4 Ways to See the Future

Peter Thiel, who many like and some disdain, has to be given credit for at least one insight in his seminal book on startups, Zero to One.

He argues that the way most people see the world, and behave in it, can fit inside one of four categories:

1)   Definite Pessimism

2)   Indefinite Pessimism

3)   Definite Optimism

4)   Indefinite Optimism

This has been a useful model for me, not only in figuring out where I fit by nature, but also in assessing the ideas and dispositions of people I work around, encounter, am married to, or negotiate with.

I will loosely paraphrase the definitions of each and provide some relevant examples.

Definite Pessimism

The Definite Pessimists can be very successful. He or she believes that most outcomes will be negative, so creates a life that can thrive in spite of those negative outcomes.

Definite Pessimists see a world in which most businesses will fail, most great ideas won’t amount to much, it is hard to rise up in most corporations, good schools are tough to get into, everlasting romance is hard to come by and passions are best pursued as hobbies. So within this infrastructure, he or she works very hard to carve out a durable and lucrative position.

This is where you find a lot of accountants and lawyers, perhaps some healthcare providers, finance majors, some tradesmen and salesmen, many valedictorians, people very good at understanding a definite set of rules and learning them well enough to excel above those around them. Great business managers come from this school. 

They think the future is grim and make definite plans to counteract that grimness.

The philosophy works. It checks out. It is consistent and yields a stable outcome.

Indefinite Pessimism

The Indefinite Pessimist has an equally grim idea of the future, but no plan for how to deal with it. He or she expects very little from it, has no specific goals or desires to fit into its framework, and therefore suffers little disappointment. This philosophy is home of the slacker and the epicurean.

Let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die.

The idea here, you could say, is to be European all of the time and an Instagram celebrity some of the time.

Believe it or not, this one also “works.” Low expectations and no plans yield a kind of lobotomized satisfaction. Think “The Dude.” He wasn’t so bad.

Definite Optimism

A Definite Optimist believes the future will be great and then undertakes to create it.

He or she has big ideas and marries them with specific executions.

You could say such grandiose vision and attention to detail rarely coexist in the same DNA strands (much like how Napoléon said we’d never have many true statesmen in the world since one had to be petty to gain power but great to exercise it) – and I would tend to agree. But the Definite Optimist is so enamored of the potential of his or her visions that a plan becomes inevitable. Concrete action grows from the root of conviction. 

This is where we typically find society’s (effective) entrepreneurs, the Jobs’ and Musks, the Thiels, inventors and innovators, pioneers of new technologies, journalists and essayists who fall into accidental activism on behalf of their subjects, leaders, a few artists, people whose marrow rots when their ideas die untested, that family member at the beach most looking forward to the end of the vacation.

Mother Teresa was a Definite Optimist. Unfortunately so was Hitler.

America, says Thiel, was born on a wave of Definite Optimism. But we couldn’t quite keep it up.

Indefinite Optimism 

Indefinite Optimism is the one that gets you in the most trouble. This character assumes just as fervently as the Definite Optimist that Good Things are coming, yet takes no steps to bring them about. Imagine waiting for your hundred-thousand dollar check in the mail, not too sure of who will be sending it, only that it’s due any day now.

The Indefinite Optimist is a very nice person, cheerful usually about the many Good Things hurrying towards him. He – not to abandon the hygienic pronoun alternation, but this perspective does tend to befit men more than women – may have a lot of ideas and may think they are good ideas, but his relationship to them remains formal and theoretical.

Kids are Indefinite Optimists. That’s why we love them. For adults it is an affliction.

Creative types are dangerously susceptible to this mindset. They have a million ideas and are usually allergic to something as unoriginal and delimiting as “effort.”

Of course it is central to Thiel’s book that America has now become an Indefinitely Optimistic nation. Several generations in a row have ridden into adulthood on a wave of boundless prosperity and simply expect that those conditions, or better ones, will remain the norm. We know things will be fine, or greater than fine, we just don’t know how, and please don’t ask us why.

Of the four relationships to the future, this is the only one that does not “work.” It is not coherent. It cannot help, save or console you.

The Roundup:

• Definite Pessimists have plump 401Ks and the satisfaction of honest work.
• Indefinite Pessimists will buy you a drink, make you laugh and maybe tell you something true about your soul.
• Definite Optimists embarrass themselves often and fail consistently, but also create a lot of magic and occasionally change the world.
• Indefinite Optimists - no soup for you.

I’m not given to categories.

I think most of them are a failure of the imagination. But in this case, I feel able to resonate with each of the four visions. Some part of me is guilty of all of them. That leaves me to try to navigate towards those tendencies in myself which I detest the least.

If nothing else, this spectrum can help us see the pitfalls and opportunities that accompany our collections of ideas.

Because everybody has ideas. Everybody. We are united in our creativity, divided only in our reactions to it.

Which is your category? And which would you like it to be?