One should always strive to be happy, search for the greatest outlook on life and force a smile when the going gets tough. This is the putative ideal that Americans have been agreeing on for the past 100 years, says Barbara Ehrenreich in her recent book, "Bright-sided." So much so, she claims, that this axiom has pervaded American commerce, psychology studies, the medical field and religion. Ehrenreich, who was inspired to write this book after being diagnosed with breast cancer, believes that this constant focus on the positive has been the impetus behind our country's disillusionment and subsequent financial meltdown. She even goes as far as beginning her book with the statement: "To complainers everywhere: Turn up the volume!" If this curt sentence sounds completely backwards to you, read on.
It was astute for Ehrenreich, who holds a Ph.D. in cell biology, to begin her book with a description of her battle with cancer, making it clear that she has been subjected to a very traumatic experience where positive thinking is usually viewed as a key component to survival. Without this information, the reader might have written her off as a pessimist, or one who has no understanding of the importance of optimism while facing death. Ehrenreich, however, clarifies her opinion on the matter while describing a little stuffed animal, a "cancer bear," that, to her, represents anything but the realities of cancer: "Let me be hacked to death by a mad man ... anything but suffocation by the pink sticky sentiment embodied in that bear." She goes on to describe cancer survival, or "Cancerland," as purely dependent on medical innovation and technology and eschews some cancer survival paraphernalia as nothing but moneymaking schemes created by companies that take advantage of the ill.
Ehrenreich writes like an educated journalist, and she does a lot of research to support her ideas. She traces the positive thinking ideal back to a reaction against the rigidity of Calvinism that was popular in the late 17th century. She then follows it through time, mapping out the New Thought movement where positive nostrums were believed to heal the body: "Illness was a disturbance in an otherwise perfect Mind and could be cured through Mind alone." She then meanders through its adoption by the psychology field and the religious sector, "not because it is biblically 'true' or supported by scripture but because it produces satisfied 'customers.'"
At the heart of her argument is the economy's financial meltdown, which she attributes to a starting point in the 1980s, when positive thinking ballooned into a recipe for motivation that caught on like a contagion in the world of commerce: "Canned motivation had ceased to be a sideshow to the main drama of the corporate world and begun to penetrate to the heart of American business." Due to corporate downsizing, managers were forced to motivate their employees with upbeat speakers, prizes and whatever else pushed them to work harder and stay positive. Concurrently, top CEOs were getting rid of any person in a company who had a negative outlook, and adhering to a message that was called the "Law of Attraction," which purports that one can make things happen by simply thinking them into reality.
Did those same positive CEOs make the housing market bubble a reality, even though there was data that gave convincing evidence against it? I won't give you any more details on how Ehrenreich tries to persuade the reader that positive thinking brought about our financial tumble. But she does not belie her disdain for the blind optimism that has infiltrated American culture. Whether or not you believe in what she writes, she develops a convincing argument and that alone is worth reading. Personally, I am convinced that positive thinking has become a commercialized success with no great outcome, other than a few new fortunes garnered by supposedly happy people. So, the next time you hear Oprah touting the effective qualities of putting a smile on your face in the face of failure, pick up this book and educate yourself about Ehrenreich's cult of critical thinking instead.