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Bright-sided: How Positive Thinking is Undermined America
Bright-sided: How Positive Thinking is Undermined America
Bright-sided: How Positive Thinking is Undermined America
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Bright-sided: How Positive Thinking is Undermined America

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Barbara Ehrenreich's Bright-sided is 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.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateOct 13, 2009
ISBN9781429942539
Bright-sided: How Positive Thinking is Undermined America
Author

Barbara Ehrenreich

Barbara Ehrenreich (1941-2022) was a bestselling author and political activist, whose more than a dozen books included Nickel and Dimed, which the New York Times described as "a classic in social justice literature", Bait and Switch, Bright-sided, This Land Is Their Land, Dancing In the Streets, and Blood Rites. An award-winning journalist, she frequently contributed to Harper's, The Nation, The New York Times, and TIME magazine. Ehrenreich was born in Butte, Montana, when it was still a bustling mining town. She studied physics at Reed College, and earned a Ph.D. in cell biology from Rockefeller University. Rather than going into laboratory work, she got involved in activism, and soon devoted herself to writing her innovative journalism.

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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Interesting, but a bit cumbersome at time. Puts into words much of what I have thought my entire adult life: It's great to be positive-minded, but how realistic is it? And isn't there an awful lot of pressure to be positive? All in all, I adore Barbara Ehrenreich, and I may name my first child after her. Partly talks about the religious origins of positive thinking as an antidote to Calvinism's doom-and-gloom doctrines, then wraps up with an intelligent discussion of the current economic crisis, pointing out that Wall Street (if not the entire business world) was so busy being positive and creative they forgot to pay attention to being fiscally sound. The motivational speaker industry and "good news" religion especially come under attack.Some quotes that I loved:
    • Entire chapter titled "The Years of Magical Thinking"
    • p. 76: "Elements of Calvinism, again without the theology ... The middle and upper classes came to see busyness for its own sake as a mark of status in the 1980s and 1990s, which was convenient, because employers were demanding more and more of them. ... While earlier elites had flaunted their leisure, the comfortable classes of our own time are eager to display evidence of their exhaustion - always "in the loop," always available for a conference call, always read to go "the extra mile."
    • p. 77: "For the individual believer, the weight of Calvinism, with its demand for perpetual effort and self-examination to the point of self-loathing, could be unbearable." (Later, Ehrenreich points out that "positive thinking" also demands constant effort and self-examination.)
    • p. 80: "... [I]t did work for the slow, nameless, debilitating illness that was reducing many middle-class Americans to invalidism. The symptoms of this illness, which was to be labeled 'neurasthenia' near the end of the century, were multitudinous and diffuse. ... Most sufferers ... reported back problems, digestive ills, exhaustion, headaches, insomnia, and melancholy.
    • p. 182-183: "While secular positive-thinking texts encouraged people to 'manifest' their material desires, pastors like Osteen and Dollar were insisting that God wants you to have all good things in life, including a beautiful home. ... Jonathan Walton, a religion professor of the University of California at Riverside, aruged that pastors like Osteen reassured low-income people with subprime mortgages by getting them to believe that 'God caused the bank to ignore my credit score and bless me with my first house.' Anthea Butler, an expert on Pentecostalism, added: 'The pastor's not gonna say, "Go down to Wachovia and get a loan," but I have heard, 'Even if you have a poor credit rating, God scan still bless you - if you put some faith out there [that is, make a big donation to the church], you'll get that house or that car or that apartment.' ... To many people who had long been denied credit on account of their race or income, the easy mortgages of the middle of the decade must have indeed come as a miracle from God. ... Household debt hit a record of 133 percent of household income."
    • p. 185: "However dire the situation, 'corporate America desperately wants to believe there's a positive outcome and message.' When called in by companies to deal with a crisis, he [D.C. crisis manager Eric Dezenhall] starts by telling them, 'I'm going to tell you something you're not going to like. "A crisis is not an opportunity."'
    • p. 194: "But at the time of this writing, Adam Smith's idea that the self-seeking behavior of individuals would add up to the general welfare of all no longer seems to apply. As individuals, we know that it would be suicidal to get deeper in debt to indulge our acquisitiveness, even if doing so could jump-start the economy, so we each hunker down and try to make do with less. The easy credit is gone; the reckless spending looks more self-destructive by the moment. Besides, we already tried all that.
    • p. 198: "... [S]ome stubborn strain of realism has persisted throughout these years of delusion. When the stakes are high enough and the risks obvious, we still turn to people who can be counted on to understand those risks and prepare for worst-case scenarios. ... We want our airplane pilots to anticipate failed engines as well as happy landings. ... Not only pilots need to envision the worst; so does the driver of a car. Should you assume, positively, that no one is going to cut in front of you or, more negatively, be prepared to brake? Most of us would choose a physician who is willing to investigate the more dire possibilities rather than one who is known to settle quickly on an optimistic diagnosis.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A very important book for employees, white-collar and common people. I can only say: Indignez-vous! time for outrage! We have 2022 and nothing has changed since 2009: the richer become richer, and the poor poorer. Don`t blame yourself for this. You can find Ehrenreich Barbara on youtube.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This is a brilliant book. Ehrenreich looks at the horrible things that have been done to our country under the guise of "positive thinking." Corporations push motivational speakers on employees who are stressed out because of too much overtime and not enough benefits. CEOs lose touch with reality because they've bought into the notion that they're rich because they deserve to be rich, and nobody wants to bring them bad news because negatively gets people fired. Preachers of "prosperity gospels" sucker the less affluent into believing they can buy anything they want (and, according to some sources, may even be directly responsible for the housing market's collapse). People can fight cancer and other illnesses if they're just happy enough. It's ridiculous.

