The optimism or lack thereof is mainly due to news and social media. Climate change, wars, criminality, cops shooting people of color, economic inequality etc. I've lived in a communist country and all the official news was boring propaganda in the lines of "our beloved leader went to <country> to visit his omologue, <name> where they deliberated about world peace". Then I saw a Gulf News newspaper from the UAE: only positive news, obviously propaganda. I'm not saying we shouldn't discuss these issues but western news has an overy negative tone, it keeps parroting the same issues and competes for our attention. Social media is even worse than news. My so keeps scrolling at insta posts and voices discontent about certain travel influencers going on vacation all the time while she has to work overtime and take a pay cut.