The human psyche has weather. When we feel bad about the present and future, it’s cloudy in our psyche. When our psyche is cloudy, it colors everything. Things feel gloomier, angrier, scarier, and more depressing. This of course has all kinds of negative effects on behavior.
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Likewise, gratitude and optimism open up a bright blue sky in the psyche. This feels blissful and energizing and fosters kindness.
These behaviors generate more of the weather that produced them. So psyche weather is contagious, and it can spread like an epidemic.
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These behaviors generate more of the weather that produced them. So psyche weather is contagious, and it can spread like an epidemic.
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People know something is wrong in society right now but it can be hard to articulate.
I think what sucks right now is that a massive epidemic, maybe pandemic, of dark cloudy psyche skies has spread.
(Covid doesn’t help, but this has been going on a lot longer than Covid.)
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I think what sucks right now is that a massive epidemic, maybe pandemic, of dark cloudy psyche skies has spread.
(Covid doesn’t help, but this has been going on a lot longer than Covid.)
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I think a huge part of the problem is that the antidote to a negativity epidemic is sunny rhetoric—but the political atmosphere has made sunny rhetoric *taboo*.
Expressing gratitude and optimism will get you smeared as callous, privileged, ignorant, malicious.
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Expressing gratitude and optimism will get you smeared as callous, privileged, ignorant, malicious.
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And part of the reason for this reaction is that pessimism, cynicism, and grievance are the lifeblood of political extremism. Extreme narratives need to crush sunny mentality like a virus in order to survive. The punishing of positivity is an immune system response.
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I don’t think this is usually malicious. It’s having been convinced that reality is so grim that it seems like anyone who feels otherwise must be an asshole or an idiot.
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