Philosophy at Work is a series of Socratic group dialogues conducted online with self-selected colleagues at a large company. Topics include freedom, authenticity, courage, and anything else that relates to work life. This is the script from the session on Negative Thinking. Words in bold are shared in an open document on screen.

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Welcome! to this “Philosophy at work” session, where we examine concepts related to our work life, and use Socratic dialogue to create a ‘Community of Inquiry’.

What we do together here is thinking out loud. This also means that you don’t have to mean what you say, or stand for it – we’re just trying out some ideas. Really: this is a community of inquiry. We’re weaving it all together.

We’re doing ‘focused and directed thinking’. On any topic.

(I love this group, and I’m so happy that you’re here.)

And now, I will share my screen and start us off with some ideas, and then we do a round, and then we finish on time. 😊

So, today, we’re talking about…

Negative thinking

Or,

“It won’t get better than this”

Or “this is as good as it gets”, like; I remember when I was in my 20s, I read somewhere that

Midlife crises…

are about coming to terms with the fact that, for most people, things didn’t really turn out the way you thought when you were younger; you didn’t live in mansion with seven dogs and happy children, and you didn’t have a Disney wedding. And, btw, this midlife crisis can, of course, last for 30 years or so … And, you look at your life and you realize that you’re X years old (fill in your age), and what have you done so far? And what are you doing? Was this it?

“Is this life?”

Now, that’s today’s topic. It’s not the same as hopelessness or depression, because that means that you don’t have the energy to even care … I’m going to write that:

To have the energy to care

There are actual courses on ’negative thinking’. I think that it partly started as a joke, or an allergic reaction to ’positive thinking’, but then it turned out to be really useful and popular, and people loved it. They’d quote gloomy philosophers, like

Schopenhauer: “Mostly it is loss which teaches us about the worth of things.”

Of course! Loss, or the fear of loss, or the threat of loss … I mean, I guess that everyone here is familiar with the tragedies of life. And, we also know that feelings come and go … that you don’t always feel as bad. But, negative thinking … I mean, the purpose of philosophy is human flourishing. To me, it often starts with emancipation – like, the breakout from the prisons we built for ourselves. So, I want to see if I can use negative thinking … I mean, I have my own examples – I’m divorced, autistic, etc. – there’s always a way to see things negatively … – I guess that’s a good distinction to make:

To be negative/pessimistic vs. utilizing negative thinking

OK. So, I’m thinking of … everything. Of course you can say, it’s all going down, we just keep playing, like the musicians on Titanic, type of thing. But what if we push it to the very far end, and say, ”It won’t get better than this. This is it. This is our best time. Right now is the time of our lives.”

Right now is the time of our lives.

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How does this sentence affect the way you do your next task?

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Philosophy is what we need.