Why Believing in a Dark Future Seems Reasonable, But is Actually Insane
Everybody seems anxious about the future, focusing on negative predictions, apocalyptic scenarios, and the end of humanity. Is the majority usually right?
Yesterday, while I was debating some investment ideas and theories with two friends, I was hit with the realization of a very persistent assumption we seem to have. That assumption is that the future is negative, full of turmoil, social unrest, WEF shenanigans, high inflation numbers, and FED printing money to save everyone’s ass.
When I listened to heated arguments about what is the better investment for the future, real estate, stocks, or Bitcoin, they all focused on this scary and pessimistic outlook on the future. After a while, I simply had to intervene. I pride myself on being a contrarian in debate if not exactly the voice of reason.
This article is my intervention for you, dear reader, if you share similar preconceptions regarding the future. A reminder that the future is hardly written in stone.
We don’t know what the future will bring, and all of these negative, pessimistic assumptions are only that, assumptions. We could be completely wrong. Furthermore, the last 70-plus years of our history would suggest that the probability is not on the side of the pessimist.
Here’s the summary of my counterarguments combating a negative assumption regarding the future.
Pessimists and catastrophists are usually wrong.
We’ve been afraid of all sorts of horrible scenarios since World War II, yet we’ve managed to avoid them all. The future was bright, and life is, for the most part, better today than it was throughout history.
Counting on a catastrophic future and apocalyptic forecasts coming to fruition has never been productive, nor has it turned out to be true. The world was supposed to have ended about five times every decade, and yet, lo and behold, we’re still here.
The list of horrible predictions and scenarios we were afraid of is endless.
None of those predictions came true. It wasn’t even close to it.
From scientists barking about freezing temperatures, deforestation, and rising sea levels to now overheating. It’s all just theory meant to scare us and fund their research. They’ve never been right and can’t forecast the following week’s weather, much less anything further in the future.
We’ve been afraid of worldwide nuclear conflicts for decades. Remember the cold way? Preppers, bunkers, and gas masks? We seem to be drifting toward such a scenario yet again, and fear and terror are creeping back into our lives through news, social media, and conversations.
Every technological development is the source of new fear-mongering campaigns, the latest being genocidal Artificial Intelligence.
The Mayan calendar, the Millenium bug, hell, even the rapture is supposedly overdue. And yet, we’re still here. We’re still kicking and fussing and predicting the end right around the corner.
For decades, people have been forecasting hyperinflation, societal collapse, environmental disasters, political unrest, global conflicts, and God knows what else.
Almost all of it was a waste of time.
Instead of being happy, optimistic, and joyful, people were miserable, depressed, and worried. I fear we’re falling for the same trap all over again.
The names and labels change, but the essence is the same. There is always some overwhelming threat, conspiracy, or prophesy looming over our heads. Political, environmental, or societal. We always seem to find reasons to predict a negative future and feel justified in doing so.
But thus far, we’ve almost always been wrong.
Shouldn’t we have learned something from this?
Must we keep repeating the same mistakes over and over again?
What makes us think that this time is different? (famous last words)
I’m not saying any of these things aren’t possible!
They are, and even from my point of view, they FEEL probable. As if some unseen force is constantly dragging the world toward a dark abyss, a bottomless pit, and it’s going to happen any moment now. It might. Or it might not.
The only thing I’m certain of is that we can’t predict the future with any degree of certainty. It is unknowable. The only constant is change, and change can be for the worse, but it could also be for the better.
Thus far, it’s been mainly for the better, despite billions of little pessimists predicting otherwise for generations.
Being a pessimist is a terrible affliction.
It makes us feel bad, demotivating us from living life to our fullest potential. It takes the fun away from today. It’s no way to live. It also causes us to make choices we will regret should our negative outlook fail to materialize.
People aren’t having children because they are so frightened of the future. Furthermore, illustrating the desperate delusion we all seem to share, they also believe this is the worst time to be alive and to raise a family.
They spend, and they spend, go into debt, and don’t care to plan for the future because it simply doesn’t seem worth their while. It’s all going down the toilet anyway.
I sympathize. Facts would disagree, though.
But facts don’t matter to our minds and our feelings. Do they? We feel like it’s terrible out there, and while there are pockets of the planet where that is undoubtedly true, for most of us, it’s not.
If we shed this preconception and look into how people lived in the past, how much struggle they had to endure, and the trials and tribulations of our grandparents or those before them, we would notice a discrepancy between our feelings and facts.
When I was born, people in my part of the world lived under socialist communism. My great-granddad was a political prisoner on something called a “Naked island,” where communists imprisoned the people who weren’t compliant with their ideals and policies. In a language the young people of today will understand - he was canceled by the socialists. He died there, moving rocks in the scorching sun until his last breath.
My great-grandma told me countless stories of life under the occupation of Germany. You know - the actual “Nazies”? Stories about sneaking behind enemy lines and how she would steal food from German supply trains and deliver it to our freedom fighters in the woods.
Also, when asked what living during the Nazi occupation was like, they shrugged it off and always said it wasn’t as bad as we think. They had to adjust to the new reality, keep their head low, do what they could, and focus on surviving.
When I was complaining about silly things, my grandparents always reminded me how they had to walk for two hours through snow and woods every day to get to school, as no one had cars back then.
These were old-school humans, adaptable and courageous. We’re the whinny new incarnation, and that’s nothing to be proud of.
My friend’s grandfather was dragged to the Russian front when he was only fifteen and had fascinating stories of his escapes from the front. Stories of fear and danger while walking across Europe by himself. Kind of like the terror of the kids today when the Wi-Fi goes down or they get called the wrong pronoun. It’s a cruel world out there, especially when you can’t buy a new Tesla at twenty-three while seeing all your favorite influencers having two Teslas. Oh, the horror, the pain!
