Hi, I’m 21/male from Germany and to me it seems like people here are constantly negative and complaining compared to people from other/non-Western countries who seem way more chill.

I assume this is probably the worst here in Germany since this is also a stereotype about Germans that they constantly complain about things and in my opinion this is very true from experiencing real life here every day. But I would say I’ve also noticed this from other western countries, maybe not as extreme but for example in America people also seem to be pretty hateful and seem to make a drama out of everything (at least from what I can tell on the internet).

I just wonder why these people unnecessarily spread this negativity because in my opinion here in these western 1st world countries we have so much luxury compared to other places. For example other countries have wars, people live in terror and extreme injustice/corruption, people starve to death, get abused, raped and tortured and need to seek refuge in other countries. But we complain that eggs are too expensive and that we have too many migrants, which goes so far that America is deporting all illegal migrants including those who might’ve fled from the things mentioned earlier such as violence and rape.

Why do people waste all this time with complaining and being negative if they could use this time to be grateful, enjoy life and make the world a better place? To me this seems like people are destroying their own life and make it unnecessarily harder/unhappy with that behavior. I think I’m noticing this particularly in older people including my parents. It almost feels like they’re unable to be positive and only know how to complain.

  • iii@mander.xyz
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    3 days ago

    I have the same observation. My guess: people aren’t made for hapiness, but for the pursuit of hapiness. Quality of life has not been improving for most in EU, au contraire.

    • Kyrgizion@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      Negativity bias has been an evolutionary advantage for hundreds of thousands of years of our development. You don’t exactly “breed out” a trait that has been honed to such a degree in a generation or two.

    • alvvayson@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      3 days ago

      I agree with this take.

      We are wired to find the next problem and to solve it. Enjoy our work for a short while and then start looking for the next problem to solve.

      Whether it is cultural or genetic, I don’t know, but it’s definitely very deep in our western psyche and it will not be going away any time soon.

      The main problem I see is that a lot of people in Western society nowadays use complaining as a substitute for action, and so problems don’t get solved, but people convince themselves that they took action by complaining.