuck it. It can be harrowing to be around someone who sees through the illusions and nails the truth right between the eyes nonstop.

Socially speaking, it makes me quite weird.

It’s that whole “he who walks through walls” thing. I see through the social illusions that define the structure of reality for most people. And this gives me the autonomy to step in and out of their reality as I see fit.

The flipside,. though, is that I don’t see those social illusions very well,and so it’s hard for me to stay within them and “act normal”, no matter how badly I might want to in a given situation. This would not be a problem if I was some kind of radical individualistwilling to be exactly himself in all situations and damn theconsequences to myself or others.

But I’m not. Perhaps I should be. But I’m not, at least. not all the time.

Maybe  would be a happier man if, instead of half-assing my identity because on part of me wants to be fearlessly myself and another part doesn’t want to hurt people on any level for any reason,.

Maybe my attitude should be “I am me, unique and bizarre, and if people can’t handle that, to hell with them. ”

It might be impossible to go through life without hurting others. And some hurts are just plain not my responsibility even if I am the cause.

Maybe it’s just plain impossible to live a happy life if your identity is trapped in a tiny cage of overexaggerated empathy where everyone else’s emotions are more important than yours, to the point of never addressing your own needs.

Maybe I need to stop skulking in the shadows for safety and develop my own solid identity, and commit to it.

Maybe I need to grow the hell up.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.