    The notion of "positive thinking" goes back to Mary Baker Eddy and the founding of the Christian Scientists. White America was founded by gloomy Calvinists, who believed that the financial condition in which people found themselves was predestined. New Thought (Eddy's belief system) was that people did deserve what they got, but that thinking only good things (and carefully moderating one's thoughts) would result in God providing whatever was needed. Added to that was the human tendency toward magical thinking, and the result was modern "positive thinking."

    Ehrenreich completely tears down the foundations and gurus of the movements, and I love her for it. I've been meaning to read this book for years, and I'm sorry I waited so long. It's excellent. Fair warning: if you read it, it will piss you off, but that's even more reason to read it. Five VERY well-earned stars.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Ehrenreich deals a much needed left hook to the cult of cheerfulness and positive thinking that has tyrannized all of us for several decades. Diagnosed with cancer and not naturally a teddy bear and pink ribbon sort, she finds herself swimming in a fetid cesspool of good cheer and proclamations of the positive difference that breast cancer had made in the life of numerous women. Naturally skeptical, she decides to examine the entire positive thinking juggernaut, and she does it in a witty, sometimes sarcastic, way that sits well with those of us who are tired of having cheerful jammed down our throats.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The first time I encountered a vision board was in the late 1990's when some friends of ours were trying to convince my spouse and me to sell Amway. We'd visit their apartment and see the magazine clippings of Mercedes sedans and diamond rings covering their refrigerator. This was shortly after one of them had quit grad school because he knew the only way he was going to reach his financial goals was to devote himself whole-heartedly to his business. That MD-PhD he'd almost completed was a dead end anyway.The first friend who used the term "manifest" to describe what our Amway friends were doing with the fridge photos tried to convince me that I just had to buy a house in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2007. It was a no-brainer: every rich person she knew owned a house, and it was ridiculous not to get into the market. She had just done it, and in a few years, it would be totally worth the financial pinch. Then I told her my family's monthly household income, and she didn't mention home buying again.The day I started reading this book, another friend told me about the positive thinking certification class she was taking. "You'd really like it, Charity," she insisted, and I considered recommending this book to her along with Julie Norem's [book:The Positive Power Of Negative Thinking206028], but instead I just kept quiet.I am in the choir to whom Ehrenreich is preaching with this book. That's not to say I haven't taken a sip of the positive thinking Kool-Aid myself at times. From the draw of a friend's megachurch when I was eighteen to starting my very own Happiness Project a la Gretchen Rubin when I was thirty-three, I do sometimes buy into the idea that my cautious optimism/defensive pessimism is a character flaw. But mostly I'm happy to live outside of the positive thinking bubble.Most of what Ehrenreich says was no surprise to me, but one idea that really got my attention was that positive thinking discourages empathy. Ehrenreich writes:"The challenge of family life, or group life of any kind, is to keep gauging the moods of others, accommodating to their insights, and offering comfort when needed. But in the world of positive thinking other people are not there to be nurtured or to provide unwelcome reality checks. They are there only to nourish, praise, and affirm...There seems to be a massive empathy deficit, which people respond to by withdrawing their own. No one has the time or patience for anyone else's problems."(56)If our primary goal is our own personal momentary happiness, what incentive is there to empathize and build relationships?I admit, though, that even as I strongly endorse the idea of empathy and do my best to practice it myself every day, I continue to have a sense of scarcity around empathy. What if I put in the effort to empathize with others and then no one empathizes back?I've sworn off self-help books, but if I found one that focused on addressing the empathy deficit, I would read it.I do wonder: Is it better in other countries? Are there places I could live where positive thinking isn't so ubiquitous?

