The Downside of Positive Thinking

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5um8QWWRvo&feature=endscreen&NR=1

Yep.

It's like that "law of attraction bs".

Yes, if you think about something a lot, you'll notice it more in the world around you.

However, it isn't shaping the world around you.

It's just changing the filter that everything passes through.

And sometimes, having a "positive filter" to only see "positive things" isn't a very valuable or useful thing to have around.

In fact, it can be downright negative, as the video points out.

And silly too boot.

Quite honestly, that's the only advantage that, I think, depression affords the individual is that we can actually see the bad where it is. And while that sometimes doesn't help, because the bad isn't really there at times, it still forces you to think about what is going on and what is going wrong in the world, such that you can be vigilant and motivated to do something about what's going on.

It works.

It helps.

And it's valuable, in spite of it sometimes, being miserable to be around at times, thanks to the mirror neurons that light up whenever we receive information from another.

In short, optimists suck.

And they do so on an empirical level.

They don't get what's going on.

They CAN'T understand what's going on.

And they lose out when negative things are coming toward them and they don't get themselves and others the f$%# out of the way!

True, you may get a false alarm in there at times.

But would you rather be dead, out of power, in a crisis than wrong?

I wouldn't.

I'd rather be wrong than dead, thank you very much.

And that's a big deal coming from a person with depression.

I know that the optimists are the ones who are hiring.

But I would let them consider whether or not it's actually good for them to be in the places that require constant attention to the negative; to the problems; to the issues, in order to be empirically successful at it.

Nothing and no one is going to be right 100% of the time.

But I, personally, would rather have an unneeded freak out than a real catastrophe on my hands.

And that's the logic that's lacking in the giddy, "I'm so happy" world of the Golden Retriever people of this world.

And they're the ones in charge.

Think about it.