The Downside is Just Easier

I think I’ve found a basic flaw in human nature. It seems to me the natural default setting for the grand majority of people is negative and this is mostly just because negative is easier than positive.

While I am not egotistical enough to believe I am the first person to postulate such a theory, I have never seen it discussed anywhere else. This may mean it is original to me but it is more likely due to the fact my reading history revolved around Robert B. Parker, John D. MacDonald and Jerry Siegel’s Superman and not Bertrand Russell, Soren Kierkegaard and Frederich Nietzsche’s Ubermensch.

Think about it. Being negative is just easier.

“Hey, John. You want to go water skiing?”

“Why would I want to do something which turns water from the comfortable consistency it has as it comes out of the bathtub spigot to the hardness of concrete as my body slams into it going thirty miles an hour. I’m staying home and watching television.”
See, unadventurous, and negative, but also infinitely easier to do.

Look at the world of politics. (I realize this is annoying so I will make it as brief as possible.) When one side puts forth an idea the other side immediately disagrees with the idea, then states the idea was stupid, then states the idea was un-American, then states the idea will cause the downfall of our nation as we know it, then states pursuing the idea means we will face an apocalypse of Biblical proportion, then states the person on the other side who first introduced the idea has a mother who wears combat boots. This is so much easier than actually listening to the idea, considering the true facts and possible merits inherent in the idea, sitting down with the other side to alter and enhance the idea to better fit the needs of a larger number of people, admitting that someone from the other side may not be a blithering idiot, then going out to dinner together instead of just talking to another exact same point of view ideologue on television in order to make sure your constituents are convinced you are doing their will even if doing the opposite might have made a positive impact on the grand majority of humans. Fomenting anger and fear mongering requires a lot less effort and sophistication than implementing the sometimes complex processes required to actually make government function in a manner conducive to bettering our quality of life. (Sheeesh, that may not have been as brief as I first intended it to be.)

While I do not think it is the best way to be, it is very possible this negative tendency may be hard-wired into us. Early man had to assume there was a man eating something or other around every corner if he wanted to see next Tuesday. Caveman Shecky sitting on the ground laughing at the absurdity of a glyptodont (an armadillo the size of a Chevy Malibu) becomes Hors-d’oeuvre Shecky in a Paleolithic minute.
To better prove my point let’s look at the most basic, least sophisticated or educated example of a human being, anybody on Jersey Shore. No, let’s look at a newborn. Ticked off and sad is what they do best (come to think of it that is true of the Jersey Shore people too). It takes weeks of existence and great effort on the part of the adults in the baby’s life to elicit that first smile. There was even an early culture that believed the first person to cause a child to laugh was to be a special person for that kid for the rest of his life.

If we are to fight this predisposition for negativity we need to start early. Think about when a baby is born. The medical staff wants to get the kid to breath. Do we show the kid Bugs Bunny and the Marx Brothers to make him laugh? Laughter is really just happy breathing. Nope. Somebody slaps the kid on the backside to make him cry. Crying is really just unhappy breathing. I understand the expediency of the slap but I have to think if the first thing we did as a human being no longer attached to another human being was fun we might be more inclined to be happy. We go from the optimum of comfort, it is warm, it is soft, it is dark so napping is simple, and the food arrives without any fuss or bother. We are ripped from this and smacked by a stranger. No wonder grumpy is our natural state.

Christopher Pyle believes delivery room staff should at least try funny faces. You can contact him at occasionallykeen@yahoo.com.