“Bad things always happen” seems to be rooted in our genes, from the collective subconsciousness of our distant ancestors. Due to the low survival ability of human beings in ancient times, a small mosquito in the tropical jungle may kill humans, not to mention the direct confrontation with the attacks of beasts, the natural disasters without warning, and the various things that may occur during gathering and hunting. Kind of accident and so on. Many uncertain factors make people full of fear and defense against the unknown.
Therefore, to the worst, this is an unconscious habit in human thinking, especially for threats. Modern humans are still very sensitive to threats, and they are not much degraded compared to earlier humans. It’s just that modern cities protect people very well, and there are fewer threats. Despite this, people still often have “misunderstandings” and interpret certain signals in the security situation as “threats.”
There is a concept in experimental psychology called “false report”, which refers to a positive report made by a subject when a specific test stimulus does not appear. “Bad things always happen” is a false report of “bad things”. People are always extremely sensitive to threats and false reports occur. With more false reports, people will doubt their emotional perception system and feel uncertain about whether they can detect threats. As a result, people become more cautious and make false reports more and more, making life seem to be threats everywhere.
Once at 11 o’clock in the evening, I was walking on the way home. From the subway station to my house, there is a dark path downstairs. There is no one on the road and it is lonely. I walked forward quickly, and suddenly saw a winding object on the ground, which twisted in a cold wind, my first reaction-it was a snake. The twist that followed the wind shocked me, but then it stopped and didn’t move. I stood there and waited for a long time, as if time had stopped. I didn’t know how long I waited before I began to suspect that it might not be a snake. When I gathered up the courage and slowly approached, I found that it was just a branch of a branch wrapped in a black plastic bag, which was moved by the wind.
But until I got home, the thrilling scene still lingered in my mind, lingering. I was surprised that I was so sensitive and suspicious about dangerous situations, and after the dangerous situation was eliminated, the tension in my heart was so deep that it could not be calmed for a long time. I began to understand that people have an instinctive preparation for “bad things will always happen”. In this state of being ready to take action at any time, signs of things going bad are very easy to catch.
In daily life, not only are threats and dangers easily captured, but negative signs of events are also easily captured by people. There is a classic story: when a mother comes back from get off work and sees her child playing on a mobile phone, then in the mother’s eyes, the child is playing with a mobile phone all day; when mother comes home from get off work and sees the child doing homework, then in the mother’s eyes , The child has just started doing homework. This negative fiction of things is an interpretation of “bad things always happen” in many people’s genes.
In the movie “This Killer Is Not So Cold”, when the killer Leon met the little girl for the first time, the little girl’s parents were beating her frantically and driving her out of the house. They met at the entrance of the corridor. The little girl asked Leon: “Is life always this painful? Or is it only when I was a child?” Leon replied grimly: “Always so.” This scene in the film remained in the hearts of many people. Impressed. Few people think about why this short dialogue can be so pricked. This is because few people have explored so deeply inwardly that they can truly understand and perceive the secret gene that “bad things always happen”.
Being aware of this instinctive tendency does not allow us to change it, but it will allow us to observe all of this when facing our own false reports, instead of excessively deducing and being led step by step into extremely bad ideas. .