The Problem with Negativity

Gerald Seib has taken to the pages of the Wall Street Journal to bemoan the state of American political rhetoric. Political advertising, he avers, is more likely to involve trash talking about one’s opponent and less likely to present issues. We demonize and vilify. We do not debate and discuss opposing points of view.

So much for the marketplace of ideas. And so much for deliberative democracy.

As for how we got to this juncture, the answer seems fairly clear. Far too many American minds have been warped to the point where they simply want to know the most acceptable opinion, to the exclusion of the rest. 

It’s about feeling like a member of a cult-like group. The practice does not appeal to intelligence, but it manipulates emotion. It makes people feel something, not think something.

People are not well enough educated to entertain alternative points of view. So, they want to feel like they belong to this or that group. Otherwise, they would need to work, to evaluate two alternative points of view. 

Knowing who you should love or hate is easier than knowing the particularities of a policy debate. Or even of legal issues.

The American mind has been closed, Allan Bloom told us more than three decades ago, and it has since been even more closed off and closed down. Our educators no longer bother to teach children how to think. They teach them the prevailing orthodoxy and punish those who deviate, or who think for themselves.

When you cannot entertain different points of view, you become a cult follower. But, that implies that you are incapable of negotiating or even conversing. If you fail to show respect for alternative viewpoints, other people are not going to show any respect for yours. 

If you cannot negotiate you cannot do business. You cannot provide leadership. You cannot persuade your staff to implement your policy. If you cannot negotiate you will find yourself in a position where you will insist on getting your way. 

It takes more intelligence and more education to see two sides of an issue than to see only one side. And, it is easier to be negative than to be positive. 

To create a consensus, to include people in a group or on a team, you need to recognize the potential validity of other points of view. No one is going to do his best job because he has been browbeaten by a manager who imposes his will on everyone else. 

Failing to recognize the value of someone else’s ideas is disrespectful. And disrespect does not persuade.

Moreover, in order to get along with other people you are obliged to modify your positions, to recognize the value of the other person’s point of view, and to reject the all or nothing, good vs. evil mindset that characterizes the conversation where you assume that one person has a monopoly on the truth and that the other person’s point of view must be ignored. In other words, you must reject negativity.

Given the mental deficiencies of the products of our educational system, executive coaches and psycho professionals tell us that we can best communicate by showering everyone with essence of vulnerability. They have elevated empathy into the supreme virtue, failing to notice, as Paul Bloom once averred, that too much empathy can make you a sadistic empath.

More important than feeling your feelings or even feeling everyone else’s feelings is-- to play by the same rules. We see it every day in courtrooms where nitwit prosecutors and judges apply one set of standards to one defendant and another set of standards to another defendant. It is not about justice, but about using the judicial system to impose one’s will on one’s perceived enemies.

In a culture where people are competing to see whose rules can be imposed on who-- which is called multicultural-- where people try to get their way, and have to win, at all costs. When they are not winning they insist that the game is rigged and that it can only be corrected by rigging it in their favor. 

Leadership involves persuading people that you have heard their views and that you are accepting that everyone has something to contribute. It precludes dismissive negativity. As of now we are not even close to it. If you dismiss someone's ideas out of hand, you should not expect that he will do his best to implement yours.

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