The Human Desire for Catastrophe
People are always predicting the end of something. For some reason, it seems like human beings are addicted to the feeling of imminent catastrophe. And addicted to predicting bad things.
On Twitter, there are always people talking about the collapse of the dollar. In public venues, you hear people talk about how climate crisis is going to make Earth unlivable in our grandchildren’s lifetimes. And in books (and my blog), you read about how the American empire is running on moral and economic fumes, and that civil war is right on the horizon. And that at some point soon we’re going to be paying the proverbial piper.
And of course, none of these is necessarily wrong. If you’re paying any attention at all, these things are all very valid concerns. They might even be true and imminent.
But what I’m concerned with is how people can spend entire lifetimes making these predictions, have none of them come true, and keep on blowing the trumpet as loudly as ever. Being pessimistic is just not a good long-term strategy. So then why are people so pessimistic all the time, especially at the societal level?
There are a lot of reasons. Here are a few.
Pessimism sells
Pessimism just sounds smarter. This is a topic my boss, Brent Donnelly, has written about. People buy pessimism because it just sounds more intelligent than optimism.
When you listen to someone give you 8 specific reasons why the stock market can’t possibly go any higher and the entire banking system is about to collapse, it sounds a lot smarter than the guy on the other side of the stage saying “dude, don’t worry so much, everything is gonna be fine.” The second guy sounds lame. He sounds uninteresting. Like maybe he hasn’t done his research.
It’s easy to look down on simple-spoken optimists as naïve. And it’s just as easy to look up to doom-and-gloom forecasters and anti-human pessimists and admire their carefully-constructed arguments and their compelling calls to action. Everybody loves a good horrifying call to action (even if they don’t heed it, and instead just panic). It elicits a strong, emotional response. Humans are designed to like strong emotional responses, especially tribal ones, and especially negative ones. We’re actually designed to like them. Our brain rewards us for sticking with our tribe when there’s bad news in the air. It’s a social survival mechanism.
But there’s a reason they call bad stock market forecasts “bear porn.” It’s because they are designed specifically to prey on that emotional feedback system, and make you want to buy more. Be wary of anything in life (and the media) that elicits an immediate, strong emotional response — the chances are pretty decent that it’s one type of pornography or another. Most information is designed to arouse you, not enlighten you.
Pessimism is more intellectually satisfying
Pessimism satisfies the self just as much as it satisfies the public. Or the audience. For a lot of the same reasons.
When you’re thinking your way through something and you arrive at a positive conclusion, the response often isn’t as strong as it would be with a negative conclusion. Kahneman and Tversky discuss a behavioral/financial bias in the ever-important Thinking, Fast and Slow: humans weigh negative outcomes twice as heavily as they weigh positive ones. When you win 10 dollars playing poker, you’re a little happy. When you lose 10 the next hand, you’re twice as sad as you were happy 2 minutes ago.
And it’s the same thing with the intellectual part of it — for some reason, optimistic conclusions just aren’t always as satisfying. They don’t satisfy our intellectual need to poke holes in things. We want to be smarter than the situation at hand, and smarter than everyone else thinking about it. And we don’t feel smart enough just being in favor of something; we feel smarter if we’re against something. Again, that’s probably an evolved social mechanism: we want to be seen as the person who puts the foot down and says “my tribe cannot tolerate this.” Then we get to look smart and protective. That’s, like, double the fun.
Furthermore, when you think your way through something and reach an uncertain conclusion, your brain goes into panic mode. It can’t handle that.
Your brain, if you don’t learn how to control it, can pull you into traps. Your brain often would rather be certain about something bad than uncertain about something ambiguous. Because at least there’s intellectual and emotional comfort in the certainty of disaster.
“I told you so” is more powerful than cocaine
There are few things on Earth as viscerally satisfying as telling someone you told them so. It doesn’t do any good, and any grandmother worth her salt will tell you to never say those words, but we do it to each other anyway.
When the bottom drops out and everything goes to shit, some portion of the population or some member of the family gets to chirp, “I told you so.” Their ego gets that big, shiny gold star that they’ve been after.
Unfortunately, you can’t build your legacy or your relationships on predictions. Your family doesn’t care how right you were. And neither do your friends. As badly as you want people to keep that score, they’re not going to. They care how you made them feel and how well you took care of them. Especially when things were going to shit.
I used to know a person who operated under a sort of “strategic negativity.” Anytime he was faced with a tough decision or an uncertain situation, he’d automatically assume the worst outcome and shoot down everyone else’s ideas. Why? Because if things go well, he’s pleasantly surprised; if they don’t, he gets to say that he told them so. It was a win-win situation for his ego. Unfortunately, it was a lose-lose situation for his relationships with everyone around him. Because eventually people see through that, and they don’t want to be around you anymore. They stop listening to you, because you don’t say anything useful.
Everybody wants to be a warrior
This might be the biggest one of all.
Why do people want the world to go to shit? Why do people want the economy to collapse? Why do people fantasize about beating up a home invader in the wee hours of the morning?
Because people want to think of themselves as thinkers, and warriors, and survivors. People want to think of themselves as the person who could survive something like that.
Generally I’m pretty hard on people. My first instinct is to interpret this as foolishness. My first thought when I see this behavior is that the person wants that badge of having survived tremendous hardship, without having to actually do the work. Because, be honest, a lot of people are like that. A lot of the time, this kind of talk is self-important and based in ego. They want the Great Depression in their personal story, but they don’t want to have to live through it. They want the trophy but not the contest.
And at this point I want to say to the person, “don’t be stupid. Stop asking for you and other people to get hurt.” Or “what makes you think you’re emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually ready for that?”
But… people are also very noble when they’re called upon to be. Noble and strong and ridiculously capable. And there are also a lot of people who really do want the challenge of a lifetime. They really, really do. For spiritual reasons, not ego reasons.
And, even more simply, people want to have a loving, positive self image. And that’s a good thing. I think that it needs to be worked for, and I will gladly remind people of that… but it is a good thing. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be a warrior.
People are missing that sense of challenge. People long to be tested. They long to have to get through something real. Something punishingly real. And to those people I raise my glass of tap water. Because that’s the stuff that life is made of.
Optimism just works better
You’re better off not getting pulled into the intellectual, tribal, emotional turmoil that comes with being pessimistic. Sure sometimes you can be right, and that might feel good, but… pessimism is just not a good long-term strategy. Just ask the stock market. Thousands (maybe millions) of people have gone broke trying to short sell the top. Meanwhile, their friends had their chins up and kept making money.
When you’re convinced that something is happening soon, you stop putting effort into the things that are in front of you. Every corporate employee knows this: when they’re expecting a Zoom call in 14 minutes, they don’t want to start anything new, so they just sit around waiting for the call. That’s 14 minutes of time that was not used for anything. You’re more productive when you don’t know what’s coming.
You should always be working on some skill set or another so that when catastrophe does happen, you’re at least more ready than you were yesterday.
The best recipe for surviving disaster is not prediction; it’s optimism plus readiness. It’s making the most of now, while also becoming the kind of person who could lead others through disaster if it happens.
Drink some water but publicly insist that it’s poisoned first, just in case.
JDR
“Where there is shouting, there is no true knowledge.” - Leonardo da Vinci
If you’d like to keep reading, check out one of my favorite Square Man pieces: Optimism and Footwork.