I’m listening to a book called Low Anthropology (by David Zahl). In the book David talks about the tyranny of positivity. The tyranny of positivity is stuff like, a 15 year old kid gets last place in a tennis tournament, and while driving home the kid’s dad says, “Don’t let this get you down. You’re just as good as all those other players!” Of course there is something commendable in the dad’s attempt to console his adolescent child, but the subtext of the dad’s pep talk is, “You’re not allowed to be sad about losing, and you’re not allowed to be honest about who you really are (namely, in this case, a lousy tennis player). It would be shameful to admit sorrow or lack of skill.”

Zahl observes that under the tyranny of positivity we have to pathologize being sad, and we have to incessantly deny the fact that we simply aren’t good at everything. Sadness must be diagnosed as depression, and only then can you get permission to be sad. “Depression” or “trauma” is the license language to talk about sadness or lingering turmoil in your life. Anything that might feel negative is not allowed to be viewed as normal. Negative stuff is “abnormal”! The tyranny of positivity pressures everyone to manufacture sexy self media, and constantly be curating an illusion of confidence and cheerfulness. Anne Lamott says, “In social media terms, this is the torment of comparing your insides to other people’s published outsides.”

Ironically, one of the most overtly positive characters depicted in our most prolific storytelling mediums (i.e. television) is actually a robust example of someone who embraces the tension between sanguineness and sadness…

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And here’s a bonus scene (just because it’s amazing):