The Art of Negativity
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The Art of Negativity
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Re: The Art of Negativity
#2Not one reference to stoicism?
Re: The Art of Negativity
#3I find the dichotomy of pessimism/optimism and positive/negative not very useful in daily life, I prefer to think of defeatism and naivety. To me realism or (practical) optimism lies between those two.
You can't go through life either distrusting everyone and everything, nor can you do the opposite and live a good life. People don't like negativity because it ruins their mood, but you sometimes have to be critical. People also don't like positivity because they feel it sets too high of a standard, but to do anything you need a little hubris.
Re: The Art of Negativity
#4Not one reference to stoicism?
Stoicism at it's core is about overcoming destructive emotions.
The negative methodology in this article seems to explicitly renounce the concept of emotions being destructive.
I tend to agree with the second view/philosophy more. Negative emotions like anger and grief are not destructive on their own. However, an individual's response to negative emotions can easily become destructive and foster harmful habits.
Stoicism aims to free one from anger, envy and jealousy, thus averting the negative responses which is an absolutely valid approach. The negative methodology in the article is about experiencing the emotion to its fullest and building resilience, which in turn reduces destructive responses.
Re: The Art of Negativity
#5I find the dichotomy of pessimism/optimism and positive/negative not very useful in daily life, I prefer to think of defeatism and naivety. To me realism or (practical) optimism lies between those two. You can't go through life either distrusting everyone and everything, nor can you do the opposite and live a good life. People don't like negativity because it ruins their mood, but you sometimes have to be critical. P…
I've found that it's possible to very cleanly separate pessimism and optimism while still experiencing both. When I'm with my family or ideating on a new project, optimism is a much better mindset as it allows the mind to wander, create and relax.
When I am in the depths of a project where I have a lot of things that I need to fail at to understand, a negative mindset is more useful.
Maintaining a positive mindset in the face of a multitude of assured failures is possible, but draining. However, a negative mindset, is more engine-like and muddles along, unsurprised by the failures.
Again, this is a purely personal anecdote and I would not recommend adopting a negative mindset to other people.
Re: The Art of Negativity
#6I find the dichotomy of pessimism/optimism and positive/negative not very useful in daily life, I prefer to think of defeatism and naivety. To me realism or (practical) optimism lies between those two. You can't go through life either distrusting everyone and everything, nor can you do the opposite and live a good life. People don't like negativity because it ruins their mood, but you sometimes have to be critical. P…
It really depends on how the negativity is expressed, and about what. Being negative about something that you can change is defeatism. being negative about something that will happen and can do nothing about is at best unhelpful for anyone.
Being negative about how you reacted to something, how you did something, or how something was done (without pointing fingers) is extremely helpful for me, it push me to improve or change where needed.
Re: The Art of Negativity
#7A kernel of a maybe good idea, rapidly descending into a rambling communist manifesto and idpol virtue performance.
Re: The Art of Negativity
#8I find the dichotomy of pessimism/optimism and positive/negative not very useful in daily life, I prefer to think of defeatism and naivety. To me realism or (practical) optimism lies between those two. You can't go through life either distrusting everyone and everything, nor can you do the opposite and live a good life. People don't like negativity because it ruins their mood, but you sometimes have to be critical. P…
"You can't go through life either distrusting everyone and everything, nor can you do the opposite and live a good life."
I distrust everything and can make a convincing case for it.
Where is the trust to be found? In societal structures? In people who have been indoctrinated into a society and think its perfectly normal to spend time in an office looking at screens and in their downtime look at screens too?
And what is a good life? Is it having the money and the goodies, or is it having the truth? This is a decision for everyone to make, whether they realise it or not!
Re: The Art of Negativity
#9I find the dichotomy of pessimism/optimism and positive/negative not very useful in daily life, I prefer to think of defeatism and naivety. To me realism or (practical) optimism lies between those two. You can't go through life either distrusting everyone and everything, nor can you do the opposite and live a good life. People don't like negativity because it ruins their mood, but you sometimes have to be critical. P…
"You can't go through life either distrusting everyone and everything, nor can you do the opposite and live a good life." I distrust everything and can make a convincing case for it. Where is the trust to be found? In societal structures? In people who have been indoctrinated into a society and think its perfectly normal to spend time in an office looking at screens and in their downtime look at screens too? And what…
If you want to be productive in life and cooperate with people you need at least some level of trust. For example if you are meeting up with someone, do you distrust that they will not show up and not go at all or do you demand they send their GPS location every minute of their way to know that you are not wasting an hour of your time going to the meeting?
This is just one minor example. There's several other things that you have to trust that work. In any exchange or trade you are providing some level of trust. If you didn't trust at all you wouldn't do the trade. You trust that whoever you are meeting up with won't kill you.
So you can't really say that you "distrust everything". That's a meaningless statement. Even you who says that they distrust everything has some level of trust in some items.
If you are in a relationship do you go there with complete distrust, once again demanding to see their messages and location at all times because otherwise you distrust them not to cheat on you?
If you are living in a house you trust that whoever built the house built it well enough for it to not collapse on you randomly.
Re: The Art of Negativity
#10I find the dichotomy of pessimism/optimism and positive/negative not very useful in daily life, I prefer to think of defeatism and naivety. To me realism or (practical) optimism lies between those two. You can't go through life either distrusting everyone and everything, nor can you do the opposite and live a good life. People don't like negativity because it ruins their mood, but you sometimes have to be critical. P…
Pragmatic optimism is the best. You don't delude yourself that everything is okay when it's clearly not, but you know that you can handle most challenges thrown at you and you use the best methods suitable for handling any problems. You are only negative if it's worth being negative about. And this is about the things that are changeable and you are negative so you would know what you have to change or improve. You give benefit of the doubt to people as much as is reasonable.