Stoicism against all hope
On harmful optimism
Today we’re sharing an edit of a popular letter from last year. Cheers,
Caleb
Optimism is harmful when it clouds our perception of reality. Sometimes, in our search for positivity, we avoid looking at reality directly.
Nietzsche said:
If you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.
A Stoic is someone who doesn’t look away and meets the abyss’s stare without flinching.
Admiral James Stockdale provides an excellent example of this. He’s an interesting and compelling character.
He was a practicing Stoic, military man, and reluctant vice presidential candidate. He was known for keeping Epictetus’s Handbook next to him, ready to hand.
In the Vietnam War, he was taken as a prisoner of war. As his plane went down over North Vietnam, he thought to himself “I leave the world of technology and enter the world of Epictetus.”
While imprisoned, he observed that the prisoners who suffered the most set themselves up for failure with blind optimism. When asked who didn’t make it out of the prisoners of war camp, he answered:
The optimists. Oh, they were the ones who said, ‘We’re going to be out by Christmas.’ And Christmas would come, and Christmas would go. Then they’d say, ‘We’re going to be out by Easter.’ And Easter would come, and Easter would go. And then Thanksgiving, and then it would be Christmas again. And they died of a broken heart.
Jim Collins, Good to Great
This is one of the best examples of harmful positivity I know. Faith in an illusion kept the optimist going for the short term. But when the illusion fell, the despair was shattering.
Optimism can be a form of short-term gratification.
We often feel the need to tell ourselves stories to feel better. We manage reality by constructing narratives. However, we should interrogate that need. Attack things at the root! See reality as it is. Yes, that’s not always easy. That’s why the Stoics said that philosophy was like going to the hospital. Looking at reality can be painful – especially in the case that Stockdale found himself in.
But it’s a better way to live. Ignorance is bliss until it isn’t.
Cease to hope and you will cease to fear.
Can't hope be rational? I raise the question because pessimists believe that their thinking is rational. It seems like rationality could go either way.
Reason can support hope or pessimism, depending on how it is used, what evidence is emphasized, and what assumptions are smuggled in.
At the same time, it's possible for both hope and pessimism to be irrational.
Interesting that yesterday I read the same Stockdale quote in the comments for another Substack post - Twice in two days, maybe I should pay attention to the message!