Anybody that has ever successfully completed a long-term project will be able to easily tell you how many ways it could have gone wrong. (The hard-working and professional folk will probably be able to tell you how it DID go wrong, but they had planned for the unexpected and were able to deal with it.) It's always easier for things to go against the plan than to follow it. Newton pointed this out with the law of entropy (which is now slightly varied in that order may eventually form from chaos, but we'll ignore that for now ... heh).
One of my earlier posts was about Bloom's taxonomy, and an old high school friend sent me a more up-to-date version that includes a new pinnacle: creativity.
It's harder to create something than to destroy it. For an extreme example, 19 men took out two skyscrapers, part of the most powerful military in the world's command center, a good section of the world's progressive economy, and a large chunk of common sense for years to come. It took a lot more than those 19 men to rebuild all that, and many orders of magnitude more to create it in the first place. But you don't have to turn to 9/11 to find examples of how creating something is harder than destroying it.
The root of "positive" is "posit," which means "to place, put, or set" or to postulate. To be positive, you have to place something out there -- albeit rhetorically, you have to create something. To be negative, all you have to do is remove something, so say that this part doesn't work. That's a lot easier.
Say you want to go out to eat with four or five people. What happens? You get in a group, probably at the last convenient moment to make a decision, and say, "Where do you want to go?" Some people will posit ideas, and those will be shot down, and eventually some consensus is reached. A personal pet peeve of mine is when somebody says "I don't care," then proceeds to shoot down every posited idea. (That person is either unaware that he has an opinion or just was hoping to seem easygoing while in reality getting his own way.) The ones that are positing ideas (not IDEA--it's called "selfish" if you only care about what you want most) are doing a service to the others, and it is a moderately difficult one for those that do not like their ideas shot down because almost all of the ideas, by definition of the context, WILL be shot down.
Another way this shows up is in the angst-ridden teen, the rebel without a cause, or the smart-aleck. A kid with a modicum of intelligence understands quickly that there is always a way to challenge any idea. (Like in the scene from Shawshank where the guard has inherited 35g from a disliked relative and someone says, "That's great ... isn't it?" and the guard says, "What are you, an idiot? You know what the IRS is going to do to me?" As one of the cons points out more prosaically, some people have terrible luck.) Immature people never get past that discovery. They are the ones that will always tell you how the new X is wrong.
For example, you see this a lot in Facebook postings. Some people will never say something positive about anything. If you mention a politician, he's a crook and the worst of all time. If you mention a movie, it had tons of plot holes, it was too slow .... Books, people, songs -- their minor imperfections are extolled. Why? It is easier, of course, but I think for some it is also because it is difficult to say somebody is wrong when he is pointing out imperfections. To say a movie is good, it has to be firing on all cylinders; to be bad, you just have to miss one. And nothing is always perfect, so you can always find something wrong about it. (Indeed, if something is always perfect, THAT will be its imperfection.)
Complaining has almost arisen to be not only socially okay but socially expected. Some people don't LIKE to hear that your day has gone well. If you are one of those people ... quit it. Like the odd turn toward finding stupidity laudable (visible at least since the advent of Beavis and Butthead), this raising up of negativity has become nigh ubiquitous. And it is both unsavory and detrimental.
I'm not saying be a pollyanna. Some things don't work, and knowing when to throw in the towel on some projects can be a wonderfully effective talent. I mean that the answer can usually be, "Yes, but ..." instead of "No." It can be "We can build that for you, but it will take an extra 6 months" instead of "You are a lunatic and it will never work." I'm not saying to be politically correct, and I'm certainly not saying to be dishonest (there will be another post about honesty at some point) -- I'm saying not to be solely negative. Make that a rule of thumb: I'm going to posit something if I feel the need to negate something.
That's one of the suggestions for good parenting that stuck with me. You are posed this question: What would you like to see changed about your child? (If you don't have a child, insert any significant person into that question, such as a spouse or roommate.)
Did you think on that? Or are you just skipping to what I have to say? Pause. Think about it. What would you like to see changed about your child?
Your answer may have been something like, "I wish she would stop throwing fits," or "I wish he would quit watching TV all night long." As a book (that I can't remember) put it, is it something that a dead person can do? Dead people don't throw fits. Dead people don't watch TV all night long. If that is all that you are trying to change, you end up with the parenting style of a crypt keeper. Instead, you don't simply remove bad behavior -- you also add in good behavior. You POSIT something you would prefer to see in its place. "I wish she would stop throwing fits and instead tell me what she wants and attempt to negotiate." "I wish he would quit watching TV all night long and instead engage with the rest of the family in talking, games, and non-electronic fellowship." The benefit here is that you can create a plan of action that isn't nagging or annoying. (Another is that sometimes you realize that your original wish was unrealistic or wrong-headed because you can't imagine what else the child COULD do.)
It's the same with other aspects. Most of the time positing something when you negate something else will have a better, more straightforward effect and get you closer to what you really want.
