THE COMPLEAT CASSANDRA: Negative Positivity

Somewhere between 1260 and 1240 BCE, Paris, a young, cocky, cock-centered prince of the powerhouse Anatolian city of Troy, went to Sparta on a state visit – and took Helen, Queen of Sparta, home with him as a souvenir.

It was congrats and wine all around at the welcome-back banquet. Only Paris’ sister Cassandra looked at the couple askance.

“You repaid Menelaus’ hospitality by abducting his wife?” she admonished her slightly-sloshed sib.

Cassandra went on to voice her concern that Sparta’s King would be coming for Helen, and that his big brother Agamemnon, King of Mycenae, would be coming with him. The Mycenaean fleet was massive, she said, the combined might of Mycenae and Sparta was no joke, and when the other Greek city-kingdoms heard the royal bros were sailing for Troy, they’d be tripping over each other in their haste to get in on the action and claim a share of the spoils.

“This isn’t going to end well,” she told the assembled celebrants.

Of course, no one believed her. And not because of some God-given/God-cursed gift of prophecy, either – though Apollo the Sun-Git had def been doing all he could to make Cassie’s life miserable ever since she’d refused to let him grab her by the pussy. No one believed her because no one wanted to. Her take on the future was too frikkin’ grim.

“Wow, Sis, chillax!” Paris flashed his patented “there she goes again” smile. “It’s all good. Helen’s my reward for doing some kick-ass judging at an Olympian beauty contest a while back. Aphrodite gave her to me. It’s the will of the Gods.”

Cassandra would have called it a bullshit excuse to justify unjustifiable behavior, but she could read a room, and it was the same old story.

“Not now, Cassandra, please,” her dad Priam sighed. “This is a joyful occasion. Paris is safe home, and I’m sure the charming girl beside him prefers the bed of a handsome prince of Troy to the one she shared with the grizzled King of Sparta.”

“Have you asked her?”

Priam pretended he hadn’t heard.

“You’d be so much happier, darling,” the Queen coaxed, picking up where the King had left off, “and find life so much sweeter if you didn’t insist on seeing the cup as half empty.”

Her daughter’s penchant for worry had weighed on Hecuba’s heart since Cassie was a child. For the millionth time, she tried to persuade the poor girl to look on the bright side.

“Have you spied any ships in the offing? Are any other augurs echoing your dire predictions? Even if Menelaus does show up in a snit, have Troy’s warriors suddenly forgotten how to fight? Are our walls made of straw? Agamemnon could lay siege to our city for ten years and never breach our defenses. What good does it do to imagine the worst?”

“It does good to avoid the worst,” Cassandra argued. “Send Helen back to Menelaus with gifts and apologies, and the worst can never come to pass.”

“Give up without a fight? Give up before there even is a fight?” Priam dismissed his daughter and her ill-omened mouthings with a wave of his hand. “You’re just being pessimistic.”

––– o0o –––

Like Cassandra, I was labeled a pessimist at an early age. My parents (relations, society-at-large) constantly urged me to somehow, magically, erase that pesky pessimism from my personality – along with my intensity, emotional sensitivity, and frankness (lack of tact) – or at least tone it way the hell down. For my own good. So I could be happy, sure, but also so everyone else could be happy. Optimism spread sunshine; pessimism rained on parades.

Social norms dictate we hide our “bad” feelings – whether personal or about the future – until we can get rid of them. Loneliness, grief, anger (actually, anger is only taboo for women; men are allowed it), anxiety, alarm … just having these feelings makes us feel like failures. We’re supposed to keep looking on the bright side, even if that means we have to wear blinders. Nobody likes a Negative Nellie.

These norms do us all a disservice. Whatever our feelings, they need to be felt. Repressing, rejecting, or denying our emotions is unhealthy on every level, even dangerous to our mental and physical well-being. Yet, the enduring influence of these norms has spawned generation after generation of people who are unable to sit with their feelings, experience them without judgment, or separate them from the context in which they occur.

Characterizing the relationship between optimism and pessimism as a polarity – a tug-o’-war between opposing viewpoints – does pessimists a further disservice. Though apt in terms of projected outcomes (pessimists tend to anticipate things will go poorly; optimists are more likely to trust that things will go well), the description is simplistic. Optimism-Pessimism is a continuum, not an either/or. At one end of the spectrum are cockeyed-optimists clinging to Gottfried Leibniz’ “best of all possible worlds” ideology to the point of absurdity. At the other extreme are the clinically depressed. Most of us hang out somewhere in between.

