The Bias Against Complaining, Profitable Positivity, Silencing Dissent, and Encouraging Inaction

I recently read a series of posts by one of my favorite steemians (Hive account@diabolika) and they got me started thinking about the idea of "complaining" and the way that some people view it. She had written an interesting post about poverty and her personal situation and a commentator decided to tell her that not complaining is the key to success (not in those exact words but that is close enough). That kind of statement, understandably, rubbed her the wrong way and she responded in both the form of a comment and with another post but the person who made the remark is representative of how quite a large portion of the population views the act of complaining. That is to say, there is a bias against it. Many people believe that it is an annoyance, an attempt to pass responsibility onto something other than the self, and unproductive. However, this seems like a flawed outlook, from my perspective. Being positive is all well and good but complaining about things serves a vital social function. To put it simply, people must be aware of a problem before they can address it and complaining helps to raise that awareness. Of course, there are likely reasons that, despite its useful function, complaining is often framed as undesirable action. Problems are often hard to solve and easy to ignore which creates the bias in our minds. Sometimes there is profit in keeping people quiet about their concerns which makes poking at our bias a good decision for a charlatan who peddles (often) meaningless positive feelings. For the establishment, complaints can be seen as the beginning of "dangerous" dissent so they exploit our bias to suppress the voices of those who complain. Our drive to complain and the validity of our complaints are under a constant assault by our own bias, by people pushing "snake oil," and by the authorities which creates a situation that leaves us vulnerable to those who would rob us of our wealth and prevent us from taking action to help ourselves.

Let's take a look at what complaining actual does. Sometimes, it isn't what we want to hear but it is meant to let us know that someone is dissatisfied with something. What that thing is and its level of importance may vary but that does not diminish the value of expressing dissatisfaction. If others feel that the problem that caused the complaint is serious enough, they can take action to address that problem in some way or, at least, think about ways in which that problem can be addressed. As social creatures who, to some extent, rely on others to provide help, the ability to bring problems to people's attention is of extreme importance.

Unfortunately, many people are prone to taking the easy road and ignoring problems is often much less work than trying to find solutions. Because that is the case, we often dismiss complaints before we really hear them out. "Shut up and deal with it" we say in one way or another. However "dealing with it" is precisely what the complainer is trying to do. He or she may be asking for real help or he or she may be simply venting frustrations but both of those things are ways of approaching an unfavorable situation. One makes the self feel a little better and the other is an attempt to stir up support for facing the actual problem but a listener who does not take the time to think about the issue that lies behind the complaint, only hears "whining" and closes his or her mind from the start. This is a bias that quite a few people possess and it creates an opportunity for exploitation by charlatans and authorities.

This unwillingness to listen to complaints leaves us vulnerable to malevolent actors and can cause us to be taken advantage of much more easily. In one of her posts that touched on the comment that she received, Hive account@diabolika pointed to some so the scamy self-help material that preaches positivity. Hucksters will tell us that if we stop complaining and think happy thoughts, good things will happen for us. Of course, that isn't true. You can't "happy" yourself out of a car fire. A murderer's bullet does not care how joyous you might be. Starvation is not caused by negative mindsets. When the scammer's scam does not work, he or she will say that the scammed just didn't think positively enough and that by "complaining" about the scam not working, they are really proving that it does work. "Give me another twenty dollars and try believing a little harder next time." Since people already have a bias against complaining and they are being fed a message that confirms that bias, they accept the premise and the weak explanations for why it does not have the advertised effect. In short, the bias against complaints gives people who push profitable positivity a free pass to extract cash from individuals who only want to seek a better life.

The systems of authority to which we are subject also have a problem with complaining. When people complain about the government or its actions, particularly in public, it starts to look bad and image is important to an institution that depends on the continued support of the population. They will use their mouth pieces in the media to discredit people who complain and bring real issues to our attention. For minor things, they may paint someone as unpatriotic, hysterical, or insane and many people, already not being fond of hearing complaints, accept those labels without much thought because they confirm their biases. If the complainer has a valid enough reason to complain (that is, they are a "whistle blower" with real "dirt" to bring to light) they are said to be "leaking national security secrets" and could face imprisonment or (potentially) death for daring to complain too effectively. Still, though, some portion of the population is fine with that explanation because accepting it is easier than dealing with the implications of the leaks. Again, our bias against complaining is used as a means to mislead us. We already didn't like hearing what the leaker is saying and when the propagandists call the leaker some negative thing, we say "yeah, screw that guy."

The risk that we face is not taking action to address the real problems that affect us. If we don't listen to the person who complains about a dangerous road, no one will fix it and prevent the accidents that it causes. If no one listens to the individuals who complain about a scammer's scam, he or she can continue to trick people out of their money. If we do not know about the shady things that the authorities get up to, we cannot oppose them. Because suppressing complaints encourages inaction, it is, perhaps, best if we ask ourselves what purpose it serves for those who tell us to "deal with it."

With all that in mind, I think it is important for us to hear people out. Sometimes, complaints are legitimately frivolous and sometimes they have merit but we can't know which is true until we hear them for ourselves. We can fight the urge to dismiss things because they are negative or point to difficult problems. We can also question people who tell us not to complain because they may have a self-serving reason for keeping us quiet about the things that we are upset over. I frequently say that changing the way that we think does not fix our problems but, in this case, I think it does actually address some of them directly. Most of the tactics that are used to keep us from paying attention to people's complaints (with the exception of legal action or the use of violence) are designed to exploit a quirk in our thinking. If we make ourselves conscious of our bias against complaints, we can suppress it until we know if it is justified.

Peace.

I referenced several posts by Hive account@diabolika here and if you are not familiar with her work, I encourage you to check it out because, in my opinion, she always has something interesting to say.

All the images in this post are sourced from the free image website unsplash.com.