There are many reasons to despair over the state of the world today: climate change, war, terrorism, social injustice and an utter failure by our political systems to fix them. Yet there will always be those frustrating optimists who counter such an outlook by citing developments such as modern medicine, democracy and the World Wide Web as signs that things are, and always have been, getting better. Stuart Sim argues in response that there is tremendous value in keeping the dark side of human affiars at the forefront of our consciousness. This book offers the proposition that pessimists simply have a more realistic world view. Tracing how pessimism has developed over time, it shows that many thinkers throughout history - including philosophers, theologians, authors, aritsts and even scientists - have been pessimists at heart, challenging us to face up to the problems that define human existence. Spanning cultures and moving across eras, this grand discourse of pessimism proposes the provocative argument that pessimism should be cultivated and vigorously defended as one of our most useful dispositions. -- from back cover.