latenightnoir

Foreword: Just My Opinion™

Pessimists are creatives who are able to see the worst possible outcomes. To me, this means we have people who are able to effectively sound the alarm, and it's worth at least listening to what they have to say.

I feel Pessimism is shunned nowadays because it comes close enough to Realism so as to be uncomfortably familiar, as what we're seeing unfold is one of the worst potentialities we had at our disposal (I think most if not all of us agree that we couldn't have anticipated a dystopia THIS fucking stupid).

In a healthy society, however, one in which things work in favour of the citizens and every soul has the necessities of life assured, Pessimism would serve as a cautionary element. It would demonstrate the disasters we're avoiding or will have to avoid.

I feel this has always been its role, from Ancient Greek Tragedies to contemporary dystopian sci-fi, but somewhere along the way it became something to be avoided like the plague (see Toxic Optimism/Positivism).

Because knowing about something means starting to see its limits, its constraints, thus rendering said something into a finite 'chamber,' and my chamber feels like it's growing smaller the more I know of other chambers.

We had this poet-philosopher in Romania back in the 1910s-1960s (-ish), Lucian Blaga, who had an interesting philosophy about knowledge which merged the rational concept of Knowledge with the somewhat artistic sense of Knowing. In his view, there were two types of knowledge, Luciferian knowledge and Paradisian knowledge: Luciferian knowledge was, essentially, the Concrete, that which can be fully conceptualised, and Paradisian knowledge was closer to a feeling of Understanding without having the concept which is understood - he takes it to near magical levels in his explorations of the concept, but it's essentially a sort of Intuition+.

Now, the dude had some controversial views and leanings in a period of immense political turmoil (we were in the process of squeezing ourselves out of being a Monarchy and he kinda' sided with the Monarchists), but his poetry mostly reflects a sense of humbleness before the wonders of the world, a deep sense of apreciation for all that exists (with very obvious religious undertones, but it never felt dishonest), and a desire to keep it that way. His theory about knowledge is best represented through his poetry (Eu nu strivesc corola de minuni a lumii being his most well-known and his most relevant in this sense).

I don't fully agree with the guy, nor am I an avid reader of his poetry (I respect it, but it's not my jam), but this realisation reminded me that there has been at least one other person who felt it. Trouble is, my brain needs information constantly, so off I go to suck the Vastity right outta my world!

Edit: I think this has primarily to do with the fact that creativity and intuition are both very pronounced in my cognition, and they start being left idle more and more as concrete conceptualisation takes shape and the more rational processes take over the bulk.

I know it's not the official channel, but the music video has a couple of diegetic interruptions which, to me, kinda' mess with the flow and take me out of it.

Edit: now with 100% less YouTube!