Is Pessimism More Realistic?

No one wants to be a pessimist, but there are those who claim to be pessimists simply because they want to be “realistic.” Indeed, some bright intellectuals have charged that when the world contains molesters and murderers, and when something as terrible as the Holocaust can occur in our century, it is simpleminded to take an optimistic view of the world.

It is a question we ought to consider. Certainly we would be simpleminded if we attempted to live as if our world contained no pain or injustice. But the practical optimists of the world rarely lead lives untouched by suffering. To the contrary, they often know great hardship. When Saint Paul, for instance, wrote his remarkable letter about joy to the Philippians, he was in a Roman jail, awaiting – so far as he knew – execution.

Dr. Viktor Frankl is a writer whose thoughts about the Holocaust have particular poignancy because he was there. His book, Man’s Search for Meaning, was written as he looked back at almost three years in Auschwitz, Dachau, and other such camps during World War II, “We wondered,” he says, “At what caused some men to survive and others to perish. It was an apparent paradox that some persons of a less hardy makeup often seemed to survive camp life better than those of a robust nature.” The explanation, he discovered, had to with the state of their minds. Here is Frankl’s eloquent comment on those years:

“The experiences of camp life show that man does have a choice of action. There were enough examples, often of a heroic nature, which proved that apathy could be overcome, irritability suppressed. Man can preserve a vestige of spiritual freedom, of independence of mind, even in such terrible conditions of psychic and physical stress.

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s way.”

When Frankl talks about the freedom to choose one’s attitude, even in such horrible depravity as a concentration camp, he is describing what is perhaps – the clearest evidence that we have some of the Divine in us. This ability to convert evil, to turn suffering into growth, to take tragic aspects of our existence and transform them with the power of an optimistic view propelled by love – that is evidence of awesome power.

We may not live in concentration camps, but similar choices await us. We have the freedom to choose between evil and good, between suicide and life, between hate and love, between immediate gratification and long-range goals. If we wish, we can opt for the cynical, pessimistic view of this world. Or we can take the position of hope, which is stubborn enough to believe that the best is yet to be. That choice – that choice of attitude – is ours.

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