How Good, Kind, Caring People Became The Bad Guys
An unfortunate psychological trait.
There's a story about Zig Ziglar, the motivational speaker and author. Apparently, a woman approached Ziglar at one of his seminars, begging him for help. She said she hated her job. Her boss was horrible. Her coworkers were so mean to her.
What should she do?
Well, Zig told her to shut up and stop complaining. He said she sounded like the negative one. He told her to chant aphorisms into a mirror. Low and behold, she was cured.
I've got bad news for everyone. Zig didn't help this woman. In fact, all he did was reinforce a cognitive bias that psychologists have been studying for decades now.
This bias explains a lot about the state of the world today.
But first, a personal story:
I don't know if you've ever been trapped in a small space with a severe, violent schizophrenic relative.
It's not fun.
When I was a teen, my mom started having delusions and hallucinations. She thought the CIA was spying on my dad. She thought a Category 4 Hurricane was going to hit the house. She thought I wa…