Everywhere I look people are bogged down by their own negativity — including myself. Even as I write this article I’m thinking about the handshake that I messed up with a coworker on my way out the door this afternoon and how much my own writing sucks.
The more I think about it though, the more I realize that there’s no utility in wallowing in my negativity at all. I think it’s important to be humble, but heavy self-loathing is almost more annoying that blind arrogance. Somehow, I can excuse arrogance at this stage of my life while self-loathing comes with a brand of melodrama that is so over-the-top it’s nauseating. Arrogance has its problems, but at least it isn’t whiney.
At this point I refuse to accept that it’s the end of the world, or that everything is getting progressively worse. Ironically, it’s stupid and arrogant in a self-loathing way, to think that this is the point in human evolution when we collapse into disrepair. What makes us so sure that we even have the capability to end it all?
Even with the threat of a nuclear holocaust or some kind of antibiotic resistant super-virus, people forget that human beings are also evolving and adapting right alongside all of the things that are preparing to kill us. If we’ve adapted and survived this long, what makes everyone so sure that we won’t manage to keep going?
It’s easy to focus on negativity when it surrounds us in the media. However, the media isn’t to blame for it — they’re just playing to what the market wants. Whether or not that’s an issue is a completely separate discussion. The news is all about negativity because that’s what people want to see.
Talking about the rapidly approaching end of days is a lame cliché. People have been saying that for so long it has been reduced to a shrill and bothersome noise. When are we going to turn around and realize that this all in our heads?
The world seems negative because we’re choosing to see it that way. Don’t get me wrong, bad s*** happens everyday. But what’s the benefit of dwelling on it. I’m not saying to ignore it, but the fact that we allow it to infect our perception of reality is what is going to force it into being.
If we assume that everything is going to get worse, it might. The irony being that most people who claim the end is near are actually against that outcome. Anyone complaining about the apocalypse is certainly not content with it, and yet they choose to believe it as if they want it to be true.
Maybe somewhere deep down people would like to believe that it will all be over soon. That way they don’t have to care as much or try as hard. It certainly would be easier to resign in the face of armageddon than it would to actually do something to stop it.
Maybe we all secretly hope that the world will end so we don’t look stupid for talking about it for this long. I find it funny and fitting that it seems like people would rather be right and have the world end, then be wrong and have things work out. After all, if there’s one thing we can be sure of, being wrong is far more painful than any radiation sickness or flesh eating virus ever could be.
