The perfect pessimist

I have often thought that if I wasn't a theist (which I most certainly am, and strongly so), I would be a pessimist. Or a cynic. Now, this may come as a shock to some that one would even think about what one would be like if one wasn't like one is, but to me, it seems just an experiment in critism (of one's self, no less.) So, as a whole, I do not foresee any major problems resulting from it, indeed, it even strengthens my current beliefs.

Anyhow, back to the point. The reason I would probably be an ultimate pessimist, would be that without a theistic base, what good is life anyway? Many theorists have remarked that it is to provide for the coming generations and to leave a mark. This, is a false hope, and I can find no grounds for defending it. For, if this life is it, and there is nothing to live for but name, and future generations, what is there? there is no God, or even, really any "larger being" out there...so, who cares what happens to those who come after? It doesn't ever enter our experiance, and as that is it, what does the future matter? And as for making a name for one's self, that is all well and good, but, as you only live, and die and that is all, you won't be around to enjoy it: There is no gain by having become famous after you're pushing up the daisies. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, to live for.

So, I would be a pessimist. It's the really only sensible thing to do in that circumstance. In fact, I am much more at home with a pessimist than a "positive atheist" as it were. The pessimists have realized where their belief logically leads and taken to it. Positive atheists live in a blind hope that tomorrow will somehow be a better place than today, or especially yesterday (which is never is). And in fact, what is hope based on when one doesn't believe in an afterlife? So, the pessimism is the only real route to take. In fact, there is something, almost intoxicating about pessimism. One falls into it, and at first, it may seem distasteful, but it's an aquired taste. It grows on one. The cynics often are the point where change occurs after all. Ironies are everywhere in pessimism, but almost invisible in any form of optimism...and with all of this, comes the giving up. Nothing is more fascinating than the pessimist who doesn't care anymore about anything, but, yet doesn't despair. What good is despair? Like hope, it is nothing either. Everything is vanity. One tries to shepherd the wind and one fails, but one keeps trying no matter. As Bradbury so stoutly put it (albeit with some profanity):
"There was a silly damn bird called a Phoenix back before Christ: every few hundred years he built a pyre and burned himself up. He must have been first cousin to Man. But every time he burnt himself up he sprang out of the ashes, he got himself born all over again. And it looks like we're doing the same thing, over and over, but we've got one damn thing the Phoenix never had. We know the damn silly thing we just did. We know all the damn silly things we've done for a thousand years, and as long as we know that and always have it around where we can see it, some day we'll stop making the goddam funeral pyres and jumping into the middle of them. We pick up a few more people that remember, every generation."
Except even that has hope....a bit, but at the same time, it realizes hope's treachery.
Death comes when it may....life is weary, but death doubly so. It provides an excellent freedom....but like any form of freedom, it comes with a price: Every morning, like a block of cement there is a tremendous weight that will fall upon your being, and that is this, Not only is your life, and everything in is, and death and every person and every blade of grass and every grain of sand and the sky and this universe and the smallest atom of the smallest thing in it meaningless, but pessimism is also meaningless. Even the word meaningless is meaningless. And that, more than the subtle scathing ironies, more than the lack of hope for the world or mankind or even yourself, THAT is untolerable. No man can take that bitter pill and really accept it and live.

Of course, I talk of atheism as if there were logic in it....there isn't. But there is more logic in the atheist who is a pessimist than in the ever-hopeful atheist. In reality, there can really only be two logical explainations for this world and everything that abounds in and around it. And that is the Judeo-Christian view, or the Hindu cycles of reincarnation. And when it comes down to that, one seems infinately more logical than the other. So....as tempting as a perfect pessimist is, I choose hope.