More praise for negative attitude...

[Me]

As you all know, I have nothing but disdain for Dave "the flaming
blowhard" Jensen, with his emphasis on "positive attitude" and all the
other pollyannas out there that see all half-glasses of water and empty
glasses of water as only _full_ glasses of water....

So, here again, is some cheer for negative attitudes:

From "The Week" magazine, Nov 20, 2009, page 24:

title:"The upside of being down"

quote:

"'Happy' and 'healthy' often go together, but being sad does have its
advantages, new research suggests. In a series of experiments, researchers
in Australia found that when people are feeling down, some of their
cognitive skills are actually sharper than those of their sunnier
counterparts. Scientists induced happy or sad moods in subjects by showing
them various films and having them recall negative or positive events.
When asked to judge the truth of certain urban myths, the sad subjects
turned out to be less gullible than the happy ones. They also had more
accurate memories of events they'd witnessed and could make more
persuasive arguments. The researchers say that though a good mood
encourages creativity and cooperation, it also promotes reliance on mental
shortcuts; a negative mood prompts the sufferer to think more carefully
and to pay closer attention to the external world. Sadness 'promotes
information processing best suited to dealing with more demanding
situations,' psychologist Joseph Forgas tells the London Daily Mail. A
'positive mood is not universally desireable'."

[Antonio Huerta]

I do not think that the Japanese reached their status of manufacturing
superpower just by positive thinking. They lived in poverty close to
each other, and the desire of better life (=unsatisfaction of the
current order of the things) is what propelled them forward.

[Me]

If you read Clyde Prestowitz's book: "Trading Places" (he is an American
who worked in the trade rep office and also worked for Japanese
companies), you will get the story (confirmed elsewhere) that the inner
circle of large Japanese companies and "influential circles" in Japan,
that Japanese society is much more cooperative with itself than American
society (with its competitive CEOs, lawyer infrastructure, and cowboy
attitude, etc).

The other end of the story is the "give the store away" attitude in US
high offices (eg. White House, Secy of State, etc.) where they have this
_religious_ belief in "free trade" but they have a blind eye when many of
our trade partners play protectionist when it comes to accepting US
exports.

[The_killing_machine]

If you express too many negative comments on that other site you are
called a vulture or a professional trouble maker...

[BMJ]

The_killing_machine wrote:
> If you express too many negative comments on that other site you are
> called a vulture or a professional trouble maker...
>
>

Attitude is destiny:

http://www.bigeye.com/attitude.htm

Yeah, right.

[Art Sowers]

On Sun, 15 Nov 2009, The_killing_machine wrote:

> If you express too many negative comments on that other site you are
> called a vulture or a professional trouble maker...
>
>
>

I thought he just censored anything not politicall correct into the
"deleted to be ignored and/or forgotten" bin.

Sounds like communism/totalitarianism to me.