“Dad, you’re, you’re twisting my words! I meant burden in its most positive sense.” – Frasier
In Rambo® 7, Rambo™ fights arthritis.
News stories are like sheep they arrive in flocks as part of a lambush. One flock of stories this week was about, and I quote, Toxic Positivity. Just like another bogeyman, Toxic Masculinity, the Left seeks to take something good and turn it into something to be seen as bad.
The basic idea of the stories is this:
- Positive people make it hard for people to be sad or defeatist.
- Because people can’t express their sadness or defeat, they feel even sadder and more defeated.
- Therefore, the people who tried to cheer them up are evil. Oh, wait, the Left doesn’t acknowledge such an old-fashioned concept as evil. It has to be “toxic.”
Positivity is good. Is it a universal cure-all? Absolutely not. When Ma Wilder died (more than two decades ago), the last thing I wanted was someone to crack a joke or try to make light of the situation. I was grieving. I was not interested in anyone putting the “fun” in funeral.
It’s normal to grieve when a parent dies. But wallowing in that grief for too long doesn’t help anyone. If I had stayed in that grief?
That’s despair, and despair is evil. Not toxic.
Evil. Despair eats into the soul.
Moses was a high-tech prophet – he was the first to use a tablet.
That was my first reaction when I read this story: whoever is behind it is evil.
Why?
Life is tough, really tough. People that we love die. The economy has hit millions directly and is looming over many, many more.
Heck, if I wanted to, I could spend this entire post writing about things that were horrible in 2020 and 2021. But I’m not going to, because, even when things are pretty tough, almost every person reading this has a life that’s better than 99.99% of every person that has ever lived, even on your worst day.
The four stages of Santa:
1. You believe in Santa.
2. You don’t believe in Santa.
3. You are Santa.
4. You look like Santa.
Objectively, my life has been fantastic, as has the life of The Mrs. and the rest of my family. Have bad things happened to us? Sure. But we don’t dwell on them, because that’s despair.
One thing that’s critical for me when I’m having a bad day is being around someone positive to bring me up and out of my sadness. It’s critical because if you let it, sadness will turn into self-pity. And self-pity is a hole with no bottom.
Joe Biden has indicated he wants to put chips in the brains of United States Citizens. What kinds of chips? “Well, you know the thing, sour cream and onion, maybe.”
So why are there people preaching against Toxic Positivity? I can only think of two reasons:
- There are a group of people who actively like feeling bad about themselves. As I’ve established before, this group tends to be (but is not exclusively) Leftist. Positive people are a mirror that they don’t like to see: a mirror of what kind of person they could be if they weren’t such miserable wretches.
- Oops, there’s only the one group.
The alternative to positive people is . . . negative people.
I avoid negative people like I avoid personal hygiene. Why? Because every day I live or work around negative people, it feels like my life is slowly being sucked away. Negative people are emotional vampires. The sort of defeatism that they spew out is as infectious as Madonna® before her monthly penicillin shot.
I hear mummies are into wrap music.
Negativity can poison a workplace: it’s the guy at work who is always sure that someone else has it better, that some other group is the favored group, and that whatever raise they get is never enough. Then one person in their team is recruited – they begin to see that their group are always getting a bad deal, treated unfairly, having to work harder than others.
Strong people can avoid this self-identified victimhood. However, I’ve seen good people sucked in and become unhappy in a great job, merely because they felt that someone else, somewhere else, had it better than they did.
The biggest weapon against that attitude: being positive. That’s why I write so often about it. I think that 95% of the way I feel on an average day is entirely in my control. No, it doesn’t apply at a funeral or on other dark days. But most days?
At my funeral, my friend promised to say, “bargain,” and that means a great deal.
I choose to be happy. I choose to enjoy my life. I choose to be positive. I choose to try to uplift those around me. Do I acknowledge that times might be rough? Sure.
But the answer isn’t giving up, and taking our ball home. The answer is to work harder, get better, and never give up.
Toxic positivity?
Sign me up.
It is a fine line between being pessimistic and being realistic. I often stray toward the pessimism because it is less likely you will be disappointed but it also makes life seem a little meaningless.
I am a cynical optimist. I believe everything will go wrong in every possible way, but somehow work out all right in the end. So far, this has worked well for me.
No opinion on the website: it has the full passage.
https://richstevenson.org/2014/07/30/screwtape-comments-about-past-present-and-future/
TL’DR The world is subject to entropy & human nature subject to sin. Rejoice in whatever good you have now, and plan for whatever evils you can. But Screwtape has style:
The humans live in time but our Enemy destines them to eternity. He therefore, I believe, wants them to attend chiefly to two things, to eternity itself, and to that point of time which they call the Present. For the Present is the point at which time touches eternity. Of the present moment, and of it only, humans have an experience analogous to the experience which our Enemy has of reality as a whole; in it alone freedom and actuality are offered them. He would therefore have them continually concerned either with eternity (which means being concerned with Him) or with the Present — either meditating on their eternal union with, or separation from, Himself, or else obeying the present voice of conscience, bearing the present cross, receiving the present grace, giving thanks for the present pleasure.
Our business is to get them away from the eternal, and from the Present. With this in view, we sometimes tempt a human (say a widow or a scholar) to live in the Past. But this is of limited value, for they have some real knowledge of the past and it has a determinate nature and, to that extent, resembles eternity. It is far better to make them live in the Future. Biological necessity makes all their passions point in that direction already, so that thought about the Future inflames hope and fear. Also, it is unknown to them, so that in making them think about it we make them think of unrealities. In a word, the Future is, of all things, the thing least like eternity.
Very, very well said.
