From Marinetti to e/acc, this essay follows the idea that speed is not merely useful but virtuous. Optimism has a reckless cousin, and the family resemblance is hard to miss.

Ten serious objections to optimism, from Dostoevsky to Ellul and Heidegger. Hope that cannot survive intelligent opposition is only morale with footnotes.

Leibniz, Lisbon, Löwith, and Blumenberg in the long quarrel over whether history has a direction. Optimism turns out to have a theology, or at least a disputed inheritance.