Any nation that possesses an optimistic mentality does not possess a feeling for the tragic in history, because they have recast their history as a series of triumphs over foreign enemies and benighted and undeserving traditions at home. As such, they gradually lose respect for their own history and cease to put much store by their historic identity, and they are propelled onward to new and ever-greater campaigns to take their place in the progressive narrative. At the same time, their expectations of continuing advancement and success put them increasingly at odds with their own future.
It is ancient wisdom that desire and expectation breed suffering — it can be found in the Four Noble Truths as easily as in the Philokalia — and that happiness, human flourishing, comes from detachment and the curtailment of desire. Part of curtailing desire is not having expectations about the future. As Joshua Foa Dienstag says in Pessimism, “Optimism makes us perpetual enemies of those future moments that do not meet our expectations, which means all future moments. It is when we expect nothing from the future that we are free to experience it as it will be, rather than as a disappointment.”
– Daniel Larison of The American Conservative writing for Culture11
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