I heard once that an optimist says, “what great weather” while a pessimist says, “it’s horrible weather” and the realist sets the sails.
I do think we’ll see rocky seas, but I do think our destination will be a good one.
Kind of what my dad used to say. Instead of saying…”Good God, what a morning.”, We should say…”Good morning God, what a day!”
Very well said. When something crappy happens, if I wait long enough, I can see why it was a good thing.
Huh. Based on some quick research, if you ask me this whole “toxic positivity” thing (a phrase I had never even heard of) is pretty weird – like it’s some kind of psy-op. Check it out on Google Trends:
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=toxic%20positivity
If you look at the Regional Trends map, it looks like the 2020 election map. “Toxic optimism” didn’t even start being a “thing” until Feb 2019. That’s a year before COVID – instead (wait for it) that was the week of the second Trump State of the Union address. Coincidence?
“TO” apparently took off with a Instagram graphic from Miami “radically honest” psychotherapist Whitney Goodman that was repeated in a couple of articles within a week:
https://themighty.com/2019/02/toxic-positivity-support/
https://medium.com/the-post-grad-survival-guide/the-terror-of-toxic-positivity-95abb8d08f9
Interestingly, “TO” didn’t “pop” until the May-Aug 2020 time frame – not after months of COVID lockdown, but exactly during the heyday of the BLM riots. This is hard to quantify, but if you scan the Google dates of articles about “TO” they seem to have been weaponized and come in batches or waves, almost like they are pre-planned to go out and push a message. HuffPo and WaPo published lead articles on “TO” within 30 days of each other in the middle of the BLM riots. Just this past week the major teacher publications seem to be pushing the concept in back-to-back articles dated Jan 5 and 6 :
https://www.nea.org/advocating-for-change/new-from-nea/when-too-much-good-attitude-becomes-toxic
https://www.edweek.org/leadership/when-toxic-positivity-seeps-into-schools-heres-what-educators-can-do/2021/01
John, how careless and unreasonable of you to stick the clickbait word “Leftist” in your title on such a sensitive topic! Feelings could be hurt here!
Ricky, thanks! Yeah, the search I did (not as comprehensive as yours) showed me that this is a subject they trot out when they want to make people feel bad.
And right now? They want the Right to feel defeated, when defeat isn’t even close yet.
“The economy has hit millions directly and is looming over many, many more.”
You misspelled government.
Well played.
Don’t get sad. Get angry. It’s more productive.
Actually, I think that’s part of the plan. First, they make you sad, then resentful, then angry, and then they tell you who to attack with your anger.
Yes, yes it is. And start to think about taking freedom back (which is Monday’s post).
I have a feeling that any eulogy at my funeral will begin with “Well, he’s gone, and I’d be lying if I said we all aren’t just little bit relieved.”
In person I am generally, with one or two exceptions, optimistic and pleasant. Though on the larger scale I know where all this is heading: No one gets out of here alive.
You’re an optimist! I’m not sure anyone will come to my funeral!!!
Dale Carnegie is rolling over in his grave. My late father took his course and subsequently, I read his books as a teenager, mumble mumble years ago. One of the things Carnegie stressed most, as I recall, was having a positive attitude. He would be anathema today.
Here are just a few basic rules gleaned from an internet search;
1. Become genuinely interested in other people. …
2. Smile. …
3. Remember that a person’s name is, to that person, the sweetest and most important sound in any language. …
4. Be a good listener. …
5. Talk in terms of the other person’s interest.
6.Make the other person feel important – and do it sincerely.
I do pretty good at numbers 1 and 2. But I am absolutely the worst at remembering someone’s name, even if I met them just a short time before.
I’m an average listener, as are probably most people, at least married ones.
Before my forced retirement and home seclusion, I was pretty good at number 5 and 6.
Ditto on number 3. I try very, very hard on it, even doing the “repeat it to remember it” trick.
I wondered why Orwellian was in the cache of the evil browser that I clean for family.
Some enemedia action.
Total corruption always leads to total collapse.
The CPUSA fifth column is quite happy with these terms as burning it all down by any means necessary is what gets them up in the morning.
Evil always consumes itself and the woketards who have appointed themselves masters of the universe are in for a rude shock.
Even Joe and Jane normie are waiting for the other shoe to drop now as the children of the devil have come out into the open and revealed all of their plans.
As for esteemed party member comrade kommissar Xiden, he is one of the original authors of the patriot act.
Will that be renamed the unity act?
I talked with Pugsley about why Orwell went from full-on socialist to anti-communist today. He asked – I didn’t bring the subject up.
I love my family.
In the end most of what Trump did was expose to a large extent of what we all believed. It is a good thing as the truth will set you free. It is not a fun time really because the truth hurts. Pain is a great motivator at times and this is still the greatest country on Earth and the silent majority and I mean “majority” are the most resilient people on Earth. As hard as its going to be remember we have already won. The blood of Christ was shed for us and where we are going was described in John’s writings while he was imprisoned on the island of patmos. I pray one day I will see it. It is strange to have to remind myself that God is in control, but I am only human.
Keep up the good work Mr. Wilder
ps. Mr. Guy I am pretty good at most of your thoughts but generally towards young people of which I became a fan of years ago spending time with them due to my kids. People my age are already set in their ways.
My Dad took the Carnegie course and went to the seminars because he went from blue collar work, (auto mechanic), to white collar work, (managing the PX on a military base ). In both instances, the bosses were military officers. He felt like he needed to learn a better way to communicate with his subordinates and bosses.
Thank you. It does mean a lot.
We will see terror and wonder beyond our imagining. Keep in mind the final destination.