I learned early on that criticism feels about ten times as bad as praise feels good.

For a while I assumed this was a neurosis only I and other recovering pessimists had. But when I started blogging, I kept hearing the same thing from other writers: one critical comment makes you forget a dozen positive ones.

It turns out this is normal for human beings. Criticism just weighs more on our emotions than praise does. We remember negative events more vividly than positive ones, and we give more emotional weight to a loss than an equivalent gain.

This makes sense from a survival perspective, if you think about it. There’s more urgency to remember dangers vividly than rewards. The trauma of negative events — whether it’s from a pointed criticism or a stubbed toe — teaches you how to stay physically safe and in good standing with the tribe. Positive events are beneficial when you have them, and it’s helpful to remember how you got to them, but there’s no benefit in staying preoccupied with them for a long time.

“Bad emotions, bad parents and bad feedback have more impact than good ones. Bad impressions and bad stereotypes are quicker to form and more resistant to disconfirmation than good ones,” wrote social psychology professor Roy Baumeister in a paper he co-authored, entitled “Bad is Stronger Than Good”.

A natural side-effect of this overvaluation of negativity is that we tend to be more passive in life than we would be if we weighed negativity and positivity the same. Bad outcomes seem to promise more in terms of punishment than good outcomes promise in terms of benefit, so it can seem sensible to speak out and try new things as infrequently as possible. As writer Elbert Hubbard put it, “To escape criticism, do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.”  Read More

The following post will appear as the foreword to Robert Wringham’s upcoming book Escape Everything!

Every time I write a piece advocating escape from corporate servitude, I receive a few emails that contain a particular kind of scolding. They tell me that only an entitled brat could be unsatisfied with a stable job and a roof, in a world where so many pine for only these things.

If that’s the case, then we live in world built out of, and for, legions of such entitled brats, whether they choose to actually implement their escape plan, or only think about it all day. For all the financial prosperity of the modern working world, there is a certain poverty in our willingness to take pay for performing activities that have, typically, almost nothing to do with our personal values. As if there were no better ideas out there, we take up this yoke by the thousand, slotting ourselves in grids of grey squares, stacked fifty to a hundred high, sealed with a shiny glass exterior. A small forest of these shiny stacks is the first image we think of when we picture a modern city.

Even while the internet and its emerging subcultures continue to hint at newer, smarter modes of working and living, you may still be told it’s vain to insist on a station more fulfilling than a permanent stall in a well-reputed grid. According to my critics, even if you find your standard weekday boring, painful or unfulfilling, you ought to embrace it, simply because a third-world coal miner would kill for your benefits package. When so many have so little, attempting to escape a situation in which you can reliably feed yourself and fund a retirement could only be an act of the utmost ingratitude.

A minority of us believe the opposite is true — that escaping from an unfulfilling mainstream lifestyle isn’t a moral failing, but rather a moral imperative. It’s precisely because we have all the necessary freedoms at our fingertips (and because others don’t) that spending our lives in the stable isn’t just foolish, but wrong. To remain, voluntarily, in a life where your talents are wasted and your weekdays are obstacles is to be humble in all the wrong ways.  Read More