The context for his survey of declinists grows ever more spacious and detailed, and the characters play off one another to fascinating effect. Time and again, they are revealed as oddly deaf to history. They do not realize how often their song has been sung before, and in how many different keys. The principal categories of pessimism identified by Mr. Herman are historical, cultural, racial, and ecological. Historical pessimism is a particular kind of sinking fe eling about the future, based on a belief that events in the present are undoing the ordered achievements of the past.
Pessimism turns to fatalism, and the only option is resignation and withdrawal.
The modern world is trapped in a process of deterioration, exhaustion, and collapse. In its original European context, cultural pessimism cut across the poli tical and ideological spectrum. As the will to challenge the terms of the debate has eroded, the conse quences for the nation have been devastating. The crucial difference is that these criticisms are now embedded in the fabric of mass culture. We live in an era of pop pessimism, with all the problems and limitations that cultural perspective tends to create.