@thesotiris 5 March 2025 more from that month

Muh optimism: Why we must embrace our doom

The first step towards strength is admitting you’re weak. The initial requirement before improvement is first admitting you are up the creek without a paddle. Otherwise, you are not motivated to work, as you surrender to the mercy of your environment. Granted, we do not have much control over our environment. But that little control we do have may be enough to save us. But to seize control, we must first shed our narcissistic delusion, the presumption that we somehow control our environment simply by “seeing the bright side of things.” We aren’t gods, and our forced deluded optimism doesn’t have magical powers over reality. You cannot see a reason to improve your situation, nor can you see the options available to you, unless you first recognize the dangers you face. Acknowledging the coming doom is not defeatism; it is bravery. Denying reality in favor of fairy tales (that end up exposing you to more harm, no less) is the utmost cowardice and laziness. You will not act to save yourself if you give up due to toxic optimism. You will not defend yourself if you cowardly refuse to acknowledge the danger. ***Nothing will save you from drowning if you use your hands for praying instead of paddling.*** False deluded hope is a cult and a psychopathy. Giving up due to despair, and giving up due to baseless optimism are two sides of the same coin: that of peak hopelessness. There is nothing more hopeless than giving in and surrendering to false hope that somehow things outside of your control will improve without any of your input. There is nothing more passive and pathetic than waiting for the storm to end before venturing to find shelter. **False hope is blind unfounded faith in things beyond your control**; that they will somehow work in your favor and improve on their own without you having to earn it. False hope is cowardice in the face of harsh truth, and it is laziness; an excuse to not work towards improving your world. ***You cannot work before you acknowledge the need for it. If you believe you’re strong enough, you’ll never train. If you think you know it all already, you’ll never learn.*** When you delude yourself that you are strong when you are not, you not only betray your weakness (your **lack of confidence to acknowledge vulnerability without compromising your self-esteem**), but you also advertise your cowardice. You are too afraid to admit your harsh reality, so you bury your head in the sand, like a pathetic ostrich, and delude yourself with made-up fairy tales of imaginary angels coming to save you. But most of all, you are so entitled to things working out in your favor that you don’t expect to do something to earn your well-being; you expect it to be handed to you without any effort on your part. When you call me a “doomer,” this is how I see you. Any coach will tell you that, if you’re afraid to be a beginner, you’ll never be a pro. Spare me your vapid meaningless epithets: “*pessimist, defeatist, doomer, blackpilled.*” I’ve heard them all. You aren’t fooling anyone. We know what you are: self-deluded, high on your own fantasies, soiling yourself in front of the screen while you wield your keyboard like a real-life Don Quixote slaying windmills, indulging in fantasy, abandoning reality. *A mule wearing blinders won’t see danger coming its way.* **Sometimes, you need to reach the bottom to push yourself off to the surface…** There is nothing more defeatist and pessimistic than resorting to “the lesser evil” just because you can’t bear the option of not choosing any evil at all; because that would require you to fend for yourself, instead of expecting the “lesser” evil to supposedly fight for you. https://sotiris.substack.com/p/the-great-evil-of-the-lesser-evil Self-deluded optimism is even more pathetic and debilitating than crippling pessimism. *“False hopes are more dangerous than fears.”* *― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Children of Húrin* Generally, people who can’t give up their **hopium and copium** to assess their position (to gain factual situational awareness, and to come to terms with what they must accept and what they have to struggle through), are not people to be trusted. Pathologically optimistic people are addicts in denial; hooked on the drug of pleasant falsehoods of their own imagination. They end up this way because they have such little integrity that they will sell out their grip on reality for **hedonistic optimism** that has no basis in reality or logic. The **toxically optimistic** are more likely to lie to you because all they do is lie to themselves. They prefer the **comforting lie over the harsh truth**. People who place their faith in their environment do so because they have no faith in themselves. The less hope you have in things you can’t control, the more hope you have in yourself. And even if doom is inevitable, it takes guts to look it in the eye with dignity rather than cover your eyes with cowardly self-delusions… Here is a collection of my “pessimistic” ideas, not to gloat in doom and gloom, not to back in effortless defeatism, but to gain **situational awareness**: the key prerequisite of survival. **Losing hope** https://sotiris.substack.com/p/losing-hope **Sotiris Rex** https://substack.com/profile/58797461-sotiris-rex · **October 26, 2024** Unfounded optimism deprives you of useful urgency and footing on reality. Blind faith that “things will somehow get better” on their own is a vulnerability that makes you susceptible to manipulation. Unrealistic hope puts you in danger of flying too close to the sun https://sotiris.substack.com/p/losing-hope **Read full story** https://sotiris.substack.com/p/losing-hope **Losing hope [Part 2]** https://sotiris.substack.com/p/losing-hope-part-2 **Sotiris Rex** https://substack.com/profile/58797461-sotiris-rex · **December 17, 2024** “If fighting will not result in victory, then you must not fight.” https://sotiris.substack.com/p/losing-hope-part-2 **Read full story** https://sotiris.substack.com/p/losing-hope-part-2 **Why the West is dying** https://sotiris.substack.com/p/why-the-west-is-dying **Sotiris Rex** https://substack.com/profile/58797461-sotiris-rex · **November 16, 2024** You cannot save a dying organism unless you first acknowledge its affliction. It takes bravery to accept uncomfortable truth. It is not “defeatism” to have the courage to recognize harsh reality over deluded comforting fantasy. Accepting truth is not “giving up” either - those who think it is have already given up. Rather, https://sotiris.substack.com/p/why-the-west-is-dying **Read full story** https://sotiris.substack.com/p/why-the-west-is-dying **Why civilisations collapse** https://sotiris.substack.com/p/why-civilisations-collapse **Sotiris Rex** https://substack.com/profile/58797461-sotiris-rex · **Jan 10** WARNING: Do not read if you find pessimistic philosophy unsettling. https://sotiris.substack.com/p/why-civilisations-collapse **Read full story** https://sotiris.substack.com/p/why-civilisations-collapse **In defense of brutalism** https://sotiris.substack.com/p/in-defense-of-brutalism **Sotiris Rex** https://substack.com/profile/58797461-sotiris-rex · **Jan 26** The barbaric World Wars - and the subsequent US-regime hegemony based on blood and corruption - brought us the cynicism and hopelessness we express through the deliberate ugliness of brutalist architecture. We didn’t just lose faith in the world; we lost hope in ourselves. https://sotiris.substack.com/p/in-defense-of-brutalism **Read full story** https://sotiris.substack.com/p/in-defense-of-brutalism **Doomer!!!** https://sotiris.substack.com/p/doomer **Sotiris Rex** https://substack.com/profile/58797461-sotiris-rex · **Feb 16** I’ve been recklessly branded - and conveniently dismissed as - a defeatist, a blackpiller, and a doomer by people who felt threatened by what I had to say… the implications of what it would mean for them if I were right. https://sotiris.substack.com/p/doomer **Read full story** https://sotiris.substack.com/p/doomer **The great evil of the 'lesser evil'** https://sotiris.substack.com/p/the-great-evil-of-the-lesser-evil **Sotiris Rex** https://substack.com/profile/58797461-sotiris-rex · **December 14, 2024** Did you ever feel cornered, forced to choose between only two calamities? Did you feel like you’d rather take a punch in the face than a knife in the gut? https://sotiris.substack.com/p/the-great-evil-of-the-lesser-evil **Read full story** https://sotiris.substack.com/p/the-great-evil-of-the-lesser-evil Thank you for reading. I appreciate your time. All my work here is free. Like, comment, share, or subscribe for free… or not. It’s all the same.