Also, you won't sound like a whining dolt. I just can't stand it when people do that. I hate ... oh, wait. Dang. Um. Read the above for my suggestions on what TO do. Yeah. I didn't say it was easy....
One of my earlier posts was about Bloom's taxonomy, and an old high school friend sent me a more up-to-date version that includes a new pinnacle: creativity.
It's harder to create something than to destroy it. For an extreme example, 19 men took out two skyscrapers, part of the most powerful military in the world's command center, a good section of the world's progressive economy, and a large chunk of common sense for years to come. It took a lot more than those 19 men to rebuild all that, and many orders of magnitude more to create it in the first place. But you don't have to turn to 9/11 to find examples of how creating something is harder than destroying it.
The root of "positive" is "posit," which means "to place, put, or set" or to postulate. To be positive, you have to place something out there -- albeit rhetorically, you have to create something. To be negative, all you have to do is remove something, so say that this part doesn't work. That's a lot easier.
Say you want to go out to eat with four or five people. What happens? You get in a group, probably at the last convenient moment to make a decision, and say, "Where do you want to go?" Some people will posit ideas, and those will be shot down, and eventually some consensus is reached. A personal pet peeve of mine is when somebody says "I don't care," then proceeds to shoot down every posited idea. (That person is either unaware that he has an opinion or just was hoping to seem easygoing while in reality getting his own way.) The ones that are positing ideas (not IDEA--it's called "selfish" if you only care about what you want most) are doing a service to the others, and it is a moderately difficult one for those that do not like their ideas shot down because almost all of the ideas, by definition of the context, WILL be shot down.
Another way this shows up is in the angst-ridden teen, the rebel without a cause, or the smart-aleck. A kid with a modicum of intelligence understands quickly that there is always a way to challenge any idea. (Like in the scene from Shawshank where the guard has inherited 35g from a disliked relative and someone says, "That's great ... isn't it?" and the guard says, "What are you, an idiot? You know what the IRS is going to do to me?" As one of the cons points out more prosaically, some people have terrible luck.) Immature people never get past that discovery. They are the ones that will always tell you how the new X is wrong.
For example, you see this a lot in Facebook postings. Some people will never say something positive about anything. If you mention a politician, he's a crook and the worst of all time. If you mention a movie, it had tons of plot holes, it was too slow .... Books, people, songs -- their minor imperfections are extolled. Why? It is easier, of course, but I think for some it is also because it is difficult to say somebody is wrong when he is pointing out imperfections. To say a movie is good, it has to be firing on all cylinders; to be bad, you just have to miss one. And nothing is always perfect, so you can always find something wrong about it. (Indeed, if something is always perfect, THAT will be its imperfection.)
Complaining has almost arisen to be not only socially okay but socially expected. Some people don't LIKE to hear that your day has gone well. If you are one of those people ... quit it. Like the odd turn toward finding stupidity laudable (visible at least since the advent of Beavis and Butthead), this raising up of negativity has become nigh ubiquitous. And it is both unsavory and detrimental.
I'm not saying be a pollyanna. Some things don't work, and knowing when to throw in the towel on some projects can be a wonderfully effective talent. I mean that the answer can usually be, "Yes, but ..." instead of "No." It can be "We can build that for you, but it will take an extra 6 months" instead of "You are a lunatic and it will never work." I'm not saying to be politically correct, and I'm certainly not saying to be dishonest (there will be another post about honesty at some point) -- I'm saying not to be solely negative. Make that a rule of thumb: I'm going to posit something if I feel the need to negate something.
That's one of the suggestions for good parenting that stuck with me. You are posed this question: What would you like to see changed about your child? (If you don't have a child, insert any significant person into that question, such as a spouse or roommate.)
Did you think on that? Or are you just skipping to what I have to say? Pause. Think about it. What would you like to see changed about your child?
Your answer may have been something like, "I wish she would stop throwing fits," or "I wish he would quit watching TV all night long." As a book (that I can't remember) put it, is it something that a dead person can do? Dead people don't throw fits. Dead people don't watch TV all night long. If that is all that you are trying to change, you end up with the parenting style of a crypt keeper. Instead, you don't simply remove bad behavior -- you also add in good behavior. You POSIT something you would prefer to see in its place. "I wish she would stop throwing fits and instead tell me what she wants and attempt to negotiate." "I wish he would quit watching TV all night long and instead engage with the rest of the family in talking, games, and non-electronic fellowship." The benefit here is that you can create a plan of action that isn't nagging or annoying. (Another is that sometimes you realize that your original wish was unrealistic or wrong-headed because you can't imagine what else the child COULD do.)
It's the same with other aspects. Most of the time positing something when you negate something else will have a better, more straightforward effect and get you closer to what you really want.
Also, you won't sound like a whining dolt. I just can't stand it when people do that. I hate ... oh, wait. Dang. Um. Read the above for my suggestions on what TO do. Yeah. I didn't say it was easy....
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