We have it good, is what I’m saying. And the only people who would disagree with this fact are either monumentally unlucky, brainwashed, or don’t know their history.
Which are you?
And then, which am I?
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, pause and reflect.
If everyone is betting on a negative future, the odds are there will be a positive one. The majority is seldom right when it comes to investing or predicting anything. Hence, the 1% taking it all from the 99%.
The majority aren’t experts. They can’t be. The majority aren’t particularly smart, and they sure as hell aren’t prophets and fortunetellers. Just because there seems to be some sort of consensus in your social circle or the so-called scientific community, that doesn’t make it true. The majority is usually wrong.
In trading and investing, there is a belief that when everybody is making money and everyone agrees on the given trend, the fun is about to end. The smart and dumb money (the few and the many) tend not to see things the same way. If you are supposed to be the professional - the smart money and everybody agrees with your view, something is amiss. It’s called measuring the popular sentiment. Most of the time, you want to bet against it. The majority lose money in the market, remember?
So, if most people see only darkness, why not take the risk and focus on the light?
Be a rebel, a free thinker. Dare to dream a better future for yourself and your family. Since you can’t know what will happen anyway, why add fuel to the fire and worry yourself to death unnecessarily?
If the planet “boils,” it will boil.
If nukes go to the sky, they will fly, and we will burn.
If society falls apart, there will be chaos.
If some God above decides to swing his sword and end us all in some fiery armageddon, fueled with rage for defying his will, what the hell will worrying about it do to sway his hand?
Always remember that some things are within your power while others are not. Confusing the two is a recipe for misery!
The pessimists are usually wrong.
It’s expensive to be a bear (pessimist) in the markets. With time, things tend to go up.
If all you do is short, therefore, bet on prices going down, you’ll be wrong most of the time. There will be a narrow window when you’re right, every couple of years or decades, but they will be few and far apart.
If you sit on your money waiting for disaster to strike, chances are, inflation will devalue your savings, and the optimists betting on prices going up will be much better off in a couple of decades.
Pessimists don’t get rich, but more importantly, pessimists aren’t happy.
I’ve been a “bear” all my life, especially when it comes to investing. I’ve seen signs of trouble everywhere and was convinced that this economic and social insanity simply cannot continue forever. While it’s still my logical conclusion, the world disagrees.
Valuations have lost all connection to reality. Nothing makes sense anymore. More money is printed every time there should be a proper recession, and the caravan continues. Without me! Markets keep reaching higher, and real estate continues its path to becoming the privilege of the rich as the prices keep rising.
I was always highly security-focused. I even acquired a college degree in Policing and Security once upon a time. I worked as a bodyguard or rather a mix of security and roady for a locally famous music band. I saw danger everywhere, and often I would find it.
That’s the thing with focusing on something. The world tends to serve you the experiences you expect most, but somehow, they are limited to your personal experience. We live in a simulation. There is no other rational explanation for this particular phenomenon.
The pessimists also have less fun in life.
In the same situation, in the same set of circumstances, 100 people will have 100 different experiences. Happiness and joy are inside jobs.
When you look outside, you may be looking at signs of rain. Your young child will look through the same window and marvel at the sky, see the play of moving clouds, listen to the birds, and enjoy the present moment, fascinated by the beauty and perfection of nature. Something most have forgotten to do.
In the same circumstances, some people will be happy, while others will be miserable. It’s not so much the life situations that determine this for us, but our minds.
To summarize my futile little attempt to uplift our collective outlook on the future:
If the past is any indicator, the odds are overwhelming that we’ll live in a better world, not a worse one. The future is bright, but it always seems dark.
It doesn’t do us any good to be pessimistic and only focus on the negative. We’ll be miserable and attract more negative things into our experience.
We’ll also probably end up being wrong and left behind by the optimists and risk-takers.
The future is unknowable. The only constant is change. There is no real indication that we’re in the end times, and even if we are, worrying about them won’t prevent them from coming. It will only ruin today.
Basing our investment decisions on a terrible future scenario has almost never worked out, yet we are still so prone to it. But our opinions don’t matter. The market is always right. The sooner we adapt and go with what the market is telling us, the better off we’ll be.
We’re set in our ways.
When I mentioned the error in our thinking yesterday on that heated debate, I was surprised that there were no factual counterarguments or pushback.
We quickly realized we couldn’t know that the future would be so grim. We also silently agreed that it doesn’t change anything in the way we think.
Bitcoiner stands by his thesis for impending growth, real estate fanboy remains convinced that they will continue to grow into infinity, and you, dear reader, will agree to disagree with me and see the world as darkness descending into pure blackness.
Oh well, I tried. So what will it be?
WEF technocratic socialism, hyperinflation, western imperium collapsing, sea levels drowning us, Russians taking over Europe, nukes flying in the air, alien invasion, population collapse or will the planet collapse under our weight, Islamization of Europe, a deadly virus to wipe us out, vaccines killing the majority of the world’s population, or will God finally drop his hammer upon the sinners with bellowing thunder, and press and hold CRTL+ALT+DELETE hard resetting the world again?
Take your pick, and click on my link to your favorite sedative of choice (joke) because it’s easier than being objective (nearly impossible) and rearranging our minds to see less darkness and more good in this world.
Haven’t we learned anything from the movies - the good guys always win in the end, no matter how desperate the second act of any movie appears to be. Salvation comes before the end (of the film, at least).
I mean, they wouldn’t lie to us, would they now? I choose to believe!
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