Is there anything more fearful than when a fan base begins to savor hopeful expectations that might exceed future performance? Don't these people realize that entire civilizations have fallen as a direct result of average folks daring to succumb to joyful optimism, based on encouraging reports? Don't these naive people realize that allowing themselves to entertain optimistic thoughts
actually causes bad things to happen?
I actually heard one of these rubes rationalize his optimism by claiming he was aware that the high hopes he was relishing could end up being replaced by disappointment, due to unforeseen events, but he was also equally aware that the bad things that the "sober realists" expected
might not happen either. So the way he saw it was, there's no penalty at all to be paid for being optimistic while the reports coming in are still supporting the optimistic POV.
If events end up turning sour, he said, he just adjusts his expectations to the new realities and experiences disappointment, but his disappointment
then won't be any greater than the disappointment that the pessimists would also be experiencing at that time. If/when the bad possibilities unfold, the 'sober realists' will not have protected themselves from the disappointment they'll feel
by being pessimistic from the start. They'll just have suffered for months while the optimists were enjoying their high hopes for a while.
On the other hand, he said, if things do end up going well, maybe even exceeding the optimists' expectations, then he and all the other optimists will have been able to fully enjoy a wonderful season the whole time, while the pessimists had unfortunately filled their heads with
fear of disappointment for months, which deprived them of the enjoyment they would have experienced if they had just allowed themselves to enjoy the expectations that the optimists had been celebrating all along.
So as he saw it, if things go well, the pessimists
suffer for nothing for an extended period, and if things go badly, the optimists end up suffering
less than the pessimists, since at least for a time, they had good reason to feel good about future prospects. What is the advantage, he asked, to being pessimistic?
Have you ever heard anything so crazy?
I shook my head and smiled a whisper, knowing all about the place...