There is, of course, a legitimate undertone to all that positivity/negativity talk, and it’s the same thing Jesus mentioned in his “log in eye” parable – basically, stop finding faults with others, because other than signalling your own supposed virtue, it only makes other people feel bad and accomplishes nothing good or useful.

This is a very real issue that needs to be addressed, especially in the age of the Internet and the social media, where everybody tries to make themselves artificially important by making loud and extreme claims that are meant to elevate their voice above the noise floor, and as a result, there’s a lot of hysterical shrieking about every conceivable topic, and any measurable effect of it all is markedly negative. Since it is not a new phenomenon, somebody already noticed it and, basically, stated that one should mind their own abundant flaws before addressing those around him, because, although everybody will always claim that there are more important issues in the world than fixing their own problems, this has always ever been but a way to avoid dealing with one’s own issues. Yeah, there’s plagues and war and climate change and pollution and what not, and there always will be, but how about you learn how to be polite, useful, responsible and honest first, instead of yelling about global warming and accomplishing nothing, eh? The world is perpetually unfixable and, by the way, it’s of no concern to you. Your job is to have a good relationship with God, and then externalize this by being God’s presence in the world, for the benefit of others. Nothing else matters.

Also, in dealings with others, if you have nothing constructive to say or do, it might be best to at least avoid doing harm, and the best way to do that is not to disturb people with critical opinions nobody asked for. Essentially, you need to understand that criticism comes with responsibility, because if you’re observing a problem, criticism must exist in the context of willingness to engage in solving it. If you don’t care enough to engage yourself in solving the problem, it’s obviously something you should not concern yourself with and remaining silent and minding your own business might be the best course for you. For instance, if you observe signs of poverty in your neighbour or a relative, the constructive way to approach it would be to tactfully ask if there’s a problem, and if there’s something you can do to help. Criticising or gossiping is neither constructive nor helpful, and you might instead take a big cup of STFU.

This is what someone probably meant by “staying positive” and “avoiding negativity”; basically, keep your nose out of other people’s business unless you are there to offer help. However, like all things, it was generalised way out of its area of usefulness, and caused a different set of problems.

I was just thinking about all the virtue-signalling and posturing that is currently in vogue, and remembered that I’ve sen something similar before: the “positivity” trend of the 1990s.

Positivity actually has a legitimate purpose in psychology, as I would know, having been proficient in autogenous training, which is a form of self-hypnosis, where positive formulation of suggestions is paramount. By “positive” mean statements such as “my hands are warm” instead of “my hands are not cold”, and so on. It seems that human mind doesn’t really work well with avoiding undesirable outcomes; basically, if you tell it what you don’t want, you’re not really telling it what you do want, which is very much like telling your driver to go “not to London”. That’s hardly a useful instruction, because “not London” is quite a large place.

So, positive suggestions such as “drive me to Bristol” or “get me coffee” work, and negative suggestions such as “drive me away from here” or “get me something other than tea” don’t. However, a whole movement of abject charlatanry developed around those basic truths, and “positivity” and “negativity” became amoral substitute for good and evil, and right and wrong, in a moral framework that tried to avoid such designations at all cost, in order to avoid any notion of religion.

You see, there’s a problem with rejecting negativity in expression. While it is true that you need to positively formulate your ultimate goal in order to be able to get there, it is also true that we often don’t have enough knowledge of the goal at the beginning of the journey. For instance, let’s say that you want to reach God, but what is God, exactly, to someone who is a mere beginner? God is something awesome and magnificent at the very extreme end of a multidimensional coordinate system of values – greatest consciousness, greatest truth, greatest power and so on – but what does that actually mean? Here, negativity plays an important part, because you can see all kinds of evil and depravity and say, “I don’t know what God is, exactly, but let’s assume he’s in the opposite direction from this”, and such a statement will, of course, not lead you to God directly, but if you practice the virtues that are opposite to the wicked depravities that are abundant in the world and easy to perceive, it will certainly help to move you from the starting point, and trying to imagine virtues by rejecting sins will give you some idea of where you want to be, which is of course not perfect, but “not perfect” is much better than “horrible” already, and as long as you understand that this is a transitory position and not a destination, I see nothing wrong with it. Hate and disgust directed at evil things imply some sense of goodness and virtue, and this can later be properly formulated, but as beginnings go, hatred and disgust are effective and dynamic enough to give you some momentum. Certainly, that’s not where you want to be stuck permanently, and you do need to transition your understanding from, for example, “I am revolted by all the perversions in modern society”, to “those things are instinctively revolting because they lie in the direction opposite of God, who is truth, reality and fulfilment”.

My problem with the positivity movement is not as much that it is wrong; it’s an ideological poison, akin to the modern variety known as “tolerance” and “diversity”. Positivity on its own can actually be extremely harmful, if it stops you from recognizing and changing things that are obviously wrong; likewise, tolerance for bad things isn’t a good thing, and diversity on its own doesn’t mean anything good, because is it really preferable to have many different bad things, and not one good thing? If you have many things, is it preferable to see them all as equal, or to choose between them based on some criterion of merit? It all looks like some kindergarten ethical philosophy of “nobody is wrong”; in fact, everybody is wrong, and everybody stands to improve, and stupid flattery is of no use whatsoever.

Without an ethical framework based upon the referential target of the Absolute, all quantitative and qualitative designations are pointless and worthless. What is right and wrong without God as the referential truth? What is good and evil without God as the referential goodness? Of what use is positivity without a referential absolute target? Also, if you understand that a statement “Satan is beautiful” is positive, and a statement “Satan is not beautiful” is negative, it becomes apparent that the entire thing on its own has no moral reference, and is a mere linguistic gimmick. Positivity starts making sense only after you obtain your actual moral reference from a worthwhile theology.