In this exclusive eBook, Penelope J Corfield explores how to navigate between optimists and pessimists
When getting to grips with fellow humans, another useful art is to learn how to navigate between optimists and pessimists. Without knowing the basic temperament of people giving advice, it’s easy to be misled.
Optimists tell you cheerily that it’s all for the best; and that things will work out well. But are they wearing rose-tinted glasses? Pessimists, by contrast, tell you to take care; not to trust anyone or anything; and to be aware that things can easily go wrong. But are their glasses chronically grey-tinted?
Moods in these things do vary over time and place. For example, in nineteenth-century Britain and the United States of America, there was a lot of cultural optimism about because these were seen as ‘top nations’. Their political leaders tended to have an inflated idea of their international power. And many of their citizens shared that complacency.
But here’s the instant complication. There are always exceptions to the prevailing cultural mood. It may be a matter of individual temperament that renders some people gloomier than others. Or it may be contingent circumstances, so that people with (say) painful illnesses are less likely to be singing and dancing – and much more likely to be full of foreboding.
Plus, there is one further relevant permutation. People are allowed to change their minds on these matters. They can be optimistic at one moment; but they can suddenly turn pessimistic the next. When I was writing my book on The Georgians (2023), I read many letters, diaries and private memoirs, to collect people’s views on the age through which they were living.
And I was fascinated to find some quite dramatic switches of mood from day to day. So in April 1758, a Sussex shopkeeper, named Thomas Turner, responded in his diary to news of a local disaster with the words: ‘Oh what a continuing proof is this of the predominancy of vice and wickedness in this irreligious age!’.
Yet two days later, his mood had changed entirely. Helovedtobebusyathisjob-andhewasa self-improver. His diary therefore recorded jovially: ‘Oh what an unspeakable pleasure it is to be busied in one’s trade and, at a leisure hour, to unbend one’s mind by reading!’ And yet! Five days later, he was sad and depressed again – this time by the (to him) annoying behaviour of his wife.
Of course, people are free to change their minds and moods whenever they wish. So diarists are absolutely entitled to record their changing moods. Indeed, it makes for interesting reading to look back at one’s own earlier diary entries to recall earlier and often transient moods.
Yet it would be important, when getting advice (say on business) from someone like Thomas Turner, to know how he was feeling that day. Would he be upbeat and cheerful? Or sunk deep in gloom at the vice and wickedness of his fellow Britons? The moral is always to check one’s sources!
Nonetheless, the question of how people view the age in which they are living is a good one. It moves people’s attention away from their purely personal concerns to consider the wider picture. And, in so doing, it gives a strong hint about either their basic pessimism or their basic optimism.
Over many years, I have amassed a large collection of reported verdicts from people in the past, when they summarised the age in which they lived. Accumulating this evidence, by the way, was great fun. It added an extra interest to reading novels, plays, poems, letters, diaries, guidebooks, journalism, sermons, songs, sayings, and so forth. I had to keep my eyes open and my pen & notebook at hand. So if you feel in the mood, please keep some future researcher happy by recording in a letter or diary: ‘It is an age of …’ or ‘a century of …’.
Quite a few verdicts define the times in terms of material goods. And that usage became more and more common throughout the later nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as technological changes multiplied. Thus it’s no surprise to find people writing about ‘a telegraph age’ (1868); ‘the age of television’ (1958); ‘the computer age’ (1963); ‘the age of electronic messages’ (1990); and so forth. None to these claims, by the way, indicate when innovations were first invented but rather when they caught the attention of an observant bystander. And these summary verdicts do not in themselves indicate whether the changes are being greeted with pleasure or with foreboding.
Very many verdicts do, however, sub-divide into either voices of optimism or voices of doom and gloom. Characteristic phrases from doubters included remarks like: ‘It is an age of uncertainty’; or ‘an age of anxiety’; or simply ‘worrying times’. One British commentator in 1800 was completely woeful: ‘Never was the world in so calamitous or so perilous a state as at this moment’. (Hard not to laugh; but it was written in all seriousness).
Those particular comments dated from the eighteenth century. But there was no shortage of negativism in Britain thereafter. Lord Byron, for example, referred in 1822 to ‘this age of humbug’. Thomas Carlyle went further in 1829, arguing that: ‘it is an age of spiritual paralysis’, in which (he added wittily) the ‘soul [is] extinct but the stomach well alive’. The young Benjamin Disraeli in 1839 was also sceptical about the trend of the times: ‘The age of chivalry is past. Bores have succeeded to dragons’. And another critic in 1840 was sternly contemptuous: ‘What doleful days! What drivelling times are these?’
True, none of those verdicts amounted to a declaration that the entire world was in deadly peril. Such deeply pessimistic comments tended to be made in times of war, particularly when Britain was doing badly. The general mood therefore lightened during the nineteenth century. By then, Britain was emerging as a leading world power and, although it was sometimes at war (as against Russia in Crimea 1853-6), the prevalent mood was upbeat.