The in-between is fluid. In the in-between, a person can swap from one side of the continuum to the other. They can be personally optimistic, but socially pessimistic. Nationally pessimistic, but locally optimistic. Optimistic about their love life, pessimistic about their job. (Our World in Data – check it out.) In the in-between, there are indefatigable optimists who see scant hope for the future and cynical pessimists who see the proverbial glass as half-full.

Optimists like the tug-o’-war model, though, because they always win. American optimists, anyway. Many cultures believe most things we experience in life are a mix of positives and negatives. These cultures foster an expectation that both good and bad things will occur. In Japan, for example, a balanced outlook is the ideal.

Here, it’s game-on, and the optimists have the advantage. There are more of them, for one thing (or more who profess to be of the optimistic persuasion), plus dictionaries and most psych studies are pulling for their side. Optimism gets the bright, shiny synonyms, while optimists bask in research that tells them they live longer, are more resilient, more successful in their careers and relationships, physically and mentally healthier, and better at managing pain. In this country, it’s accepted that having a sunny disposition and expecting a favorable outcome – even when an unfavorable outcome is equally likely – is the key to living one’s best life.

Is it, though? Or is that just what our ingrained cultural precepts have led us to believe?

When ships did appear in the offing, a hostile Greek host set up camp before Troy’s gates, and Menelaus declined to buy the “will of the Gods” line Paris was selling, Cassandra gave it the old college try. Finding mum and dad in the council room talking strategy with her brother Hector, she offered them an alternate plan.

“Send Helen back to the Greeks,” she suggested. “It’s not too late to broker a peace.”

King Priam gazed on his daughter with condescension and annoyance. “Sending her back now makes us look like cowards. Get a grip, Cassandra. Our warriors are the best, Hector is unbeatable, and our walls were built by Apollo and Poseidon. Inside this city, no one will even realize there’s a war going on.”

“What about our people outside the city?”

“Lighten up, Cass.” Hector winked at his sister and fake-punched her on the jaw. “We’ve got allies out the wazoo and Gods on our side – failure isn’t an option! You worry too much. Be happy!”

“We can hope for the best and still prepare for—”

Snagging Cassandra’s elbow, Hecuba steered her daughter out the door. “Haven’t you anything better to do than spread doom and gloom all over the palace?” the Queen hissed in a totally audible-to-everyone stage whisper. “Your negative attitude is the last thing we need with a bunch of Greek scuzzballs sitting on our doorstep.”

––– o0o –––

Both pessimists and optimists believe their point of view is the rational one, the one that considers the evidence provided by current events, historical trends, the laws of physics, human behavior – all that empirical stuff. Both believe their outlook is based in reality. Both believe the opposing outlook is merely an expression of emotional temperament.

As it happens, neither outlook is rational. Both are expressions of temperament (how prone a person is to experience positive or negative affect (an underlying feeling, attachment, emotion, or mood)). Both are also a personality trait (in this case, a predisposition to expect good or bad things to occur). And both are shaped to some degree by genetics, generational trauma (or lack thereof), social conditioning, and environment.

Temperament is immutable. Attitude, perspective, thought patterns can be changed, through experience, meditative-spiritual practices, and/or cognitive behavioral therapy. But in asking a person to alter a character trait, the implication – one not lost on the perspicacious pessimist – is that optimists are normal, but pessimists have something wrong with them. An implication which, if you think about it, is precisely the sort of veiled, esteem-damaging criticism that must affirm a pessimist’s natural inclination to look to the future with diminished expectations.

But negative affect is bad. Positive affect is good. Can’t have too much of a good thing, right?

Well … wrong. On all counts. Let’s start with the obvious oops. “Too much” of anything is not good. It’s too much.

In a culture where optimism is wholly conflated with positive and pessimism irredeemably shackled to negative, we have to get out our magnifying glasses and read the fine print to discover that the lauded optimistic lifestyle has “a few potential pitfalls.”

Toxic positivity, for one. Hector’s default mode. Good vibes only! It could be worse. Every cloud has a silver lining. Just stay positive! If you can dream it, you can achieve it. Smile! Happiness is a choice …

Looking on the bright side is terrific – when there is a bright side. When someone is dealing with serious difficulties or trauma, banal platitudes that make them feel judged for failing to maintain a cheerful outlook are worse than useless. They’re cruel. Toxic positivists may claim they’re just trying to make a sad friend feel better, but it’s really about making themselves feel better. Insisting on putting a positive spin on every bad situation is a coping mechanism that lets unrelenting optimists avoid emotionally-charged, uncomfortable situations. This mechanism can also be turned inward, with crippling results. Dismissing, ignoring, or invalidating one’s own painful, un-pretty feelings is denial. Doing the same to someone else’s feelings is likewise denial. It may be abuse. It’s certainly a form of gaslighting.

