The nice part about being a pessimist is that you are constantly being either proven right, or else pleasantly surprised.
— George Will
Living in an isolated paradise in the Colorado Rockies — a small town that will not be identified in this column, lest it become overrun by tourists and curiosity seekers — I hadn’t been exposed to a particular political symbol that’s apparently gaining popularity among the younger generation.
I was looking for a photograph online, to help illustrate a short essay about the positive value of pessimism…
…and I found this photo, of ‘Extinction Rebellion’ activists in Trafalgar Square, London, taken by Crispin Hughes/Panos:
I could really identify with the cardboard sign this young person is holding up… because I’ve always had a sneaking feeling it was worse… much worse… than I thought.
Except it isn’t a ‘sneaking feeling’ at all. As a card-carrying pessimist, I knew it was worse… much worse… than other people thought. Assuming the other people were hopeless optimists, and hadn’t yet discovered the joys of pessimism.
Looking more carefully at Mr. Hughes’ photograph, I noticed something in the background. Lots of colorful flags bearing a symbol that looks vaguely like an stylized hourglass, inside a circle.
I grew up surrounded by the ‘Peace’ symbol… it was fairly rampant, when I was a kid and I still see it displayed occasionally here and there…
…but this hourglass symbol… was unfamiliar? Apparently, it’s a favorite symbol of the young people who refer to themselves as the ‘Extinction Rebellion’.
I had never heard of the ‘Extinction Rebellion’ either. I guess that’s a ‘thing’ out there in the real world: rebelling against extinction. Good luck with that one.
Of course, this younger generation is not the first to embrace the thrill of pessimism. Thinking back to the 1960s…
And it’s one two three, what are we fighting for?
Don’t ask me, I don’t give a damn; next stop is Vietnam
And it’s five six seven, open up the pearly gates
Well, there ain’t no time to wonder why — whoopee, we’re all gonna die!
— ‘Feel Like I’m Fixing to Die Rag’ by Country Joe and the Fish, 1967
It’s a widely accepted belief that everyone dies, sooner or later. Although most people seem to prefer ‘later’.
A less popular assumption is that the entire human species is going to become extinct.
The dinosaurs somehow managed to last 150 million years before throwing in the towel, and many of them had brains the size of a walnut. Which suggests that you don’t have to be intelligent to survive for 150 million years… you just need razor-sharp, 6-inch teeth.
Does anyone really think the human race can last 150 million years? Half of us are already wearing dentures.
I believe we’re simply too optimistic. As playwright and polemicist George Bernard Shaw once said, “The optimists invented the airplane. The pessimists invented the parachute.”
We thought we could build a society dependent on endlessly extracting the residue of decayed dinosaurs and prehistoric plants — petroleum oil — to be burned in various types of engines and furnaces, spread across the landscape as fertilizers, and molded into bottles and bags and miscellaneous other objects that have now covered the entire Pacific Ocean in a layer of deadly micro-plastics.
We thought we were intelligent, and successful. We thought things were turning out great. We were optimists, without parachutes.
But now the chickens have come home to roost.
And so have the members of the ‘Extinction Rebellion’, with their pink and purple flags.
As mentioned, the shape on these flags, in the middle of the circle, is meant to represent an hourglass, an ancient device invented by pessimists for measuring time, when it was running out. In fact, that’s where the term ‘time is running out’ came from.
The sand ‘runs out’. End of story.
We modern folks typically use clocks and various other electronic devices to measure time. Even if my iPhone runs low on power, it shows me the correct time as soon as it gets recharged. An iPhone, in other words, is an optimistic device. Time never ‘runs out’.
Good luck with that one.
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all.