3 - Activism

Summary

Meliorism and “concerted effort”

For amnesiacs, the way to be rid of disquiet is to blot the condition of humankind out of one's thoughts; for the nihilist the way is to be rid of humankind, the source of the disquiet. Both strategies give up too soon, according to the champions of the response to pessimism and misanthropy that I shall consider in this chapter. According to them, disquiet is to be overcome, or at least managed, not by forgetting or bringing to an end the human condition, but by working towards its betterment. We should not ignore, but on the contrary be alert to this condition and, instead of despairing at it, undertake to improve it.

This activist, meliorist response is the most common one found among people who are nevertheless receptive to a dark vision of the human condition. Among them are those who march, demonstrate, protest and otherwise visibly display their support for movements dedicated to ways that, they believe, will lead to the melioration of humankind. These people include, among many others, radical environmentalists, anti-racists, pacifists, religious evangelists, nationalistic populists, and enforcers of “woke” cultural policies.

It might be thought that activism and meliorism are ruled out by pessimism. But pessimism comprises two judgements: a recognition that the human condition is a bad one, in which suffering predominates, and a prediction that this situation will not radically alter. People who confine themselves to the first judgement may well hope that suffering and moral failings can be significantly reduced through movements like those mentioned. There is no inconsistency in the title of a recent blog entitled “The world is awful … The world can be much better”. But these are not the words, of course, of someone who accepts the full pessimist package.

It is, moreover, theoretically possible to accept the whole pessimist package and still advocate activist intervention for the betterment of humankind. This is because a negative prospect of future improvement can come in different degrees of gloom. Rousseau, for instance, thought it was possible to “banish” some – but only some – vices. William James thought there was a reasonable, though not guaranteed, prospect of betterment, and hence described himself as standing between optimism and pessimism.