Pessimism is always beckoning.
It shelters us from disappointment, makes us look wise, and frees us from responsibility.
It shuns forward-striving achievement, leaving us to shield our egos with zero-sum, pseudo-egalitarian status games.
It makes today easier, at the expense of tomorrow.
But there's an alternative.
We can be audacious. We can set our sights so high that it justifies the effort.
We can make the world better, according to our value systems.
And when corruption inevitably grows in the corpses of our great institutions, we can redeem them through courageous, precise, well-articulated dialogue.
There is no limit. No finite prize to be divided up. We can create (and have created) wealth from nothing, enriching everybody in the process.
The only constraint is ourselves.
Think about it:
Either there's something unique about humanity, or we'll eventually be wiped out by our own inventions.
If we refuse to move forward, we will definitely perish. But if we risk moving forward, we might just survive.
Maybe, at a fundamental level, existence is an act of optimism.
A choice to accept a value system, however flawed, and strive towards something better.
A decision to push humanity further, and to refine our ideals asymptotically towards perfection. No matter what.
This is a mortal game. We will not make it out alive.
But what if we worked towards a future so great that it was worth sacrificing for, in spite of this?
Maybe we'll fail. Maybe extinction is inevitable.
But we have to try.