It has become quite popular nowadays to avoid anything we don't fancy. Part of the reason is due to the abundance of choices around us. The main reason though, in western countries at least, is that we tend to shove our heads far deeper in our asses than everyone else.
Since this topic is largely speculative, I will try and give it a personal twist. In doing so, I hope to deliver my point more accurately. Without further adieu, here it goes.
Life, involves variety. Ups and downs. Negatives and positives. Growing up in a rural village, I learned this truth the hard way. I had friends around me that were assholes. Others seemed to always be obnoxiously nice and positive. I was hanging out with people that bullied me as much as I did with people that praised me. In a great extent I remember it could relate to the feral cats of my neighborhood. One minute we were fighting over stupid reasons and the next minute everything was cool and dandy.
Every single friend I made was through fights. If it wasn't physical, it was surely over debates. The reason this behavior appealed to me, was because I got to know people instead of masked puppets. I used to fight a lot as kid. I still have the belief that if you haven't got into a fight with another human being, you have no fucking clue who you really are. Deep down, we are animals after all. Even if one has not engaged in a physical fight, they will surely make it show either online, or worse, turning on their own selves.
I know all these are far stretched — hence why I wanted to keep this post more personal. I wanted to share these thoughts because what I see today around me is rather nauseating. Many people seem to be chasing the positive experience as if life is about pink ponies farting rainbows and candy. Whenever they see someone that doesn't agree with them —criticizes or invokes in any way negativity — they immediately label them as Toxic, effectively removing them from their life. Fights? What fights? What a primitive state of being that is!
The end result: Giant safe-space jerk-circles form. In a greater extend this is why the 'Motivational Culture' has formed. "Everyone can succeed", "Everyone can become a millionaire" ... failing to understand that if everybody was a millionaire everybody will be equally poor. If everyone succeeded equally in their domain then value would disappear. I could never understand how mature adults with over two decades of experience on this planet walk into those conferences with their I.Q. matching the room temperature.
What most people call toxic, I call invigorating. Without negativity and pessimism I would never be able to be a rational realist. Instead, I would more likely form a glass bubble where everything would seem to reinforce my own delusions. An echo-chamber where the rules inside my special circle are different.
Thing is, life doesn't care about the safe spaces that we build. No matter how much we try to hide negativity and "attract positivity", at some point it will bitchslap us so hard we won't be able to make a come-back. The epidemic with anxiety and depression today occurs exactly because people lack skin in the game. They get too softened up with the 'positive', any 'negative' experience seems to be devastating.
I admit that some people can afford to build bubbles and effectively keep themselves barricaded. Having money surely enables such state of being. For most us though, taking this path and buying into the narrative, can be catastrophic.
How can one form healthy relationships when the hardest thing they experienced is a text book "constructive criticism"? We all took that business class. We all read that article. Thing is, more often than not, these sidetracked theatrics end up being politically correct rhetorics, obscuring the importance of friction and conflict that foster healthy relationships.
Another worrying part of this false narrative is the propensity these individuals have to dramatize every single fucking thing. Since real problems don't occur, small things become huge issues. There is too much sugar in the coffee. The maid was lazy this morning. I gained two pounds and I will look ugly at the beach. No gluten free? What a terrible restaurant! First World problems that turn us more and more into obnoxious spoiled brats.
Allow me to take the toxic label and apply it to the positive thinking crowd. Whenever I see someone overly optimistic about something, I start worrying. Sorry to break it to you but the world involves more negativity due to what physicists call "the second law of thermodynamics". Aka, give it enough time and all things get messed up. This is how most people became so addicted in finding happiness. Those loopholes of 'positive' are so rare that everyone is behaving like a crack whore with withdrawal symptoms.
If you doubt this, take a step outside and look up at the sky. Almost every single point of light you observe is a nuclear explosion with the deadly radiation coming towards us. If it ever reaches our small rock we will all evaporate. If space looks all too depressing but way too far away for you, here on this planet 75% of the inhabitants don't have food, water and shelter on a daily basis. You do. Simple economic principles dictate that most people won't ever succeed no matter how much they try, no matter how many Tony Robbins mantras they repeat. Simply put, the concept of value and success is dependent on scarcity, not abundance.
These are not toxic thoughts. This is what is actually happening all around us. I would suggest to the positive thinking crowd to invite the toxic in their life. They might even built anti-fragility for the unfortunate events that will surely come sooner or later. Like Ayn Rand said "You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality".
