let me put this another way: despair, or its new name, doomerism, asserts omniscience--that things cannot be better, that all possibilities of good are already foreclosed, that you can know this as fact. it looks like humility, but it's all ego. it is, in fact, the assumption of godhood.
I joke a lot about my capacity for despair, but there's enough Catholic discipline in my youth to remember that it is in fact a sin, one that absorbs all the best in you more comprehensively than a tar pit. I left the church ages ago, but I held onto that cable: despair is not a long-term good.
100%—also heavily influenced by Catholic upbringing on this. Related: I can't remember how faithfully Denethor's story is rendered from the books but imo the LOTR films depict well the perils of despair with his character and how it only makes defeat certain. (And how the Palantir can't be trusted!)
Having just reread the books—the books portray a more competent Denethor who’s a born statesman if definitely not a nice guy. But thanks in large part to the palantir melting his brain, he collapses into despair at exactly the time when Minas Tirith most needs a strong leader.
Denethor using the Palantir to “stay informed” while not realizing the Palantir only showed him what its master wanted him to see is _almost_ too apt an analogy for online doomerism, huh