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    When I saw this book I was immediately intrigued by an in-depth look into the psychology of positive thinking. I was a skeptic of things like "The Secret" and the prosperity theology that cause me to leave many a church, so a book like this was right up my alley.

    I enjoyed learning about the history of the positive thinking movement and seeings its mark in places like religion, business and health care. Since the first chapter, I have not looked at Breast Cancer paraphernalia the same. At time I disagreed with Ms Ehrenreich, especially about her analysis of Cancer patients/survivors, but I also saw a lot of truth in the information presented.

    Overall an enjoyable read I recommended to fans of Ehrenreich and those interested in Positive thinking
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I believe Barbara Ehrenreich when she says positive thinking is undermining America. I was just hoping for something more intellectually substantial than an argument seemingly intended for the general population.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    If you're interested in investigating the shadows on the sunny side of the street...an entertaining look at the history, recent manifestations, and unforeseen ramifications of the "positive thinking" movement in the United States. One of the most interesting insights was the comparison to Calvinism.

    2 people found this helpful

  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Another brave undertaking by an insightful sociologist who somehow never lost her ability to write convincingly and engagingly in grad school. Don’t bother trying to persuade others to read this book, though—they’ll ask you to repeat the title and assume you are trying to make them unhappy. In fact, Ehrenrich is arguing for empiricism, a dose of reality in a world in which many believe that wealth can be got by simply thinking about how you deserve it. News flash to the idiot mob: the world is a mix of good and bad news and you aren’t going to be very effective at your job or in your life if you ignore contrary evidence and ostracize individual thought. If you manage to magically manifest some dollars for yourself, buy this book.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    An excellent subject but the delivery was repetitive; I could have stopped reading after the first couple chapters and come away with what I did after finishing the book.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    For a book with such a "negative" title and purporting to contain many hard truths, this was a surprisingly funny, entertaining read! Ehrenreich has put together a compelling selection of essays, particularly the opening chapter with its personal anecdotes of her time in treatment for breast cancer and experiences with positive thinking induced blame for her own illness. I got a bit bogged down on the last couple of chapters as they got somewhat samey/repetative towards the end (particularly "Motivating business and the business of motivation" and "Positive psychology: the science of happiness"), but I thought it ended on a strong note (making sure not to promote pessimism or unrealistic negativity in the place of optimism, but rather critical thinking and realism) and would say that for anyone feeling contrary about "The Secret" and its ilk this is worthwhile!

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Ehrenreich is always fun to read. Here she takes on various forms of popular psychology grouped under "positive thinking." Good, brutal fun.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Ehrenreich provides an antidote to everyone who believes that success is solely a result of attitude. From reading about people whose livelihoods were discarded during the Great Recession, it seems that many were demoralized by the popular perception that if only they had believed in themselves and worked harder, they could have avoided unemployment and financial ruin. The idea that individuals are solely responsible for the outcome of their lives atomizes us; it discourages us from working together to make broader social changes. I'm grateful that Ehrenreich can see these connections, from the obvious example of Oprah Winfrey espousing "The Secret" to Ehrenreich's own treatment for breast cancer, when she is shouted down by an online chorus after posting her honest feelings of anger and fear about her diagnosis.The one element that I felt the book was lacking was more interviews with people who promote positive thinking -- or those who once believed it and have become disenchanted. Ehrenreich attends a speaker's conference and a megachurch, and has insightful observations, but I would have loved to hear from more of the attendees.

