Con: (n) the negative position

In evaluating the pros and cons of any situation, no one is ever yelled at for coming up with too many pros.

There is not some formal rebuke which proclaims, “You’re just being too positive!”

But if you come up with too many “cons”–reasons that something might not work, you could easily be decried “too negative.”

The question has to cross our minds: is it more dangerous to be too pro or too con? Trying to find the balance is impossible.

Basically, in life you have two positions:

Pursue with wisdom.

Or abstain with intelligence.

And to gain the wisdom and acquire the intelligence does mean that one has to be able to isolate the “cons”–the negatives–in any given situation.

Being too positive has caused tyrants to become dictators and murderers because no one wanted to believe that anyone could actually be that evil.

It has also caused parents to find themselves being interviewed on 24-hour news networks, attempting to explain why their teenage son walked into a school and killed as many innocents as possible.

After all, they just wanted to love their kid and be positive.

When the obvious signs of danger show their ugly faces, it is time to allow ourselves to be a wee bit negative. And those signs of danger are:

• killing
• stealing
• destroying

Whenever this trio–or just one of them–shows up on the horizon, it is a good idea to pose the simple question, “Hold on a second! Now what in the hell is this all about?”

 

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