Why Negative People Rule the World: A Hypothesis

I have noticed many people can have a long series of perfectly mundane experiences--or even a series of relatively positive experiences--and not come away from those experiences feeling they have gained any particular insights into the human condition. But let those same people have even a single negative experience, and they suddenly believe they have discovered some profound, terrible truth about human existence. In the wake of a negative experience, people will often rant on and on about how life is shit, about how society is evil, about how their fellow human beings are nothing but a bunch of bloody savages.

I have seen it again and again; I have even been guilty of it myself.

It makes me wonder if we human beings are not in some way hard-wired for negativity. I can imagine that in our evolutionary past, being a cranky, suspicious bastard may have conferred certain survival advantages, while being an upbeat, positive person might have lead to an early demise.

Suppose it is 50,000 years ago, and I am hiking across the African savanna. Suddenly, I hear a rustling sound somewhere up ahead of me. If I happen to be a happy, positive person, I might think, "It's nothing to worry about. It's probably just the wind blowing through the tall grass. I'll just continue on my way."

But, if I am a cranky, suspicious bastard, I am more likely to say, "Oh, fuck me. I bet that's a lion, crouched low in the high grass, waiting to pounce on me and rip my johnson off with her bare teeth. I think I'll turn right around and go back the way I came before it is too late."

The trouble is, lions really do like to crouch in the tall grass and pounce on passing prey. If I were a cranky, suspicious bastard, and that lion I thought I heard turned out to nothing but the wind, I'd lose nothing by turning back. I 'd survive to pass on my genes regardless of what actually lay ahead. But if I were a happy, positive person, inclined to hear soft breezes rather than hungry lions, I might well end my days in Simba's belly before I got a chance to knock anyone up and pass on my genetic heritage.

It could well be that the high incidence of negative thinking among modern human beings is a holdover from an early era, when being a cranky, suspicious bastard was an asset, and being an upbeat, positive person was a liability.

This is what occurred to me this morning as I sat at my kitchen table, petting my cat and stirring just the right measure of cream into my coffee...