Smile! Human Beings Can Never Stop Toxic Positivity

Don’t look down

It’s positively toxic.

Our predilection is to be positive. Fake it till you make it. Be on the winning team. Don’t look at the bad energy. Stop spiraling, look on the bright side.

And so on.

In the film, Don’t Look Up, this is parodied when the big celebrity release of BASH life is revealed. The dodgy billionaire announces, to thunderous applause, that BASH life will detect (by monitoring your vital signs) if you are ever sad. Or afraid. Or alone.

It immediately directs you to a cute puppy on hen’s back video, and promises — through selling more products and services — that the “sad feeling will never, ever, EVER return.”

This hilarious, and widely overlooked, scene is in a film about denial. It’s so appallingly evident that we are, indeed, absolutely addicted to “feel-good” human vibes. We do not admit having emotions, and we are in a serious denial of that part of life which includes suffering.

The reason we are so toxically positive

We don’t like the truth. We can’t handle the truth.

Hence, we have not succeeded to stop the climate crisis. Or reverse inequality. Or disallow the rise of authoritarian leaders.

It’s true. Putin’s maniacal smash and grab is due, at least in part, to our inability to see negativity.

This human tendency goes against what one would think is required for evolution. However, it must never (never, ever, EVER!) be forgotten that evolution is driven by the environment.

The new environment, of eight billion people on a rapidly heating globe, is brand new to the last 150 years. The rise of technology, inter-connectedness, global dependency on economy, surveillance, and most of all consumerism, creates a not-that-brave new world.

We also live in a nuclear age. Surprise! That negativity seems so cold war and old war.

We are social beings. If we fail to win friends, family, partners, allies, and community, we fail as human beings. We present ourselves — except anonymously online — as positive non-disruptors.

Among our own perceived tribe, we answer the buzz of electronic tweets and texts. We readily respond to being acknowledged for our social participation, however false, however phony.

When a person catastrophically fails at being social, he is said to have a pathology. Hence the term itself: sociopath.

We positively need one another

It doesn’t matter if you are a fanatical religious zealot, or a hippie-dippy new age flake. (Or both.) You are going to be positive with those whose love and support you need to have. You are going to be compliant with employers and customers. You are going to not piss off your neighbors. You are going to fall into prescribed roles, and not rock the boat.

Oh, you say you are a rebel? If so, then you already know there are social consequences, public and private if this is true. We know all of this intuitively, automatically, and fully.

But what about traitors? Idiots? Populists? Tucker Carlson? The Dumpsters?
These guys are by definition, there to play a role of agitator.

They purposely, and profitably, go against the grain. They sometimes lead people astray by telling them, positively, what they want to hear: you are winners, They are non-human. Or, you are the good guys, the bad guys want to take away your way of life.

Not all positivity is toxic

Like magnificent masculinity, not all positivity is toxic.

How do we tell when we are just being polite social beings, or lying to ourselves?

History is affected, good and bad through our agitators. They are on both “sides.” The best of them, however, like the suffragists, or Gandhi, or MLK, serve up the ugly truth, not just digestible lies.

It’s a good deal more complex than that. Thomas Jefferson had good ideals, …and bad behaviors.
As long as we are social beings, there is hope, however. By sensing that we need affirmation, validation and inclusion, we can all begin to see our actual belonging.

We can see the truth, and we can learn to handle it.

That’s positive. Therefore, ask not for whom the dopamine hitting, buzzer of inclusivity rings.
It rings for thee.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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