Declarations of confidence in the age could certainly be found well before 1800. The philosopher Jeremy Bentham, for example, wrote euphorically in 1776 that he and his fellow Britons were living in ‘an age in which knowledge is rapidly approaching towards perfection’. And in the nineteenth century, the chorus of optimistic statements swelled.
There were tracts on The Age of Wonders (1825). Discussions of the New Age of Intellect (1832). Poems to the New Age of Gold (1843). And in 1836, a breathless panegyric to the impact of technological innovations appeared. It was penned by J.A. Etzler, in a tract entitled The Paradise within the Reach of All Men, Without Labour, by the Powers of Nature and Machinery. (First published in Pittsburgh in 1833, it was reissued in London three years later). And Etzler had no doubts whatsoever:
The powers of science ‘are more than sufficient to produce a total revolution of the human race, as soon as understood; for they can effect in one year more than hitherto could be done in 10,000 years, and things unheard of. The world will take a quite different appearance than it has had hitherto to man; productive of a thousand times more means for human happiness, than the human race may be wanting; a paradise beyond the common conceptions.
With glowing words like that in circulation, it was no surprise that the catch-phrase of the Victorian era became: ‘It is an Age of Progress’. That verdict could be found from one or two commentators in the eighteenth century. But it had become almost routine by the 1850s. Of course, pessimists were still able and ready to reject the consensus, as they saw fit. But the mantra of ‘Progress’ was becoming commonplace.
Furthermore, these optimistic sentiments were not just confined to learned tracts and to serious philosophical discussions. Popular songs were one medium via which scholarly ideas could be circulated to the general populace. For example, a rhyme in 1795 referred to: ‘this age of invention, improvement and taste’.
And another popular song, circulating in Britain in the mid-1830s, was full of excited anticipation about changes yet to come. It imagined that people could peep into the future, and was full of cheery forecasts. (One prediction was that future Earthlings would be able to hitch a lift on a passing balloon to attend a party on the moon… Well, not yet!) Yet the song was relentlessly and excitingly enthusiastic, as its chorus urged:
Open your eyes, and gaze with surprise On the wonders, the wonders to come!
Asking people their views about the nature of ‘the times’ usually gets a conversation flowing readily enough. And it usually differentiates optimists from pessimists pretty quickly. When times seem bad and most people are agreeing with negative verdicts, serious optimists will still say: ‘Wait a moment… the picture is more complex than that’. And vice versa. In good times, when all are rejoicing, a serious pessimist will urge: ‘No! You are overlooking this or that pressingly serious problem’. [And there always is some serious international problem that can be mentioned].
Then, having detected those with decided views about the state of the world, there are two further steps to navigate. Firstly… when encountering optimists, it’s essential then to understand exactly where they stand on the spectrum of positive thought. Many years ago, the French philosopher Voltaire penned a brilliant critique, in his novel Candide (1759), of one Dr Pangloss. This man allows no light and shade into his worldview. His mantra states simply that: ‘All is for the best, in the best of all possible worlds’.
Well, plenty of optimists (like myself) shudder at declarations like that. This viewpoint, known as ‘Panglossian’, gives optimists a bad name. Therefore, while it’s heartening to consort with optimists, it’s important to check that they have not lost all sense of reason and proportion. Blind optimism is truly blind.
Conversely, it is also helpful, when identifying pessimistic individuals, to assess the degree of their pessimism. There is no fictional character like Pangloss to epitomize this stance. Instead, the real-life German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer is generally taken as a quintessential pessimist. ‘Life is a constant process of dying’ runs one of his (accurate) aphorisms. Yet Schopenhauer’s overall philosophy was far more complex than the simple sloganizing of Voltaire’s Dr Pangloss.
Nonetheless, every pessimist can still be interrogated. Here a key perception comes from the Italian communist theorist Antonio Gramsci. He differentiated crucially between the intellect and the will. One person might take a long, cool look at the state of the world and decide that things look very bleak. That might underpin a valid intellectual pessimism. Yet, don’t forget the will, urged Gramsci. If need be, a pessimism of the intellect should be matched by an optimism of the will. In other words, however bad things look, they can always be changed. Gramsci thus dealt in hope. A great quality.
Ultimately, then, when navigating between optimists and pessimists, it’s vital to understand how fervent they are in their views – and then to avoid the extremes of either position. Blind Panglossian optimism in all circumstances is unrealistic and even dangerous. Yet so is a universal deepest-dyed pessimism. Humans have intellects to assess the actual state of play. Yet they also have willpower to respond appropriately, even in the darkest of times. So, in all human interactions, don’t ever forget willpower. And don’t forget reasoned hope!
Penelope J. Corfield explores these mind-sets more fully in her book The Georgians: The Deeds and Misdeeds of Eighteenth-Century England (Yale University Press, 2022; paperback 2023). And for further debates, see too R. Scruton, The Uses of Pessimism and the Dangers of False Hope (2010); contrasted with E.C. Gordon, Human Enhancement and Well-Being: The Case for Optimism (2022).
