Pessimism, the sense that it is hopeless, is a self-fulfilling prophecy

Not entirely wrong… but is optimism better?

Are you a techno-optimist? This is a serious condition—as common as prediabetes. Don’t laugh. You can treat your prediabetes—and your techno-optimism, too.
- A techno-pessimist manifesto https://graymirror.substack.com/p/a-techno-pessimist-manifesto

I have learned that ages become golden because they imitate and innovate.

Let’s imitate a golden age, then. But wait, are we learning from past or is that Voodoo thinking again?

They started to support strongmen, control the economy and abandon international exchange. This made the fear of disaster self-fulfilling, since those barriers limited access to other possibilities and restricted the adaptation and innovation that could have helped them deal with the threat.

Would not hurt to drop a specific example or two here as well.

On the other hand, are there examples of the opposite? Let’s remember Russian minister Sergei Witte, once competently working for the monarch who won a tariff war. But his wild economical spirit wanted much more. Thus, once he was left to his own judgment, the bold renovator opened those barriers and optimistically expressed hope that now wealth will just flow in on its own. For some reason, this course ended quite disastrously. Hmm.

Or we may at least remember that “golden age” is called “age” for a reason, and that if someone 70 years old (or 10, for that matter) rejects the fear of disaster and boldly tries to act as if he was a fit 20 years old man… well, this sort of optimism does not sound healthy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGkLjfPWqeI

But get Giotto and the flying shuttle, it takes something more: a broader culture of optimism.

What is this grammatical construction? Is this valid English?

This progress sometimes became self-sustaining because, at a certain point, it started transforming the self-identity of these cultures. That is why we often see clusters of creativity, like philosophy in Athens, art during the Renaissance, classical music in Vienna and technology in Silicon Valley.

This seems subtly wrong, somehow. Could it be because AdtechVC-era Silicon Valley is an instantiation of Hell on Earth and must be permanently destroyed and utterly obliterated forever, or is it, rather, the truly farcical notion that AdtechVC-era Silicon Valley has produced anything of value at all, let alone anything of eternal value like Athens, Florence, or Vienna?

They started to support strongmen, control the economy and abandon international exchange. This made the fear of disaster self-fulfilling, since those barriers limited access to other possibilities and restricted the adaptation and innovation that could have helped them deal with the threat.

…And here it is. The author is implicitly protesting presidents with the arrogance to exercise the powers of their office in unapproved fashion, mundanely Hamiltonian economic policies, and fewer than infinity Indians.