When I was first asked, back in 82, or was it 83, to give this keynote address to the Society of Pessimists, my first thought was, what good would it do? What good has ever come from a keynote address when those here assembled are convinced that their organization, founded in a spirit of discovery and enthusiasm by our illustrious visionary, Zebulon Quirinius Minsk IV, is doomed to a fate of lost pondering and misguided fear?

Those of you who know me see my splinter movement, neo-pessimism, as a heresy to those founding principles of truth, discovery and insight, but in reality they could not be closer, in truth, to those very principles we hold dear. Looking out at at the dwindling number of those assembled in our great hall of fellowship, I see a number of head-nods, I hear quite a few grunts of approval, but mixed in with a large number of you drowsing and several of you fully asleep. Much of that could be attributed, in fact, to my droning, nasal, monotone voice, a personal trait that I have possessed my whole life and I am convinced that I will never be able to fully change. Nevertheless, I argue that neo-pessimism is closer in truth to the founding principles first set down in 74, or was it 75, by Zebulon Minsk, in his now famous 856-page, unfinished manuscript, "I, Pessimist", from which I will make several references, and which I will refer to as simply "IP". As usual, several copies of "I, Pessimist" are scattered through the hall, and if you choose to look up these references, ask one of your colleagues to locate you a copy.

Our movement has in fact splintered into three groups, the classic pessimists, who focus on society and the good that will never come of it, and the impossibility of anything we can do to change that proven fact. The Minsk Pessimists, our second splinter group, focus on our illustrious society, which, membership in decline and unable to reach out to new members, is doomed to shrink into oblivion, as we perhaps wander off to become optimists or worse, with the last member turning the light off and closing the door, and the last bit of warmth slowly ebbing from our meeting hall until it, too, is as dark and cold as doomed society itself. Finally, we have the small number of neo-pessimists, who seek to revive the principles of Minsk, knowing full well that their efforts will not succeed, but nevertheless make the attempt, as they see that there is something noble in the effort itself.

I begin with the simple principles of pessimism, which cannot be restated often enough. A pessimist should always be able to explain what it means at the core, to be a pessimist. Minsk begins here as well, after a short introduction, on page 3. I'll wait a few moments as I see that some of you are fumbling for a copy of "IP". I think that there are some more copies over here. I have one here, here, why don't you use mine. I carry one with me all the time.

Minsk states that two gentlemen by the names of Landau and Chisholm first mentioned these ideas to him at a long-forgotten dinner party years ago. Pessimism, it should be known and as well, related to everyone we meet, does not mean that we live in the worst of all possible worlds. It is, truly, the assignment of high priority to the probability of error, of failure. The point is to reduce such possibilities to insure effective and reliable performance even in the face of hardship. Minsk was of the opinion that pessimism moves us to the prevention of error before it even occurs - it produces, in ideal form as explained in the diagram on page 10, a failure-avoidance management strategy.

Optimism, in contrast, is nothing but flaws and deception. I'll wait for the cheers and ritual chanting to subside. I can't continue until you, all of you are all seated. Sir in the front, you need to sit down. What are the ways that optimism deceives us? Page 15, optimism does not assign high priority to the constructive features of error detection and correction. Knowledge and competence develop only on the basis of error, and the search for truth follows its pathways. Misplaced optimism is everywhere. Take for example, the design of gasoline tanker trucks, and their thin aluminum skin. It can be only optimism that lets this design flaw continue, in the light of the facts which tells us that such tankers have more than five times the crash death rate than other trucks. Was it not optimism that let the war in Vietnam continue when we knew it was unwinnable? The can-do attitude inherited from our ancestors was nothing more than raw optimism. In fact, the longer the time since the last catastrophe, the more one comes to believe that another will not occur. When the threat of error is taken seriously, management attitudes must become pessimistic. Pessimism, in a sense is realism. It is the lens which lets us see the practical aspects of the world clearly - the ones we use to determine how to 'go on'. And this is one point where the neo-pessimists differ from Minsk, at least in limited examples.

IP page 22 we have the discussion of the half-empty glass - Minsk saw the glass not only as half empty, but destined to become fully empty, at some near point in time, and the glass itself destined to become broken, with the shards of glass perhaps cutting someone, who, held back by society from reaching his potential, would sit in a dark corner, alone and crying, bleeding, and with an uncertain future. As neo-pessimists, we must rise above this dark prediction to simply note that we must be careful with objects that can break and make whatever use we can of the limited amount of fluid in the glass. Now I hear several of you gasping and protesting that my words are heresy, but they in fact speak of what is real rather that what is not. A neo-pessimist always seeks the truth wherever it may lead, rather than forcing that path down dark alleys without reason.

And IP page 343 through 413 we have the long Minsk lament that "It will never work," whatever it is we try to do to society to change it from its path to oblivion. We all nod our heads each time we re-read this passage, confident with Minsk's solid mathematical proof that society is unchangeable is correct. I argue here that what in fact Minsk has proven is that nothing that has been tried "in the past" will work - that new ideas and new concepts can be tried to see where they lead. What is it I hear from the back row? Staccato chants of heresy? Can I possibly be the evil of evils, an Optimist? It is simply the truth that you cannot prove the unprovable, and that nothing ventured is nothing gained.

IP page 777, we have the chapter "Hope is hopeless", which cannot be correct, because it is in fact a contradiction. What Minsk truly means is that raw hope - hope that is not tied to action, hope that is not grounded in what is real, hope that does not begin with what we already have, is the kind that is hopeless. A hope that is grounded in what is real, what can be done, and what should be done, is the kind that can change society. A neo-pessimist would say that society itself will never realize, on its own, what it would take to move it forward. This does not mean that the task itself is not possible, or not do-able.

Finally, I would like to refer to the famous "last page", page 856, which itself was not finished, where Minsk wonders out loud if anything really matters. Minsk would not have written his book, seen it published, and established the first "Universal Pessimist" societies (independently owned and operated, I know, I know, we all know that) if it did not in fact matter. Our pessimist society is descended from those initial groups, after of course suffering a great loss of members, and the first consolidation, and the second consolidation, and now of course, the three chapter halls that are left, or at least still have regular meetings.

But my time is up. I see that some of you are already leaving, and most in fact have already left. I yield the floor to Madam speaker, and I truly wonder if anything good came from my words.