Negativity Bias

"For us, material well-being always followed spiritual progress; it never came first."

The Plain Language Big Book P 113  

Dammit!  That is SO unfair.  If I had a lot of material stuff then I'd be more inclined to do spiritual stuff.  If I'm not going to get a lot of nice stuff why the hell would I work on my spirituality?  A wise man once said: "The more expensive the chair . . . the more profound the meditation."

"Another principle we live by is this: We do not share the private or secret experiences of someone else unless we know they will feel okay about it.  Usually, we just stick to our own stories.  Any person may criticize or laugh at themselves, and other people may laugh along.  But criticisms coming from another person create the opposite reaction.  We alcoholics are sensitive people.  It takes some of us a long time to outgrow that troublesome trait."

The Plain Language Big Book PP 113-14.

I am famously sarcastic among my friends and neighbors.  I guess also among my enemies and competitors to be honest about it.  The point is that I get away with it - mostly because it's so over the top and transparently kind but also because I can take a punch, a shot.  I'm an idiot!  I know I'm an idiot!  So if you want to call me an idiot I'm with you, dude.

Repeating myself, saying the same over and over, saying the same thing using slightly different words, I adhere ferociously to the maxim that I don't say anything about anybody that I wouldn't say if the person was standing right next to me.  I don't want anyone to accuse me of talking shit behind their back.  If I can't say it to you I don't think it should be said. 

Negativity bias is a cognitive bias that results in adverse events having a more significant impact on our psychological state than positive events.  This bias occurs even when adverse events and positive events are of the same magnitude, meaning we feel negative events more intensely.  Most of our instinctual responses to the world were hard-wired in when the world was a much more threatening place than it is now.  We had to worry about starving or freezing to death or being eaten by something large that had lots of sharp teeth.  The fact that most of us are no longer in those kinds of circumstances hasn't eradicated that instinct.  I've always considered myself a negative, suspicious person.  Hurray for me and no shit!  I'm a survivor.  I can see now that my eyes are opened - or opening, at least - that most of us are like that although I tend to take things way, way too far.  One study suggests that we need to hear something positive six times for it to really take hold while we get the negative thing on the first attempt.  The fact that most of us have a negative bias suggests that all the positive people have been eaten up.

Not me, man.  Nothin's going to catch me today.