For much of my life, I have been attracted to the macabre. Maybe because those close to me and the wider culture so readily dismiss and avoid it. There is something deeply peaceful and consoling about horror movies, heavy metal, somber fiction, and pessimistic philosophy. These mediums quietly confirmed a feeling within me that is difficult to share with others, often because when I brought these themes up, people didn’t want to discuss them. When I articulated these perspectives, I was encouraged to “cheer up” or told I “shouldn't think that way.” Over time, I began to believe that I was terminally depressed for having these emotions and thoughts. That there was something wrong with me. I sought therapy, read feel-good self-help books, listened to self-improvement podcasts, and the sort. Yet I kept returning to the morose honesty labeled dismissively as pessimistic.
It was not until recently that I realized that what had been understood as depression was in fact an internalized definition flavored by the dismissive and skeptical responses I received from others. I labeled myself as depressed because I was told the perspectives I was expressing were unacceptable. However, with experience, the help of a therapist or two, and personal reflection, I’ve come to see this “depressive” perspective as rather gentle and kind. What I found in the music of Black Sabbath, the comedy of George Carlin, and the consolations of Arthur Schopenhauer was an honest account of human life that many find difficult to acknowledge, let alone confront. I also found compassion and a sense of humor towards life's tragic nature.
Where East Meets West
Alongside these more macabre interests was a blossoming practice of Zen Buddhism. I began meditating in my early teens, encouraged by the relief the dharma promised. I can honestly say this practice saved my life and still enriches my daily experience. What drew me into dharma practice was the directness and honesty of its teachings, and the fact that meditation works. This stood in stark contrast to the biased positivity I found in Christianity and the consumer culture around me (there’s a saying that Christianity promises everything and delivers nothing, whereas Buddhism promises nothing and delivers everything; while exaggerated, I found this mostly to be the case). What I found refreshing in Buddhism is its acceptance of the macabre. The first Noble Truth stated the predicament of human life directly: that it is full of dissatisfaction and suffering. As with Carlin, Schopenhauer, and Sabbath, I found that the dharma too met this truth with a gentle compassion and humor. Buddhism encourages practitioners to let suffering open their hearts rather than harden them.
Over the years, I have found more and more like-minded thinkers in the hidden corners of philosophical pessimism. Followers of Schopenhauer, such as horror author Thomas Ligotti, psychotherapist and scholar Colin Feltham, and political thinker John Gray, all spoke to the First Noble Truth with the elegance, comfort, and beauty of a moonlit graveyard. It drew me in. Again, something about their openness and honesty about suffering, meaninglessness, and sadness was comforting. I learned more about Depressive Realism, the stance that those with mild depression tend to have a more accurate account of reality than optimists.1 It’s a sort of solemn wisdom exemplified in the archetype of a sad Socrates.
At first, the writings felt brutal in their directness and the often bleak picture of life the authors painted. Still, I found them comforting. I later stumbled across the Buddhist nun Pema Chodron elucidating this sentiment: “The first noble truth of the Buddha is that when we feel suffering, it doesn’t mean something is wrong. What a relief. Finally, someone told the truth. Suffering is a part of life, and we don’t have to feel it’s happened because we made the wrong move.”2 What a relief; someone else was interested in what I had felt so earnestly in my own heart. I was not alone.
I wonder if Chodron may feel uneasy being noted in such dour company. Often, when similarities are drawn between Buddhism and philosophical pessimism, factions emerge from both camps and take issue with the comparison. From the pessimist's point of view, Buddhism is too optimistic or deluded in its beliefs in reincarnation and enlightenment. On the Buddhist side, pessimism is too bleak, disregarding the medicine of the other three Noble Truths. I have found myself situated somewhere in the middle, which seems fitting from a Buddhist point of view, as the dharma teachings often counsel against taking extreme positions on either side. Until now, it was unclear what to call this position.
Moving Towards a Gentle Pessimism
From this point on, I will advocate for a gentle pessimism which combines the wisdom of both traditions noted above while leaving out certain excesses.3 What then is a gentle pessimism? It is the acceptance of impermanence; a turning towards the changing, unstable, and fluctuating nature of reality. From this, four major conclusions emerge: the transience of the self, the groundlessness of concepts, the wisdom of compassion, and an acceptance of the tragic nature of life.
Firstly, no lasting self or identity can exist amid continual change. Much of our efforts to remedy suffering involve searching for a permanent place to hang our metaphysical hat. In this search, we seek a sanctuary that transcends universal entropy. Often, we focus on our own identity, and immortality projects become the center of our lives. The Norwegian existentialist Peter Wessel Zapffe calls this anchoring.4 Anchoring is a coping strategy we use to avoid the inevitability of change (most poignantly the reality of our own death) by fixing our identity to something larger than our physical self, such as religion, accomplishment, community, or institution. Buddhism, like any philosophy, can be misused in this way.
Yet, in the end, all anchors fail to secure us from impermanence in any enduring sense. Experiencing this often leads to despair, followed by further searching for a safer replacement anchor, turning the wheel of suffering. A gentle pessimism does not advise abandoning all anchors, but rather to view them with detached irony, understanding that they, too, are subject to change. In short, it’s wise to take them lightly.
Secondly, we can derive an openness to change and the groundlessness of our concepts of reality. In Buddhist terms, this is an acceptance of emptiness. Emptiness in the Buddhist sense does not mean hollow or meaningless. It is more akin to the dynamic flow of a whirlpool or river. As the pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus notes, you cannot step into the same river twice because both you and the river change between steps. While this can seem depressing at first, it is also a liberating realization. If everything is groundless, we are liberated from the persistent dissatisfaction that comes from striving to find some permanent anchor. By accepting change and taking ourselves lightly, we may adopt a more playful approach to life.
