Optimism (as a radical life choice)

It turns out it’s not just The Cave that is frequently gloomy.

This week, Monash University’s Australian Youth Barometer found four in five young Aussies think they’re going to be worse off financially than their parents. Presumably the 20% who thought otherwise are counting on a healthy inheritance and high interest rates.

It’s not just Zoomers. 

Economic confidence in the US has reached near historic lows. Americans are also pessimistic about basically everything else, including the country’s moral and ethical standards, education system, marriage and the family, and ability to ensure racial equality. Coming from some of the cheeriest people in the world, that says a lot.

Consumer sentiment in Australia is now ‘cautiously pessimistic’, which doesn’t actually make sense as a phrase but presumably means people know things are bad but don’t want to think about it too much.

Chinese AI company, DeepSeek, emerged from a year of public silence to announce it was pessimistic about AI's future impact on humanity, a strategy which is not in most PR playbooks. 

Defeatism is now so ubiquitous, the FT felt the need to write a defence of it. 

It can be (very) easy to get sucked into this way of thinking - you only need to consume the news, scroll through your phone, or read a newsletter that was conceived as a fun marketing tool but has unwittingly morphed into a weekly diary of despair.

Optimism now feels radical, perhaps even fanciful. But despite all the evidence, it remains a far better option than the alternative.