    2 people found this helpful

  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I have never won the lottery. And clearly, this is because I have never really wanted to win the lottery. And when my friend got cancer, it was because she wanted it, and really, it is a gift, no?
    Barbara Ehrenreich goes on to describe the history of positive thinking, it's dangerous likeness to corporate America and "religious" cults, reveals that these three things are not at all separate from each other.
    As a cancer biologist, I must say I like the first chapter, as Ehrenreich describes the cultish attachment to positive thinking among cancer patients and "survivors" and the health industry. I also highly enjoyed the chapters on Christian positive thinking (mega churches...wow! really! they bring in that much money!) and of course, positive psychology.
    In the end, my only complaint would be that Ehrenreich was too kind to some of the people who abuse the masses for their own profit and wealth (though perhaps the masses deserve to be exploited, if we are so dumb and ignorant). Perhaps Ehrenreich managed to be more unbiased than I am, and that's a good thing.
    I now understand why and how being a realist started to be equal to "being negative" or "having a negative attitude." If I could just change my negative attitude and focus my mind to think real hard of the NY lottery... Wait, I won!!!! (no "I'm your long lost cousin, please give me some money" requests, please!)
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Positive thinking, far from being a support for happy and healthy life, is a delusional way of thinking. Journalist and biology Ph.D. Barbara Ehrenreich first came to this conclusion while fighting the deluge of joy and positivity among her fellow breast cancer patients. Her book examines the history of positive thinking as a doctrine of ever-similing America and its current manifestations in the corporate world, megachurches, positive psychology, and the 2008 financial meltdown.The good parts of her book: Ehrenreich's long career as a journalist and past career as a scientist came together in this book. She is best known for her experience living poverty in [Nickled and Dimed], and she resurrects that when writing about how the motivational speaker market indirectly shames the poor and unemployed for simply not trying hard enough. Her background as a scientist strengthens her critique of positive psychology as a science and a pseudoscience.I too feel some of her pain. I disdain self-help books and self-proclaimed gurus . So much of it seems like narcissism and magical thinking. Take [The Secret], which flew off the shelves yet was not worth the paper it was printed on. It seems like an easy target for ridicule, but if so, why did millions of Americans buy this book? Same goes for the bestsellers of plastic-smiled Joel Osteen. Ehrenreich does not mention this, but I suspect much of the mantra of positive thinking comes from a desire to avoid confronting the suffering of oneself or others. If a friend is feeling down, don't listen to their problems: just tell them to cheer up! Positive thinking can be quite hardass.Despite this points, Ehrenreich's book fails to deliver. It was hard to draw the line between her anger and lucid logic. Joel Osteen is an easy target, but her attacks on Martin Seligman and positive psychology seemed too ad hominem and not well-balanced. My mom pointed out to me that if she were to get breast cancer, she would not want to wallow in negativity and anger as Ehrenreich seems to want to do. She (the author) has fallen into the trap of overstating her good points, so much that they become bad points.This is too bad. Perhaps Ehrenreich should have written a book about "delusional thinking" rather than "positive thinking." Delusions of grandeur and perfection are the shadow, the evil twin, of positive thinking. These delusions were certainly one of the fuels of the 2008 meltdown. These delusions turn into the kind of positive thinking dogma and ideology - shun the nonbeliever! - that so frustrates this author. But these are not positive thinking per se. Ehrenreich's book would have been stronger had she made this point.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    For all the rah-rah, be happy, be positive, let me show you the way for $29.95 books out there a refreshing look at reality. And that is what Barbara Ehrenreich offers with this book.Starting from her own battle with cancer which she managed to defeat without the help of a pink ribbon. She takes us through a number of scenarios in life where the positive thinking drum beaters endeavor to show us the way. Her message boils down to nothing inherently wrong with the positives, but they can easily be used in a coercive manner with which those who do not step in line, are stepped on.She concludes with the warning the eternal pessimists can be just as bad. It is up to us to look through both sides and strike a balance. Doing and accepting in life is an alternative to get through in one piece.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I read this after reading Martin Seligman's Flourish because I wanted to hear from someone on the other end of the spectrum. Seligman thinks that the common treatment for depression, antidepressants with a dose of analytical therapy for why things go wrong, should be replaced with positive psychology. He concentrates on "perma" that is positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning and accomplishment.

    Ehrenreich's book takes on Seligman the man more than his thesis and so is weak in that area. But her writing on the pink ribbon movement surrounding breast cancer is finely observed and poignant since she herself is a breast cancer survivor. What she exposes is an infantilizing of women's needs. Must we be positive in the face of suffering? Why can't we suffer with dignity and not be called failures? When the US was warned that the terrorists were ready to attack in early 2001, Bush's optimism blinded him to the reality that was to come.

    I respect Ehrenreich, and Seligman, but see the need for both skepticism and optimism. It is too simple to pick one over the other.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    The only thing left for America to manufacture is happiness.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Quite honestly how upbeat of a review do you expect from a book that debunks positive thinking? Many points well taken with her usual engaging style, but don't read it all at once or it may be too depressing!
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Incisive and amusing, this book takes on the mania for positive thinking- and the dark side of same. Ehrenreich throws science, that proverbial bucket of icy water, over any number of claims regarding the efficacy of visualizing the life one wishes for. I laughed repeatedly at the snarky asides. There's nothing particularly revelatory here- it's a pop take on a pop phenomenon, and as such, well worth a read. Or in my case, a listen.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    If the day ever comes that I have to go out and get a real job I will go skating on the Seaway and seek the thin ice.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    A fascinating study in positive psychology and the Doctrine of Double Effect. Should be required reading for anyone who owns a self-help book.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    There's a certain element of Preaching to the Choir here--the people who pick this book up aren't likely to be the ones who believe that a smile can beat cancer and a motivational speaker is all that's standing between you and exceptional job performance.

