positive

It seems my world and the people in my life are absolutely obsessed with being positive. Being positive has become something to flaunt to others that you possess. Proclamations such as, "I'm too optimistic to ever be negative" is something many say in a smug tone.

I have a few questions. Namely:

1. why so positive?
2. is it possible for everyone to be positive?
3. is it bad to be negative?

For one, being positive is easy if the circumstance are right. Nobody should be proud that they are positive-thinkers if their situation is favourable. If they have a promising future, good health, love and money, they have little to be negative about on a personal basis and therefore easy to be optimistic about life. But, if you are one of the billion people that go to sleep hungry at night; if you are one of the thousands of Iraqi mothers that watched their son be mercilessly murdered; if you are on of the many little girls that were brutally raped during a night raid by a militia group in Africa; if you are one of millions of Palestinians that watched with humility their home they spent a lifetime creating bulldozed to the ground in front of their family, then you have nothing to be positive about, and any positivity is admirable and commendable.

This leads to my second point, that positivity is not as clearly a mindset that you are born into or decide to have as it is a product of your thoughts and circumstances. It requires a certain amount of ignorance. It requires one to shield themselves in a bubble that blocks out the "downers" of the world, like the situations that one could find themselves in that I previously listed. You could know of the miseries in the world, but you can't sympathize and understand them at a deep level, for that will naturally make you less happy to feel their pain.

You must also only look at the bright side, and pay little attention to the negative side. What you decide to focus on is highly determinant of your mood. If you think of the bright side, and skim past the negative side, you'll be able to possess optimistic thoughts. This is fine, but it is nonetheless a conscious effort to ignore many sides of an issue.

One must, ironically, be very negative about the way things can change to be positive. The only way you can truly embrace the present, and not feel a malaise for society, is if you believe that now is good, and that it can't be drastically better. It also requires you to think that we are in a better or just as good a world relative to the past, for if you don't believe this, you will naturally have negative thoughts about your world.

Finally, the question, is being positive bad? Well, I would say no. If you are a person that sees the problems in the world and is positive and hopeful about change and are therefore optimisitc it is a very good virtue to have. However, I would describe this person more as a positive negative person. They do not say things like, "I'm so happy. I love this world. I love my life." If you want to be a happy wanderer it is okay, but you are part of the problem. Happy wanderers don't want change, or at least don't care to put in effort to make change. They have a good life and a clear head. Their life is good enough that it is not worth it to them to spoil their happy times with all the negativity in the world. But they consciously have to avoid raising topics about things that are important, such as wars, poverty, capitalism's ruinous and polarizing order. Instead they indulge in positive conversations about food, sex, wine, clothes, music, and the like.

I would say the best kind of person to be is a positive negative person. Positive negative people are aware and sympathetic to the problems of the world, but believe in change and know that things can't be perfect. They have hope and are the drivers of change. The understand that things can be much better and work towards those goals. The embrace the problems of their world instead of ignore them.