So much of life is striving to find an everlasting port to dock our boat, bemoaning unforeseen tides and undertow. We become so obsessed with this task that it becomes a ceaseless project. In my therapeutic practice, I see this again and again. People burn out trying to beat entropy, trying to swim upstream. After a while, our will to keep swimming is depleted, and we realize the futility of our efforts. This is often called depression, and is what the dharma and pessimists seek to warn us against.
Thirdly, from impermanence we can derive a deep compassion for one another. Schopenhauer is often miscast as a brooding miser, akin to Ebenezer Scrooge. This is not without reason; portraits of him display a scowling, bitter old man. However, he is one of the few Western philosophers to propose a universal compassion towards humans and non-humans alike.5 In his essay The Basis of Morality, Schopenhauer says, “Boundless compassion for all living beings is the surest and most certain guarantee of pure moral conduct, and needs no casuistry […] he will have regard for everyone, forgive every one, help everyone as far as he can, and all his actions will bear the stamp of justice and loving-kindness.” Schopenhauer shares this practice of loving-kindness with dharma practitioners and famously encouraged mankind to refer to one another as “fellow sufferers” as an acknowledgment of our solidarity. Rather than harden us to life's harshness, Schopenhauer and his ilk encourage gentle empathy.
Likewise, Colin Feltham characterizes this perspective, though more bluntly: “We evolved haphazardly within a random universe; no purpose underpins us, no God watches over us, and no assured glorious future awaits us […] We can make ourselves as comfortable as possible, as doctors tell their terminally ill patients, but we are sadly incurable.”6 Instead of tiring ourselves by swimming upriver or sailing to endless ports, it is wiser to float gently down the stream of impermanence, with a kind and caring disposition toward one another, acknowledging the difficulties life inevitably brings.
Lastly, gentle pessimism suspends the final judgment of reality that often characterizes both the pessimistic perspective and the mystical pursuit of enlightenment. Thomas Ligotti notes that the pessimist views life as ultimately not worth living, and that pessimists would prefer non-existence to existence, even in a state of ecstasy.7 This is a conclusion I cannot endorse, not because of its bleakness, but because it is untrue. I tend to side here with the Zen Buddhists who take the stance of “no view” or “don’t know mind” when it comes to adopting value judgments towards reality. Due to impermanence, any concept, emotion, or perspective cannot be understood as “The Truth.” Likewise, permanent mystical knowledge is likely impossible (or at the very least exceedingly rare), making it unhelpful to pursue.
Zen in particular emphasizes the ineffability of reality and the error in our attempts to capture a picture of reality through language. Likewise, in the Western tradition, scientists, postmodernists, and pragmatists ranging from Sean Carroll to Richard Rorty highlight the impossibility of deriving a prescriptive way of life from descriptive findings. According to gentle pessimism, the world simply exists and is indifferent to our characterizations. Likewise, an attitude of acceptance toward reality, despite its tragic nature, is a wiser, more liberating stance than the firm “malignant uselessness” of reality noted by Ligotti and Schopenhauer. This applies equally to the transcendent enlightenment of religious Buddhism. This is not relativism, but a humble acknowledgment of language’s limits in grasping reality's transient nature that dissolves the pessimist’s rejection. It seems wiser to meet reality with an open silence.
Conclusion
Here I have advocated the middle way of gentle pessimism. In the end, the ideas and words are merely “skywriting in the mindspace”8 and share the same imperfection and impermanence as the rest of reality. This gentle approach likewise endorses an ironic detachment from the ideas themselves and understands them as human attempts to point toward an ineffable, ever-shifting reality. Additionally, the more excessive tendencies of each tradition, including attainment of some mystical enlightened state as well as a resigned rejection of life, are dropped.
In closing, it seems worth noting that even the most abject pessimists, such as Schopenhauer and Zapffe, have been observed enjoying fine dining, art, music, and mountaineering despite their philosophical position. Nietzsche famously questions Schopenhauer’s pessimism because of his love of playing the flute.9 Likewise, I advocate a gentle reading and understanding of the braver souls among us who encourage disillusionment and freedom. You can find them across Buddhist and Western philosophical traditions. Often, wisdom is found in the places we least expect.
1 There is ongoing debate about whether depressive realism is a real phenomenon; however, its adherents are undeniably present throughout history. See, Depressive Realism by Colin Feltham
2 See When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron
3 It should be noted that I use the word pessimism here not because I view the stance as sad or negative, but rather because it is the name given to those who openly accept and advocate acceptance of the First Noble Truth: that the human condition is pervaded by dissatisfaction and suffering. It is better and more accurate to call this approach a gentle realism, and many pessimists and Buddhists alike refer to themselves as realists in some sense. I choose to reframe this perspective as a way of shedding the preconceptions and biases brought to the teachings of Western pessimistic philosophy and the Buddhist culture of the East.
4 See The Last Messiah
5 Schopenhauer’s misogyny is widely discussed in secondary literature. It is often attributed to the rather cold and distant relationship with his mother. It is not difficult to feel a compassion towards Schopenhauer when reading the harsh, dismissive letters written to him by his mother. Though it does not excuse the behavior, it may explain his mistrust of the women.
6 See Keeping Ourselves in the Dark, page 55
7 See Pessimism I in The Conspiracy Against the Human Race
8 See A Temporary Affair by Yoshin David Radin.
9 See Beyond Good and Evil, "...whoever has thoroughly realized how absurdly false and sentimental this proposition [...] may be reminded that Schopenhauer, although a pessimist, ACTUALLY—played the flute […] daily after dinner: one may read about the matter in his biography. Is that really—a pessimist?"
