Negative Enjoyment: In Defense of Calling Things Shit

Positivity culture is a cult and it sucks.

Positivity culture is a cult, but worst of all, it is boring. An exciting cult can be justified by its pure excitement. It exists because it is exciting. Positivity culture takes away from us negative judgment. We like negative judgment, we like hearing the negative judgment of others. Behavioral economics theorists imbued with positivity culture like the rest of society, note that when people receive negative feedback they need twice the positive feedback to compensate. This is a one-sided view of negativity, since of course if someone tells us we are bad for some reason, it will make us feel bad. Similarly, if we drink gasoline, we will not go fast. It says nothing about negativity itself.

Negativity is the only framework that allows you to tell society to go fuck itself. We try to get around this with positivity, saying people reach compromises, adjust to each other, figure out ways to say things positively because god forbid anybody calls another person a piece of shit or says something sucks. You’re afraid of words? Words cannot hurt you. Having no money can hurt you. One more time for those in the back. Words cannot hurt you; that is of course, unless you are utterly terrified of them.

What if your words are not ideal!? Oh no! How sad would that be? What if someone uses negative judgment against you? Wouldn’t you feel sad? All these things are bringing us away from the point, which is that words can be used to say this or that sucks, or this abstract tendency is low quality, or this or that person is a whiny douchebag who doesn’t follow through on their agreements and so on.

If you’re a therapist, and I am, you get to hear how people relate to their negative judgments. Is a person generally not satisfied with their life? Not to worry, the dominant positivity culture is here to come to the rescue and silence all things negative! What if instead of that, you were happy with your life and you got to keep your ability to make negative judgments! You can be not depressed and even use curse words! Wow!

This is not that deep of a concept, many people already agree with this sentiment, but what is necessary is an exact war against positivity culture itself and the reduction of human experience due to a fear of negative enjoyment. This isn’t to say we don’t have to negotiate with each other and sometimes hold our tongues and not call the other person whatever vile name for them pops in our head, it just means to not be afraid of these sorts of thoughts. Negative judgment is great. There’s a good chance I’m doing it as you read this, and you can too!