According to the scientists who understand the world much better than you and I, you will earn more money, live longer, and enjoy a healthier marriage if you are bad-tempered and pessimistic.
Finding this out almost made me smile. Almost.
But it’s a baldfaced lie. Everything is a lie, nowadays.
And I’m not saying that simply because I’m a bad-tempered pessimist. I actually want to save the world from the lies that are overwhelming us on the internet. Like, for example, an article published a while back on BBC.com, penned by reporter Zaria Gorvett. (Probably a pseudonym.)
The title? “Why it pays to be grumpy and bad-tempered”.
Ms. Gorvett focuses her essay on three famously bad-tempered (but successful?) people. Actor Hugh Grant, billionaire Jeff Bezos, and composer Ludwig van Beethoven, for instance. The article starts out:
On stage he’s a loveable, floppy-haired prince charming. Off camera – well, let’s just say he needs a lot of personal space. He hates being a celebrity. He resents being an actor. To his ex-girlfriend Elizabeth Hurley’s friends, he was apparently known as ‘Grumpelstiltskin.’
Hugh Grant may be famed for being moody and a little challenging to work with. But could a grumpy attitude be the secret to his success? …
… The truth is, pondering the worst has some clear advantages. Cranks may be superior negotiators, more discerning decision-makers and cut their risk of having a heart attack. Cynics can expect more stable marriages, higher earnings and longer lives – though, of course, they’ll anticipate the opposite.
Well, unlike Hugh Grant, I have not earned $80 million pretending to be someone I’m not, in front of a camera. But I propose that I am probably just as pessimistic and cranky as Mr. Grant. Maybe more so.
But higher earnings? Stable marriage? Longer lives? Maybe Ms. Gorvett can explain the meager contents of my bank account… and my alimony payments to two ex-wives… and my stomach ulcer.
You can’t even believe the BBC nowadays.
But I have to agree with Ms. Gorvett’s perspective on one thing. Happiness is totally overrated. And totally useless.
Is anyone paying attention to this obvious fact? No. They’re all trying to keep a ‘positive outlook’. What a dreadful waste.
The pressure to be positive has never been greater. Cultural forces have whipped up a frenzied pursuit of happiness, spawning billion-dollar book sales, a cottage industry in self-help and plastering inspirational quotes all over the internet.
Now you can hire a happiness expert, undertake training in ‘mindfulness’, or seek inner satisfaction via an app. The US army currently trains its soldiers – over a million people – in positive psychology, and optimism is taught in schools. Meanwhile the ‘happiness index’ has become an indicator of national wellbeing to rival GDP.
Where… I say, where… is this world coming to? Comparing ‘happiness’ to copious capitalist profits… and comprehensive government jobs programs?
Good moods are downright dangerous. Does anyone think the Pilgrims — arriving on the Mayflower after two miserable months bouncing around on the Atlantic Ocean in an overcrowded little wooden ship during the height of the storm season — were in a good mood? Not only had they been kicked out of England for their heretical beliefs, but they landed in totally the wrong place, sick and starving, and fewer than half of them made it through the first winter.
This was the founding of America. Grim pessimists charted the course for the most powerful, and the least happy, nation the world has ever known.
Every time I hear someone recommending that “we all need to think positive and be nice to one another,” I get so angry I could spit.
Anger and antagonism make the world go round. Whenever you get angry, your blood pressure shoots up, and healthy red blood goes screaming through your veins, cleaning out the dead viruses and platelets and slacker white blood cells, while delivering a shot of adrenaline to every organ in the body. You start breathing heavy, which fills your lungs with oxygen. The people who have been annoying you, get frightened and leave, which is exactly what you wanted them to do.
This is not news. Back in the day, among the the bad-tempered, pessimistic people of Greece — then, the most powerful and unhappy nation in the world — the philosopher Aristotle knew all about the benefits of cynicism, and he recommended that Greek citizens regularly attend performances of tragic plays, where they could experience anger, sadness, and guilt in a safe, controlled environment.
Better, of course, to experience authentic, first-hand anger, sadness and guilt — regardless of how much money actors like Hugh Grant may have earned pretending to be someone they’re is not.
Optimists have it all backwards. They think things will turn out just fine. If anyone needed proof that everything that can possibly go, will in fact go wrong, the year 2020 should have provided all the proof necessary.
Of course, we pessimists knew this was going to happen, sooner or later. But that didn’t make us happy. It can always get worse. And it will.
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all.