In case you haven't noticed, there is a lot of crazy stuff going on in the world today. It has gotten to the point that you almost think it might be better to crawl into a hole and just keep to yourself. Of course, we know that isn't the smart move, we need human interaction, but when 95% of that interaction leans towards the negative, are we really doing ourselves any favors?
You can't really see it in this photo, but just imagine off in the distance there is a river. If you look really closely, you can see an bridge in the distance that carries vehicles over the Tittabawassee River. Recently, as part of another reclamation project they decided to build a pedestrian bridge parallel to the auto bridge. This pedestrian bridge will carry walkers across the river and over to a nature area that used to be an industrial building supply companies stock yard.
As a fun idea, the city thought they would take to social media and have a contest where residents could come up with a fun or meaningful name for the bridge. I remember scrolling through that FB app when the post came across my feed about the contest. Like a moron, I decided to check out the comments to see if anyone had any creative names.
Clearly, that was a mistake.
I was suddenly taken aback by the number of negative comments about the bridge. Trust me, I am not naive, I know there is a lot of negativity in the world, but it was in that moment it struck me just how pervasive and prominent it is these days.
Personally, I prefer my bitters in an Old Fashioned, but dang if there aren't a lot of angry and bitter people out in the world today. This example of a mundane foot bridge (not the one pictured above), is just a small example of what you can see on pretty much any social media post these days.
It's no wonder that @ericvancewalton created the #goodvibesonly tag here on HIVE to try and highlight some of the positive out there in the midst of all the negative. Needless to say, since this post is mainly about negativity, I won't be using that tag.
It makes me wonder though how we got to this point. Have people just been beaten down so much over the years that negativity is their only recourse? While I think that might be true for some folks, I am not buying that for the majority. Perhaps I am delusional, and yes, the world is a pretty crumby place at times, but there is good here too. Enough that it should be able to counteract some of the negativity.
I'm no expert (but my wife is), and I honestly feel like a lot of this has to do with people not learning to cope with negative emotions or feelings.
I've mentioned this before, but in the book "Let Them", the assertion is made that most adults have the emotional intellect of an eight year old. It's never convenient to deal with negative emotions. How many times have you seen a parent or adult out in public deal with a child by having them stifle their big negative emotions?
Now trust me, I don't think a full blown tantrum in the middle of a store is the answer either, but a big part of what my wife tries to teacher her students is how to recognize those big emotions and cope with them in a way that validates them, but also puts them in perspective.
Unfortunately, many of us (myself included) didn't have the blessing of having someone like @mrsbozz around to teach them that. I don't fault my parents either, that's just how things were. The fact that we have generations of angry people raging in the comments section of social media is proof to me that it is a systemic issue and not something that pointing the finger at someone will fix.
The problem is, now we have all these people bottling up these negative emotions and because they don't know how to cope, their best course of action is letting it all out in the comments section of the Internet. It's the stupidest stuff too sometimes. I can appreciate being upset at a social injustice, or some decisions politicians are making that is going to be detrimental to the public, but a pedestrian bridge? Come on!
No doubt they feel it is some sort of misappropriation of funds, and while that might be a valid argument, not everything is a conspiracy. That's probably a topic for a different post!
I don't have a fix for it, and I am sure this won't be the last time I post about it.
I can appreciate how hard it is to be positive when we are surrounded by so much negativity
Even here on HIVE we are not immune to it. It only takes hanging out in your favorite HIVE focused Discord channel for a few days before you start to see the negativity creep in. Does that mean things like the DHF aren't flawed? No, but there is a lot of positivity on the chain too, and perhaps focusing on that would do us all some good.
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All pictures/screenshots taken by myself or @mrsbozz unless otherwise sourced