Next up for pitfalls, we have blind trust in a positive outcome (excessive optimism). Even semi-blind trust can cause trouble. People who never take off their rose-colored glasses are unable to see or believe in potential problems (poor risk assessment). A vision-compromised optimist often takes crazy-stupid risks while failing to take action to mitigate or circumvent hazards that compromise their odds of achieving the positive outcome they’re counting on while upping the chances of – or even ensuring – a negative outcome. They might win a Darwin Award, though. So there’s that.

As for equating all positive affect with “good” and all negative affect with “bad,” this does nothing but perpetuate the oppositional and offensively reductionist O-P tug-o’-war paradigm. No argument, the ruminating pessimist locked in repetitive negative thought-loops about the past, the catastrophizing pessimist unable to stop their bleak thoughts about specific future possibilities from spiraling out of control, and the hard-line, fatalistic pessimist could all benefit from cultivating a few optimistic thought patterns.

But hard-line, idealistic optimists should be aware that sometimes a healthy dose of pessimism is just what the doctor ordered.

What the heck does that mean? Find out in the next (and final) installment of THE COMPLEAT CASSANDRA

COMING SOON!

14 thoughts on “THE COMPLEAT CASSANDRA: Negative Positivity”

  1. I have first-hand experience with logic and a “pessimistic” point of view. And you still can’t completely convince I was wrong! I have a natural and well-founded distrust of Bruné Brown and DBT. Some of my best friends are more optimistic than not, so I mean them no disrespect. But there are more things in heaven and earth . . . than are dreamt of in an optimist’s philosophy.

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    • What? I did all this research and never encountered CASANDRA Brené Brown? (No joke! That’s her full name!!) I don’t see a real difference between Dialectical Behavioral Therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy … but what do I know? As for BB, that woman is chock-full of banal advice. I gather she did her famous TED talk ages ago; perhaps her pearls of wisdom were more novel at the time? My take, she concocted a mixture of innocuous, proverbial truths (“What we know matters, but who we are matters more”), subtly toxic positivity (“Want to be happy? Stop trying to be perfect”) and pseudo-sagacity that falls apart if you think about it too much (“We can have courage or we can have comfort, but we cannot have both”), and parlayed it into a sweet gig as an academic (Brené Brown Endowed Chair at the University of Houston’s Grad College of Social Work/visiting prof in management at McCombs School of Business/U of Texas, Austin), best-selling author, podcaster, and, apparently DBT guru. My fave BB quote: “We don’t have to be perfect, just engaged and committed to aligning values with actions.” (Emphasis is mine; set up for failure courtesy of Brené Brown.)

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  2. Risa, this is brilliant quite a dissertation.
    Best to you and Roy for the new year, we look forward to seeing you sometime. We’re off to Costa Rica again in about a week -10 days so perhaps after that.
    Con cariño, Adrián

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  3. I am a pessimist. It works for me. If I imagine the worst, and the outcome is less than the worst, I am pleasantly surprised. Whereas if I were to imagine the best, I would go through life constantly disappointed.

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  4. Seriously though you’ve triggered a lot of memories from my time working with kids on the spectrum. There’s a lot of pressure to smile and be happy, almost to a Brave New World level. I think it’s especially oppressive to adolescents..

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    • Part of my intent here is to fact-check my O-P perceptions — including the pressure to smile (present as cheerful) and “be” happy (as if we can select our emotional states at will). I’m glad to have learned that it ain’t easy to maintain an optimistic perspective under all conditions. To keep a chipper p.o.v., optimists have to ignore, deny, or get a good hit on the curve balls life sometimes throws at them, and also shut down anyone who may be testifying to a more pessimistic interpretation of reality by their demeanor or by expressing a downbeat take on the sitch.
      It’s way tough on kids who are on the P side of the continuum and also on the spectrum. For an adolescent to be repeatedly hearing they are not ok, but if they “just” adopted a completely different outlook, they’d both be ok and feel ok (So, what’s wrong with you, kid? Get on board the happy train! What are you waiting for?) … talk about toxic positivity…

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  5. A Canadian met a North Korean at a poetry reading and asked how are things were you live. The North Korean replied “Can’t complain.”

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  6. I’m not keen on two-parters! I blame Netflix; we have become impatient with the world. We want everything now. Including part two. But I guess all good things come to those who wait (says the optimist in me). Unless, of course, I get hit by a bus…
    See what you’ve started now! :-)

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