Understanding Negativities Without Becoming Cynical

There seems to be this narrative out there that considers being negative about things and understanding the realities of things as one and the same. And a similar narrative that says being positive about things means you are blind to what is going on. But I’m here to suggest that it’s not as shallow as this narrative, and that there’s a lot more to the full picture.

Now, let me first make sure this first part of the article is as clear as clear can be: I think it is extremely important for us to identify negativities in our society and in our personal lives, and to do what we can to uproot those negativities. I think there is absolutely no good in sticking one’s head in the sand and just pretending those things don’t exist. The modern day mantra of focusing on the self and ignoring all those negative things happening in the world around us is a recipe born and nurtured from ego alone. It is an outgrowth of a privileged mentality that ignores challenges and difficulties instead of working to overcome them.

But all this being said, understanding and facing negativities in deeper and deeper ways over time need not lead to cynicism- as seems to happen so often. Seeing and facing challenges doesn’t mean their need be some sort of dark sheen blanketing everything. Negativities are real. But they need not define the entirety of the bigger picture.

My Story

Let me connect all this to a personal story. When I was in high school, I had an urge to see and understand the world. This desire was definitely nurtured by my parents when they encouraged me to take my GED and leave high school early so our family could go live in China for a year. Which we did.

My parents were particularly eager to get the heck outta Dodge (or Springfield in my case), because during my junior year in high school my school had a horrific school shooting in which 24 students were shot. That was a wake up call for my parents, and they felt it was necessary, before I left their nest, for them to help me expand my experiences and see the world in a wider way than my small town could provide. And as a wide eyed 16-year old, I was all for it.

So, off we went to China- my parents, my autistic brother and I. And expand my view of the world, it definitely did.

After living in China for a year, I returned to the US to begin college, and I knew right away that I wanted to study International Relations. I had a deep seeded desire to understand and contribute to the world meaningfully, and I thought that was the way I could do so.

If I was to summarize the outlook on life of all of us fresh faced first year international relations majors, I would say that there was this general optimism that we could learn to contribute to the world in meaningful ways. There was a real palpable feeling that we could accomplish good things.

But over the next four years, as we began to dig deeper and deeper into different things related to how the world operated, there was a distinct change, a constant nurturing of cynicism that caused many of my classmates to feel completely disempowered and incapable to contribute to the world in any real way. Rather than inspiring them to action, their knowledge was becoming a force of disempowerment.

There were exceptions to this, from specific individuals here and there who took it all in as extra motivation to focus themselves on doing what they could, but those were really just a rare few individuals with stronger roots. For most of my classmates, the knowledge they were gaining seemed to be merely causing them to become less willing to do much of anything because of an overwhelming feeling that it was all just too big and too chaotic and too full of unending negatives.

For me, I had a different framework from a lot of people. Growing up as a third generation Baha’i, I had been nurtured from an early age with certain understandings about the world. I was taught from the time I was an infant about the importance of working towards unity, of working towards overcoming prejudice, of working towards overcoming hate with a more powerful force of love, and that those things are challenging and required effort and learning and growth. Concepts like that were embedded in my upbringing.

When I was learning about all these horrible things going on in the world during my college years, nothing was a surprise to me. I was gaining knowledge and understanding those negativities of the world in deeper ways over time, but it didn’t move me away at all for my original purpose in wanting to learn about these things so I could do something meaningful with the direction of my life. I had a framework that made the knowledge beneficial to me, and not become a source of unending cynicism like it seemed to be doing to so many of the people I knew.

Linking it to the Now

So, when I look at how much cynicism is growing in so many people’s perspectives and outlooks on the world today, it often times reminds me of my experience in college. I see that as people learn more and more about the realities of the negatives things happening in the world around us, it can often nurture cynicism and make people feel disempowered- like it’s all too chaotic and negative for them to even bother trying to do anything about it.

That’s not what understanding the realities of things should be doing to us. We need a better framework. We need to expect and embrace hardship. We need to be comfortable in ambiguity and being surrounded by unknowns. We need to have the humility to realize that the way we see things isn’t ever the full truth. We need to be able to take in the realities of things without letting the overwhelming aspects of it shake our foundation. Our foundations need strengthening.

For myself, I recognize the world is in many ways an incredibly f’ed up place. The f’edupness is apparent in pretty much everything- the ways the business world is structured, the nature of international relations, the systems of education and health. The more you dig into all these, and pretty much any other space out there, the more clear it is that the foundations these things are built upon is missing core concepts that should really be at the center of it all- like integrity, for example.

The default setting of the world’s systems and structures is where the f’edupness resides. It’s not some outside force coming in to ruin something built beautifully, it’s that the roots themselves have been planted in tainted soil.

The world we reside in is the Upside Down (“Stranger Things” reference alert), though we think we’re in the “normal” world.

Changing the default setting of chaos and negativity requires ongoing, sustained effort. Even with constant effort, the f’edupness will keep trying to pull us into its void. Just getting to a place where our world resembles some sense of what should be “normalcy” requires herculean effort. Without effort, the Upside Down will forever remain our reality.

All this being said, and as negative as some of that probably came across to many of you, I am not cynical in my view of the world. Not at all. I expect these negativities to exist. They are part of the current default setting.

At the same time, though, my purpose to know these negativities isn’t just to sit back and know them. They inspire me to action. They inspire me to thoughtfulness. They inspire me to want to beautify those one or two pixels of the bigger painting that are within my capacity to change.

I want to understand these negativities as deeply as I can, because they are realities. Hiding from reality is not a recipe that ever leads to anything good.

So for me, seeing the negatives in the world is not something that nurtures cynicism. I want to know these things, so that I can see the full picture more clearly, so that I can take my steps with open eyes.

I expect to see unethical behavior and a lack of integrity when I analyze the way the world is currently operating. But, at the same time, I also fully recognize that these things are just part of a much bigger picture.

I also see the capacity of human ingenuity. I see the potential for so much good. I see many humans rising above their base desires and selfish whims to contribute to making the world a better place. These things are also realities.

And though at the moment, when looking at the conditions of the world, it often seems like the negative realities outweigh the positive realities, I also recognize that the source of the positive forces is something powerful. The human spirt- and the force of soulful, heart-centered unquenchable love- is something that can transform things. It does transform things. It is transforming things. This is a reality just as much as all of those other negative realities that tend to occupy our mental space so much more often.

And in many ways, those positive realities are the more powerful realities. Darkness does not exist, it’s merely a lack of light. There’s no need to focus on the darkness itself when it’s merely just the absence of the thing where our focus should be.

But, without cold, you can’t perceive heat. Without darkness, you can’t perceive light. Without understanding the negatives, you can’t perceive the positives.

Mic drop.