    But it's nice to have validation that a positive attitude isn't enough, and that yes, sometimes things do, objectively, suck, and it's okay to say that. Saying differently is delusional at best. (To quote The Princess Bride, "Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.")

    Recommended for all the grumpy misanthropes in my life. I love you guys.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I could not get into this one. Maybe I'll try again some other time.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This was fascinating. From the intensely personal opening, talking about breast cancer and the culture of mandatory optimism that surrounds it, to the fascinating historical examination of motivational speaking (including its roots in early-twentieth-century Spiritualism) and a blistering condemnation of the thinking behind the banking collapse, Ehrenreich held my interest. It is, perhaps appropriately, something of an angry book - it's hard to condemn wide-eyed optimism without appearing to be a bit of a grouch. This suits me fine. Having read far too many business-oriented motivational books as a child (they're what Dad would leave on the toilet tank) it was nice to hear from the other side in blunt terms.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    American culture is saturated in a surreal dedication to being upbeat. Nearly every adviser from your mother to boss will tell you to "think positive". But is this really good advice? Ehrenreich examines the consequences of blind positivity in a number of situations. Her conclusion? Well, it's not exactly positive. It's a very interesting book, and a good dose of realism. My only detraction is the author seems a little embittered, but that might just have been the delivery from the audio book narrator.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    After being diagnosed with breast cancer, and flunking out of various support groups for failing to see it as a gift, Ehrenreich sets out to investigate the notion of positive thinking and it’s effects on American society. She looks at a view of illness where the disease is primarily there to learn from – and where it’s probably your own fault if you don’t get well. She looks at religion where, as a loooong reaction to puritanism, a version of God as a wish-granting genie is handing ut success to those who pray hard enough. She looks at psychology which is only interested in removing symptoms. She looks at a one-sided love affiar with particle physics, which spawns ”scientific” methods like ”The secret”. She attends tons of depressing self-help-esteem-boosting-get-rich-quick seminars. And, perhaps most unsettling, she looks at a management philosophy which focuses on gut feeling and motivation rather than actual skills, driving American economy towards collapse.Ehrenreich is tart, unflinchingly bitter and often funny. Many head-shakes and rolling eyes occur at the astonishing examples she presents. She’s also, I think, refreshingly open about her own position. I might feel she’s underplaying the benefits (on a much smaller scale) of a positive outlook, but her outspoken grumpyness is rather refreshing. In the end though, I feel perhaps the book is a little too repetitive. The points it makes are a bit too few. And dspite clocking in on just over 200 pages, it feels a little too long. Still, a recommended read, potentially eye opening.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    How did we become so relentlessly, blindly, positive? Surely we're not all naturally optimists. In this book Ehrenreich looks at how positive thinking has taken over America, and more importantly, shines a bright light on the downside of such blind optimism. Whether it be the medical establishment, business, or the economy, unfounded optimism has a hidden dark side that is ably explored in this book. Well written and fascinating, yet unsettling.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I enjoyed this book as it takes issue with concept of positive thinking mantra. There is nothing wrong, in my opinion, about having a positive attitude just as long as you do not expect an entitlement to the good life. As regards to the economic downturn starting in 2007-2008, there is a lot more at play here than overly optimistic people leading us to the financial brink. Pure greed and entitlement come to mind.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Positive thinking, and the exhortation to conform to it, permeates our society. I can't count the number of times I was told to "be positive" and "think good things" and "picture the job you're going to have" during my stint of unemployment. And okay, maybe not dwelling in depression isn't a good idea (and the author states this, too), but sometimes you really need to focus on the problem instead of being all pie in the sky.The author does a great job of exploring different things that are fueling the positive thinking glut, from religion to corporate America, and shares her own experience with positive thinking after being diagnosed with breast cancer. She also details how positive thinking, in many cases, is actually harmful to individuals and society. It's a great book for those of us who are sick and tired of being chided, nagged, and generally hit over the head with a positive thinking stick.

Book preview

Bright-sided - Barbara Ehrenreich

Introduction

Americans are a positive people. This is our reputation as well as our self-image. We smile a lot and are often baffled when people from other cultures do not return the favor. In the well-worn stereotype, we are upbeat, cheerful, optimistic, and shallow, while foreigners are likely to be subtle, world-weary, and possibly decadent. American expatriate writers like Henry James and James Baldwin wrestled with and occasionally reinforced this stereotype, which I once encountered in the 1980s in the form of a remark by Soviet émigré poet Joseph Brodsky to the effect that the problem with Americans is that they have never known suffering. (Apparently he didn’t know who had invented the blues.) Whether we Americans see it as an embarrassment or a point of pride, being positive—in affect, in mood, in outlook—seems to be engrained in our national character.

