I hope by now to have convinced you that negative thinking is a beneficial mode of thought that can be a powerful counterbalance to the dearth of positive thinking and positivity. I have not touched on the dangers of negative thinking, for they are overblown, but it would be unfair not to comment on them.
Negative thinking is often believed to lead to depression, anxiety (crippling or otherwise), malaise, ennui, and other pathologies and pseudo-pathologies. Those who believe such rubbish are likely to be the same people who confound causation and correlation on such a regular basis that they will swear that umbrellas lead to rain.
This negative thinking about negative thinking is, if you’ll remember elementary math, actually a cleverly disguised positive mode of thinking.
Consider this: would The Upward Spiral be a Nine Inch Nails album that anyone would consider worth listening to? No, of course not. In fact, study after study has shown that there is an inverse correlation between the positivity of an artist’s music and its quality. From The Cure, to the Smiths, The National to Modest Mouse, greatness is born of negative thinking, and anyone who disagrees can take their Micheal Buble albums and shove it.
Let us begin with the premise that improving oneself is desirable and virtuous. One should seek, as much as possible, to improve their character so as to be a better person, and a better member of society. To do this, negative thinking is the only true path.
Have you ever found yourself stuck in a mental loop, remembering a horrible thing you’ve done? Perhaps you’re reminded, over and over again, of that day in high school where another kid who you thought was your friend, offered you a chicken burger. Recalling how you felt popular for once, how you were hanging out with people who thought you were maybe even cool too, you biting into a delicious chicken burger in the school cafeteria, all around you more people that you might start considering friends from this day on…when suddenly it hits you.
These people aren’t your friends.
This isn’t your ordinary chicken burger.
Fucking Stephen.
There’s no time to think of much else, but you run to the bathroom and your only relief from the situation is that you haven’t pooped your pants. What kind of monster gives you a chicken burger with a laxative in it, you think, as you unspool roll after roll of 1-ply.
Had you not been reminded of this moment over and over again, had you not considered it carefully for months after its occurrence, what would be the effects? Would you have still sharpened your emotional acuity to help differentiate a true friend from an imposter? Would you less eagerly accept free burgers from acquaintances? What valuable life lessons would you miss out on?
Those who would do away with negative thinking would also do away with criticism and the scientific method. Criticism, an essential, if fallible, requirement of art is what differentiates the mediocre from the sublime. Both internal and external criticism is what drives artists to improve. Constantly comparing one’s own mediocre work to that of those marginally or infinitely better allows the artist to humbly accept that they must improve their craft for it to be worth even a modicum of likes and shares. It is why the best artists are forever self-doubting and self-hating, and also why present-day Kanye is terrible.
Critical theory is equally important, and owes its importance to negative thinking. From Marx to Marcuse, we see a great line of negative thinking that cannot be replaced by positivity. Criticism of class structures, politics, and culture cannot be replaced by good vibrations. Speaking of good vibrations, how good were The Beach Boys after notorious negative thinker Brian Wilson left the band? (Not very good at all.)
The scientific method is the complemental half to criticism. Its very foundation is negative thinking. Its why treatments are assumed to be useless unless proven otherwise, through careful use of experiments and statistical techniques. Doing away with negative thinking would mean a positivity approach to science, which only leads us down the path of Jenny McCarthy and anti-vaxxers. I am sure Jenny is very much a positive thinker.
I hope it is becoming clear that negative thinking is the only true self-improvement model that works. Negative thinking is what allows you to understand what it is you hate about yourself, and that discomfort with your own existence is what will motivate you to change it. Without these important emotional cues, you will only become a positivist, someone who thinks that they are already as great as can be, and the only self-improvement they need is to be even greater. That, however, is the attitude of a narcissist, not a healthy and critical thinker.
Look forward to more chapters in my new book, The Power of Negative Thinking: by Who Would Publish This Press
Chapter 1: The Power of Negative Thinking
Chapter 2: The Downward Spiral
Chapter 3: Become genuinely uninterested in people
Chapter 4: Give constant and sincere criticism
Chapter 5: Frown
Chapter 6: Getting by: how to look busy while doing nothing
Chapter 7: Stop blaming your parents, blame yourself
Chapter 8: How to lose friends and influence your cat
Chapter 9: The Power of Later
Chapter 10: The Secret (there is none, you’re an idiot)
