Bright-sided: How Positive Thinking Is Undermining America - Book on Psychology & American Culture - Perfect for Self-Help Readers & Social Critics

Ah.. at last... a member of my tribe!What's wrong with being sad and depressed when sick and suffering; horrified by the bombing of innocents; furious with inequality, racism, misogyny, ageism; outraged by corporate malfeasance and immunity? A little pessimism and skepticism is damn useful.I suspect I'm in the minority when I say I don't believe having a positive, cheerful outlook will cure cancer. In fact, I don't think cancer, or any other illness, gives a fart if I'm chipper, whereas if I take it seriously and realistically, rather than being determinedly, insistently, optimistic as to the outcome, then although I may be bloody miserable, at least I'll be doing whatever it takes to improve my health. Oprah would probably disagree. She, and so many others in the Positive Thinking camp, would probably tell me I had brought the damn disease on myself due to negative thinking and that my negative thinking would be the death of me, literally.Similarly, I believe no amount of 'visualizing' will 'manifest' my material desires. In other words, I won't get a Pulitzer by visualizing myself accepting it. I think the book THE SECRET is a dangerous fraud, although not a new one. Its bulls*** has been around since before Norman Vincent Peale.And so on.So, imagine my joy in reading a book, a well-researched, thoughtful one at that, which not only agrees with me (don't we all love being agreed with!), but one that also provides a history of where this idiotic belief system came from in the first place. And where did it come from? Ehrenreich tells us it comes from "New Thought" the 19th c. reaction to the more dour and punitive practices of Calvinism, which over time mutated into something just as useless and damaging. I didn't know that, but it makes perfect sense. These things are never new, they just slink around for years, shapeshifting as they go.When she turns her gaze to the medical community, Ehrenreich knows what's she's talking about, having experienced cancer herself, and damn near choked to death on all the pink ribboned positivity everyone insisted she have, and the marketing of products like pink teddy bears and pink lipstick and pink everything that, she believes, serve more to infantilize women than empower them. Wouldn't you, she asks, rather have a skeptical, even pessimistic doctor who was going to explore ever treatment possible, do every test possible, rather than the positive-thinker who says, "oh, it's probably just a shadow on the x-ray. Meditate a bit. That'll do the trick."She looks at the motivational gurus hawking their dubious wares; the corporations bullying their employees into faux positivity, to the detriment of both the employees and the bottom line; and the quacks claiming cheerfulness can improve the immune system and, as I said above, cure disease (research on the subject is laughably feeble and discounted). She takes us inside the mega-churches of abundance -- Joel Ornsteen and the ilk -- and doesn't hesitate to show us the little man behind the bedazzled curtain. She points a damning finger at how such 'Christian' churches are entirely concerned with materialism, in utter contradiction to the teachings of Christ. It reads like some bizarre heretical cult.One of the most important sections for me had to do with the economic consequences of positive thinking, and how it contributed to the collapse of the Ponzi scheme the mortgage industry had become and the resultant economic meltdown. An eye-opener and must read.Reading this wonderful book reminded me -- I met a man some years ago, a plumber and victim of the economic catastrophe, whose house was in foreclosure. He told me he wasn't worried because he was putting out great energy into the world and would soon -- he had no doubt -- be raking in cash as a motivational speaker to corporate executives. I suggested no amount of positive thinking would pay his back mortgage, and shouldn't he start working as a plumber again, a field in which he could make pretty good money, and renegotiate with his bank? He wouldn't be dissuaded and insisted he was plugged into the abundance of the universe. Well, okay, then. Of course he lost his house and, I'm sad to say, disappeared on down the road where he was sure he would find his pot of gold waiting.The positive thinking camp would say he simply wasn't visualizing properly, that some wee dark pocket of negativity was holding him back from his best life. Ehrenreich would suggest his problem was the unreality inherent in ruthless optimism, because it kept his delusions intact and chasing after a sparkly carrot that not only would he never catch, but doesn't exist.To be clear, Ehrenreich isn't extolling depressive, morbid crankiness and pessimism, just a dose of reality. Such reality might just help you get out of town before the pitchfork-waving mob arrives and get into the cellar before the tornado blows your roof off.