Who would be churlish or disaffected enough to challenge these happy features of the American personality? Take the business of positive affect, which refers to the mood we display to others through our smiles, our greetings, our professions of confidence and optimism. Scientists have found that the mere act of smiling can generate positive feelings within us, at least if the smile is not forced. In addition, good feelings, as expressed through our words and smiles, seem to be contagious: Smile and the world smiles with you. Surely the world would be a better, happier place if we all greeted one another warmly and stopped to coax smiles from babies—if only through the well-known social psychological mechanism of mood contagion. Recent studies show that happy feelings flit easily through social networks, so that one person’s good fortune can brighten the day even for only distantly connected others.¹

Furthermore, psychologists today agree that positive feelings like gratitude, contentment, and self-confidence can actually lengthen our lives and improve our health. Some of these claims are exaggerated, as we shall see, though positive feelings hardly need to be justified, like exercise or vitamin supplements, as part of a healthy lifestyle. People who report having positive feelings are more likely to participate in a rich social life, and vice versa, and social connectedness turns out to be an important defense against depression, which is a known risk factor for many physical illnesses. At the risk of redundancy or even tautology, we can say that on many levels, individual and social, it is good to be positive, certainly better than being withdrawn, aggrieved, or chronically sad.

So I take it as a sign of progress that, in just the last decade or so, economists have begun to show an interest in using happiness rather than just the gross national product as a measure of an economy’s success. Happiness is, of course, a slippery thing to measure or define. Philosophers have debated what it is for centuries, and even if we were to define it simply as a greater frequency of positive feelings than negative ones, when we ask people if they are happy we are asking them to arrive at some sort of average over many moods and moments. Maybe I was upset earlier in the day but then was cheered up by a bit of good news, so what am I really? In one well-known psychological experiment, subjects were asked to answer a questionnaire on life satisfaction—but only after they had performed the apparently irrelevant task of photocopying a sheet of paper for the experimenter. For a randomly chosen half of the subjects, a dime had been left for them to find on the copy machine. As two economists summarize the results, Reported satisfaction with life was raised substantially by the discovery of the coin on the copy machine—clearly not an income effect.²

In addition to the problems of measurement, there are cultural differences in how happiness is regarded and whether it is even seen as a virtue. Some cultures, like our own, value the positive affect that seems to signal internal happiness; others are more impressed by seriousness, self-sacrifice, or a quiet willingness to cooperate. However hard to pin down, though, happiness is somehow a more pertinent metric for well-being, from a humanistic perspective, than the buzz of transactions that constitute the GDP.

Surprisingly, when psychologists undertake to measure the relative happiness of nations, they routinely find that Americans are not, even in prosperous times and despite our vaunted positivity, very happy at all. A recent meta-analysis of over a hundred studies of self-reported happiness worldwide found Americans ranking only twenty-third, surpassed by the Dutch, the Danes, the Malaysians, the Bahamians, the Austrians, and even the supposedly dour Finns.³ In another potential sign of relative distress, Americans account for two-thirds of the global market for antidepressants, which happen also to be the most commonly prescribed drugs in the United States. To my knowledge, no one knows how antidepressant use affects people’s responses to happiness surveys: do respondents report being happy because the drugs make them feel happy or do they report being unhappy because they know they are dependent on drugs to make them feel better? Without our heavy use of antidepressants, Americans would likely rank far lower in the happiness rankings than we currently do.

When economists attempt to rank nations more objectively in terms of well-being, taking into account such factors as health, environmental sustainability, and the possibility of upward mobility, the United States does even more poorly than it does when only the subjective state of happiness is measured. The Happy Planet Index, to give just one example, locates us at 150th among the world’s nations.

How can we be so surpassingly positive in self-image and stereotype without being the world’s happiest and best-off people? The answer, I think, is that positivity is not so much our condition or our mood as it is part of our ideology—the way we explain the world and think we ought to function within it. That ideology is positive thinking, by which we usually mean two things. One is the generic content of positive thinking—that is, the positive thought itself—which can be summarized as: Things are pretty good right now, at least if you are willing to see silver linings, make lemonade out of lemons, etc., and things are going to get a whole lot better. This is optimism, and it is not the same as hope. Hope is an emotion, a yearning, the experience of which is not entirely within our control. Optimism is a cognitive stance, a conscious expectation, which presumably anyone can develop through practice.

