Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America

[RamboLiberal]

by Barbara Ehrenreich

From Amazon.com

A sharp-witted knockdown of America’s love affair with positive thinking and an urgent call for a new commitment to realism

Americans are a “positive” people—cheerful, optimistic, and upbeat: this is our reputation as well as our self-image. But more than a temperament, being positive, we are told, is the key to success and prosperity.

In this utterly original take on the American frame of mind, Barbara Ehrenreich traces the strange career of our sunny outlook from its origins as a marginal nineteenth-century healing technique to its enshrinement as a dominant, almost mandatory, cultural attitude. Evangelical mega-churches preach the good news that you only have to want something to get it, because God wants to “prosper” you. The medical profession prescribes positive thinking for its presumed health benefits. Academia has made room for new departments of “positive psychology” and the “science of happiness.” Nowhere, though, has bright-siding taken firmer root than within the business community, where, as Ehrenreich shows, the refusal even to consider negative outcomes—like mortgage defaults—contributed directly to the current economic crisis.

With the mythbusting powers for which she is acclaimed, Ehrenreich exposes the downside of America’s penchant for positive thinking: On a personal level, it leads to self-blame and a morbid preoccupation with stamping out “negative” thoughts. On a national level, it’s brought us an era of irrational optimism resulting in disaster. This is Ehrenreich at her provocative best—poking holes in conventional wisdom and faux science, and ending with a call for existential clarity and courage.

And from the Right.

We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism by John Derbyshire

To his fellow conservatives, John Derbyshire makes a plea: Don't be seduced by this nonsense about "the politics of hope." Skepticism, pessimism, and suspicion of happy talk are the true characteristics of an authentically conservative temperament. And from Hobbes and Burke through Lord Salisbury and Calvin Coolidge, up to Pat Buchanan and Mark Steyn in our own time, these beliefs have kept the human race from blindly chasing its utopian dreams right off a cliff.

Recently, though, various comforting yet fundamentally idiotic notions of political correctness and wishful thinking have taken root beyond the "Kumbaya"-singing, we're-all-one crowd. These ideas have now infected conservatives, the very people who really should know better. The Republican Party has been derailed by legions of fools and poseurs wearing smiley-face masks.

Think rescuing the economy by condemning our descendents to lives of spirit-crushing debt. Think nation-building abroad while we slowly disintegrate at home. Think education and No Child Left Behind. . . . But don't think about it too much, because if you do, you'll quickly come to the logical conclusion: We are doomed.

Need more convincing? Dwell on the cheerful promises of the diversity cult and the undeniable reality of the oncoming demographic disaster. Contemplate the feminization of everything, or take a good look at what passes for art these days. Witness the rise of culturism and the death of religion. Bow down before your new master, the federal apparatchik. Finally, ask yourself: How certain am I that the United States of America will survive, in any recognizable form, until, say, 2022?

A scathing, mordantly funny romp through today's dismal and dismaler political and cultural scene, We Are Doomed provides a long-overdue dose of reality, revealing just how the GOP has been led astray in recent years–and showing that had conservatives held on to their fittingly pessimistic outlook, America's future would be far brighter.

Ladies and gentlemen, it's time to embrace the Audacity of Hopelessness.

[aquart]

1. I always thought so.

[hadrons]

2. I love Barbara Ehrenreich's books

[Captain Hilts]

3. Agree very strongly. "If you work hard, you'll make it." No, not necessarily.

I remember hearing Tim Russert and Chris Matthews talking about how their dads taught them that if they worked hard, they'd be successful. And, guess what? They worked hard and, now, they're successful!!! Isn't that great?

Somehow they both avoided being drafted, for one. And, two, a lot of hard-working folks don't make it.

Luck counts. So do connections.

[abluelady]

6. How True

I remember reading a short story once that started by asking the question, "Would you rather have brains or luck?" I'll take luck anytime, of course it was good luck! The story was old and "connections" wasn't mentioned, but I rhink you're right. If bad things happen, they happen. I think we need to try to solve problems positively, but I don't think we can make good things happen because we believe positively, and I don't believe we can solve any problem if we aren't realistic.

By the way, all her books are good reads.

[raccoon]

9. Which is what lots of people, especially Republicans, don't want to admit.

"Luck counts. So do connections. "

[KansDem]

4. As I grew up in the 1950s and 1960s during the "Red Scare"

I remember how communist regimes would encourage its citizens to engage in "self criticism." I got the impression that to engage in self criticism was emblematic of oppressive regimes, and therefore we, as "free Americans" should avoid such activities.

Perhaps that's the reason so many right-wingers are filled with hate: They refused to self-criticize, important for self development, and now wonder why, with all their "cheerful, optimistic, and upbeat" attitudes toward themselves, they're not prosperous...

[JDPriestly]

5. Outliers debunks the myth that success is the result of hard work and talent.

You need to be born in the right place at the right time to the right family in the right social milieu and just be lucky in addition to working hard, etc.

But, in my opinion, you don't have to be extremely successful to be pretty happy in life. That is why I believe that as a society we should make sure that everyone has enough on the material level to enjoy a modest life. If we found more joy in flowering plants, in snowy horizons, in the power of the wind and in each other, we could live well without trying to fool ourselves into happiness.

[abluelady]

10. Just Started "Outliers"

He explains his ideas so well, and you're so right. The better off a society is, the better off an individual is--NOT the other way around. Why doesn't everybody see that? Hmm, wonder if it's because of Ronald Reagan who believed in me, me, me!

[kaehele]

7. Excellent

The sort of timely and critically important as was Learned Hand's essay noting that people had a "right to fail."

We need a few public folks to present some of these home truths periodically. Of course, Fix News and the right wing screwballs would just have them shot for being commies.

[raccoon]

8. Just finished BRIGHT-SIDED, and I recommend it.

It's especially sickening the way the business community promotes denial relentless optimism, even in the face of layoffs, when the reality is that for many of those who were laid off, the chances of them ever getting a job as good as the one they lost, are not good.

There's a BIG difference between being optimistic and "magical thinking" which is what the business community and some religious groups promote nowadays.

[abluelady]

11. And Let's Not Forget the Church

If you pray god will provide. :puke: What could possibly be worse than thinking positively, praying and believing and then failing? It's much easier to be optimistic than face failure for so many. Imagine taking responsibility for your failues and not being able to blame someone/something else?