I made an interesting discovery tonight. All things that are considered negative, are ultimately the natural state of the universe. Conversely, all things considered positive are something one must strive for. This, however, takes energy, and as we all know, energy is something we don't have in abundance.
Take warmth for example. The phenomenon we know as warmth is actually caused by movement of atoms, and coldness is the lack of such movement. Movement takes energy, and thus when it is removed, things freeze up. The same goes for light. Ultimately, darkness is the natural state of the universe.
Things get a bit more complicated when we observe the effectiveness of this theory on things like human emotions. Discomfort, for example, can be caused by actions or inactions, on your part or someone else's. Then again, it can be caused by a simple lack of warmth or light, thus being caused by lack of energy. Again, we see that energy, or rather the lack of, is the cause of purely non-physical phenomena.
We may then conclude the following: Lack of energy = Subjective negative perceptions
I say subjective because ultimately, things like negative and positive are nothing else than attributes based on past experiences of the individual, and to some extent, on heritage (by that I mean both things learned from parents and information passed in genes).
In the light of this theory, one might argue that while bad things do happen, good things happen too. This is of course true, and this theory does not exclude such things from happening. Often times good things follow bad things, but it should be considered whether or not the universe sometimes spends some extra energy to make us feel good, so that the eventual turn for the worse would feel that much worse in compensation...
The effects of this theory are far-reaching. For instance, if this writeup is voted down, it will prove that sufficient energy was not used in things other noders consider important for a good node (flashy formatting, inside humour, common sense etc.), and was subjectively percieved as being negative. Then again, the energy you would spend doing so would make me consider this theory as being somewhat accurate, and thus feel good about myself. A sure sign of the coming visit of Klaproth and some of his/her really loathesome relatives.
Update, 29. December 2001
Oh, now I'm really smiling. As I forecasted, this writeup was voted down. Not much, but still enough to convince me that the theory might work. I also forecasted that such action would invite Klaproth and now, a week after writing this, It ate one of my earlier writeups. Do you still doubt my words?