The second thing we mean by positive thinking is this practice, or discipline, of trying to think in a positive way. There is, we are told, a practical reason for undertaking this effort: positive thinking supposedly not only makes us feel optimistic but actually makes happy outcomes more likely. If you expect things to get better, they will. How can the mere process of thinking do this? In the rational explanation that many psychologists would offer today, optimism improves health, personal efficacy, confidence, and resilience, making it easier for us to accomplish our goals. A far less rational theory also runs rampant in American ideology—the idea that our thoughts can, in some mysterious way, directly affect the physical world. Negative thoughts somehow produce negative outcomes, while positive thoughts realize themselves in the form of health, prosperity, and success. For both rational and mystical reasons, then, the effort of positive thinking is said to be well worth our time and attention, whether this means reading the relevant books, attending seminars and speeches that offer the appropriate mental training, or just doing the solitary work of concentration on desired outcomes—a better job, an attractive mate, world peace.

There is an anxiety, as you can see, right here in the heart of American positive thinking. If the generic positive thought is correct and things are really getting better, if the arc of the universe tends toward happiness and abundance, then why bother with the mental effort of positive thinking? Obviously, because we do not fully believe that things will get better on their own. The practice of positive thinking is an effort to pump up this belief in the face of much contradictory evidence. Those who set themselves up as instructors in the discipline of positive thinking—coaches, preachers, and gurus of various sorts—have described this effort with terms like self-hypnosis, mind control, and thought control. In other words, it requires deliberate self-deception, including a constant effort to repress or block out unpleasant possibilities and negative thoughts. The truly self-confident, or those who have in some way made their peace with the world and their destiny within it, do not need to expend effort censoring or otherwise controlling their thoughts. Positive thinking may be a quintessentially American activity, associated in our minds with both individual and national success, but it is driven by a terrible insecurity.

Americans did not start out as positive thinkers—at least the promotion of unwarranted optimism and methods to achieve it did not really find articulation and organized form until several decades after the founding of the republic. In the Declaration of Independence, the founding fathers pledged to one another our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor. They knew that they had no certainty of winning a war for independence and that they were taking a mortal risk. Just the act of signing the declaration made them all traitors to the crown, and treason was a crime punishable by execution. Many of them did go on to lose their lives, loved ones, and fortunes in the war. The point is, they fought anyway. There is a vast difference between positive thinking and existential courage.

Systematic positive thinking began, in the nineteenth century, among a diverse and fascinating collection of philosophers, mystics, lay healers, and middle-class women. By the twentieth century, though, it had gone mainstream, gaining purchase within such powerful belief systems as nationalism and also doing its best to make itself indispensable to capitalism. We don’t usually talk about American nationalism, but it is a mark of how deep it runs that we apply the word nationalism to Serbs, Russians, and others, while believing ourselves to possess a uniquely superior version called patriotism. A central tenet of American nationalism has been the belief that the United States is the greatest nation on earth—more dynamic, democratic, and prosperous than any other nation, as well as technologically superior. Major religious leaders, especially on the Christian right, buttress this conceit with the notion that Americans are God’s chosen people and that America is the designated leader of the world—an idea that seemed to find vivid reinforcement in the fall of Communism and our emergence as the world’s lone superpower. That acute British observer Godfrey Hodgson has written that the American sense of exceptionalism, which once was idealistic and generous, if somewhat solipsistic, has become harder, more hubristic. Paul Krugman responded to the prevailing smugness in a 1998 essay entitled American the Boastful, warning that if pride goeth before a fall, the United States has one heck of a come-uppance in store.

But of course it takes the effort of positive thinking to imagine that America is the best or the greatest. Militarily, yes, we are the mightiest nation on earth. But on many other fronts, the American score is dismal, and was dismal even before the economic downturn that began in 2007. Our children routinely turn out to be more ignorant of basic subjects like math and geography than their counterparts in other industrialized nations. They are also more likely to die in infancy or grow up in poverty. Almost everyone acknowledges that our health care system is broken and our physical infrastructure crumbling. We have lost so much of our edge in science and technology that American companies have even begun to outsource their research and development efforts. Worse, some of the measures by which we do lead the world should inspire embarrassment rather than pride: We have the highest percentage of our population incarcerated, and the greatest level of inequality in wealth and income. We are plagued by gun violence and racked by personal debt.

