Virginia Heffernan on the counter intuitive sin of despair:
But another way to see despair, in secular terms, is as a profoundly counter-adaptive philosophical position. Having no hope puts a living being in a terminal state. Why eat, if you have no hope of satiety? Why see people, if you have no hope of love or friendship? Why bathe or see the sun, if you have no hope for health? Why do anything but dull the pain and wither?
In our democracy, despair is also a hazard. If too many people despair, and start making the despair calculation—the why-bother, nothing-matters calculation—we find ourselves with an unsteady, unpredictable population who have given up faith in our collective American project. The despairing themselves might see themselves as harder to subjugate, and they’d be right. But fulfillment and joy and the pursuit of happiness are closed off to them too.
And just as individuals in despair can’t be brought around to hope or wellbeing by argument, or carrots and sticks, a despairing population can’t be brought around to sound citizenship with appeals to reason, passion, moral principles, or even self-interest.