If you find nothing else from Pessimism interesting or persuasive, I ask you to consider the simple wisdom of the following lines from Dienstag’s Afterword (alas, yes, our journey through Pessimism is nearing its end, but all things must come to an end):

We are each given one human life with no promise as to how much light or darkness it may contain.  Nor is there any promise that turning ourselves toward the light or the darkness will make us free and happy.  Freedom and happiness exist, occasionally they are even visible–but they do not exist as the “solution” to a “problem” any more than do the sun and the moon.  The coexistence of freedom and happiness is like the appearance of the sun and moon in the same portion of the sky, and effected by similar means.