The case for snapping out of pessimism

A vendor sells balloons amid traffic on a busy street in Kabul on September 16, 2024. (Photo by Wakil Kohsar / AFP)

In recent days, I have been struck by the overwhelming and general note of pessimism bubbling in almost every piece of news I read. Pronouncements by experts on a range of issues, from geopolitics to economics to technology, have become uniformly negative. It is as if there is a group-think at work, and it could be very dangerous.

The initial feeling is that it is wholly appropriate to have little optimism to express, given the horror we are witnessing in Gaza and the bloody quagmire in Ukraine. Nor are we winning the fight against global warming. And if the lack of positivity was confined to these issues and their consequences, then there can be no argument from me about it.

However, the negativity is everywhere now, across geographic regions, sectors and communities. I cannot remember sentiment being this weak since the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The negativity is everywhere now, across geographic regions, sectors and communities

In the UK, the new Labour government has been very vocal about how broken the country, its services and finances are. Neither of the candidates in the race for the White House – former US president Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris – seem concerned about running hopeful campaigns, rather preferring to scare the electorate into not voting for their rival.

The prospect of a recession in the US has returned despite a stronger-than-expected economy in the first part of the year. Gold prices are at record highs, indicating investor demand for a hedge against wider market risks, after the US Federal Reserve cut interest rates for the first time in four years.

It is, of course, important to be wary, or open-minded, to all possibilities, both good and bad. But fundamentals don’t justify such a dark wave of opinion. By and large many things are working fine. The strongest piece of evidence to justify this hypothesis is how quickly technology start-ups have been able to become global companies, creating wealth, jobs and new cultural, societal and personal areas of growth. We still live in a world of opportunity and promise.

So, why the persistent pessimism? Well, the truth could be simply (and I admit I am being quite cynical here) that it “sells”. To engage the largest possible audience, it is more effective to share negative sentiments. Research from the University of Michigan suggests this to be the case.

Its recent study examined thousands of email campaigns by the Environmental Defence Fund, a US non-profit, between November 2011 and February 2020, reaching more than 300 million American addresses. Emails with a negative tone were more frequently opened, and recipients were more likely to click links within these emails, compared to those with a positive tone, according to the researchers. Putting out more balanced viewpoints doesn’t win you much traction with audiences these days.

It might have always been the case that negativity sells better than positivity, but in this current era of fragmented media and heightened noise, it is perhaps the only way to be heard. However, the situation is more nuanced and cannot be explained away as just another tactic to get eyeballs. It has been suggested to me that because there is a mental health crisis now, it would seem inauthentic to not be pessimistic.

A report published in The Lancet last month said that all over the world, the mental health of young people has been declining over the past two decades. Understandably, in such a context, it would jar with the many people suffering to be told that things are OK.

The hard truth is that, for the most part, they are. Levels of wealth and peace are at historic highs. Access to education and health care is only growing. Despite our failures, there is a rising consensus on how to co-operate on climate change. There is much that is positive to build on, as we meet the many challenges and crises.

A message that includes that hint of hope might actually reduce a little bit of the pressure we are feeling that it is becoming too difficult to make progress. We may at times be too hard on ourselves about the rate at which we are moving. But it could be argued that the direction being correct is just as important, and generally we all agree on where we need to get to.

If we don’t snap out of this pessimism, we may create a scenario where any momentum we have built up gets killed off by apathy and lethargy.