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1984 is more than just pessimism, it's a warning that Orwell wrote because he hoped that there was time to change. Games like Mirror's Edge have a similar mess
by strken 8y ago
1984 is more than just pessimism, it's a warning that Orwell wrote because he hoped that there was time to change. Games like Mirror's Edge have a similar message: dark times are ahead if we don't take action. I read and play them in the spirit of preventing disaster and I can't imagine other people are much different.
Kunzelman writes that "pessimism, crucially, does not see a way out." The world cries out for a way out of global warming, food insecurity, nuclear proliferation: does it do any good for us to paralyze ourselves with imagined impotence?
- klodolph 8y agoPessimism and optimism are different lenses to view the world, I don't think there's a solid case to be made that privileges one over the other. Looking at the world through either lens distorts what we see. Take global warming as an example. If I am optimistic, I could believe that we will curb carbon emissions and convert the world to use clean energy. If I am pessimistic, I could believe that we'll face severe ecological devastation and food shortages. "Hope for the best, expect the worst" is only possible if you are capable of seeing both the optimistic solution to a problem and the pessimistic consequences for failing to solve a problem. If you limit yourself to only an optimistic or only a pessimistic viewpoint, you are crippling your ability to deal with problems rationally.