While positive thinking has reinforced and found reinforcement in American national pride, it has also entered into a kind of symbiotic relationship with American capitalism. There is no natural, innate affinity between capitalism and positive thinking. In fact, one of the classics of sociology, Max Weber’s Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, makes a still impressive case for capitalism’s roots in the grim and punitive outlook of Calvinist Protestantism, which required people to defer gratification and resist all pleasurable temptations in favor of hard work and the accumulation of wealth.

But if early capitalism was inhospitable to positive thinking, late capitalism, or consumer capitalism, is far more congenial, depending as it does on the individual’s hunger for more and the firm’s imperative of growth. The consumer culture encourages individuals to want more—cars, larger homes, television sets, cell phones, gadgets of all kinds—and positive thinking is ready at hand to tell them they deserve more and can have it if they really want it and are willing to make the effort to get it. Meanwhile, in a competitive business world, the companies that manufacture these goods and provide the paychecks that purchase them have no alternative but to grow. If you don’t steadily increase market share and profits, you risk being driven out of business or swallowed by a larger enterprise. Perpetual growth, whether of a particular company or an entire economy, is of course an absurdity, but positive thinking makes it seem possible, if not ordained.

In addition, positive thinking has made itself useful as an apology for the crueler aspects of the market economy. If optimism is the key to material success, and if you can achieve an optimistic outlook through the discipline of positive thinking, then there is no excuse for failure. The flip side of positivity is thus a harsh insistence on personal responsibility: if your business fails or your job is eliminated, it must because you didn’t try hard enough, didn’t believe firmly enough in the inevitability of your success. As the economy has brought more layoffs and financial turbulence to the middle class, the promoters of positive thinking have increasingly emphasized this negative judgment: to be disappointed, resentful, or downcast is to be a victim and a whiner.

But positive thinking is not only a water carrier for the business world, excusing its excesses and masking its follies. The promotion of positive thinking has become a minor industry in its own right, producing an endless flow of books, DVDs, and other products; providing employment for tens of thousands of life coaches, executive coaches, and motivational speakers, as well as for the growing cadre of professional psychologists who seek to train them. No doubt the growing financial insecurity of the middle class contributes to the demand for these products and services, but I hesitate to attribute the commercial success of positive thinking to any particular economic trend or twist of the business cycle. America has historically offered space for all sorts of sects, cults, faith healers, and purveyors of snake oil, and those that are profitable, like positive thinking, tend to flourish.

At the turn of the twenty-first century, American optimism seemed to reach a manic crescendo. In his final State of Union address in 2000, Bill Clinton struck a triumphal note, proclaiming that never before has our nation enjoyed, at once, so much prosperity and social progress with so little internal crisis and so few external threats. But compared with his successor, Clinton seemed almost morose. George W. Bush had been a cheerleader in prep school, and cheerleading—a distinctly American innovation—could be considered the athletically inclined ancestor of so much of the coaching and motivating that has gone into the propagation of positive thinking. He took the presidency as an opportunity to continue in that line of work, defining his job as that of inspiring confidence, dispelling doubts, and pumping up the national spirit of self-congratulation. If he repeatedly laid claim to a single adjective, it was optimistic. On the occasion of his sixtieth birthday, he told reporters he was optimistic about a variety of foreign policy challenges, offering as an overview, I’m optimistic that all problems will be solved. Nor did he brook any doubts or hesitations among his close advisers. According to Bob Woodward, Condoleezza Rice failed to express some of her worries because, she said, the president almost demanded optimism. He didn’t like pessimism, hand-wringing or doubt.

Then things began to go wrong, which is not in itself unusual but was a possibility excluded by America’s official belief that things are good and getting better. There was the dot-com bust that began a few months after Clinton’s declaration of unprecedented prosperity in his final State of the Union address, then the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001. Furthermore, things began to go wrong in a way that suggested that positive thinking might not guarantee success after all, that it might in fact dim our ability to fend off real threats. In her remarkable book, Never Saw It Coming: Cultural Challenges to Envisioning the Worst, sociologist Karen Cerulo recounts a number of ways that the habit of positive thinking, or what she calls optimistic bias, undermined preparedness and invited disaster. She quotes Newsweek reporters Michael Hirsch and Michael Isikoff, for example, in their conclusion that a whole summer of missed clues, taken together, seemed to presage the terrible September of 2001.⁷ There had already been a terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in 1993; there were ample warnings, in the summer of 2001, about a possible attack by airplane, and flight schools reported suspicious students like the one who wanted to learn how to fly a plane but didn’t care about landing and takeoff. The fact that no one—the FBI, the INS, Bush, or Rice—heeded these disturbing cues was later attributed to a failure of imagination. But actually there was plenty of imagination at work—imagining an invulnerable nation and an ever-booming economy—there was simply no ability or inclination to imagine the

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