I dont follow the news or politics because it upsets me. Ever heard that one? #positivity To add to this Psychology Today article, it is very enlightening to read Barbara Ehrenreichs book; Smile or Die: How Positive Thinking Fooled America and the World. According to Ehrenreich, trying to stay continually positive by avoiding negative realities such as politics and the news. This is one of the reasons why so many in society are so ill informed. We have been indoctrinated with the idea that we must stay continually positive and only focus on positive things. Anything that upsets us or causes feelings of anxiety must be avoided. We cant deal with pressing unpleasant issues in our personal lives or in our society if we choose to ignore them. Problems often dont go away, just get worse. It should come as no surprise to find that the book, The Power of Positive Thinking was written by a social engineering Reformist Religious Right Christian Minister en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Vincent_Peale The idea behind the book being, dont worry your little heads about what the powers- that-be are up to, stay positive. Be good little consumers, just smile and keep shopping. Like 60% of the advertising industry Peale was a physiologist and has been accused of group/social hypnosis. Here is an excellent review of Ehrenreichs book; The Weekend Australian Edition 5 - All-round Review SAT 23 JAN 2010, Page 022 THE POLLYANNA INDUSTRY By Miriam Cosic Smile or Die: How Positive Thinking Fooled America & the World By Barbara Ehrenreich PESSIMISTS will say that they are the realists, and theres a lot to be said for people who are experienced, cynical or timorous enough to cover all eventualities in advance. We need those people as much as ever in the face of global terror, climate change and other 21st-century challenges. Barbara Ehrenreichs new book, Smile or Die: How Positive Thinking Fooled America & The World, is salutary reading for those who would rather ignore the warnings and keep on shopping. The author of several exposes of American society, including Bait and Switch: the Futile Pursuit of the Corporate Dream and Nickel and Dimed: Undercover in Low-Wage USA, Ehrenreich has turned her attention to her countrymens pollyannaish view of the world. The view that has carried them -- and us -- into serial world-rescuing military adventures during the past 40 years and into the delusional and criminal financial fairyland that has brought the whole international economic order to its knees. Ehrenreich traces its evolution from national personality quirk to reified product to quantifiable scholarly theory. ``Americans are `positive people, she begins. ``This is our reputation as well as our self-image . . . In the well-worn stereotypes, we are upbeat, cheerful, optimistic, and shallow, while foreigners are likely to be subtle, world-weary, and possibly decadent. A picture of the idealistic Alden Pyle, scraping human gore off his nice clean shoes in the bicycle-bomb chapter of Graham Greenes The Quiet American, springs to mind. Ehrenreich runs through all the good reasons for cultivating positive emotions: that they enhance happiness, health, longevity and -- this being America -- business as well. And then she sounds the caution: where is the material evidence for burgeoning happiness theory? Are we sure the happiness movement isnt just another runaway success of a business scam? How does the ideology of it reinforce the class structure Americans are not supposed to have? And thats not to get her started on the negative flipside of positive psychology: the guilt-inducing insistence on personal responsibility for every kind of misfortune, from business reversal and job loss, to a failure to vanquish cancer. Ehrenreichs first case study is her own experience of breast cancer and the fury evoked in her by relentlessly cheerful pink-ribbon wielders who rallied around. She describes the language: the warrior metaphors of ``fighting the ``battle with cancer, the triumphant recovery-movement celebration of ``survivors. No such incantatory words are applied to the more than 40,000 American women who lose the war each year. And it gets worse: ``Some women have reported being expelled from their support groups when their cancers metastasised and it became clear they would never graduate to the rank of `survivor, she writes. She traces the roots of American optimism to the Calvinism that white settlers brought to the New World as they fled religious wars in Europe. Ehrenreich describes the strange dance that developed between the repressive and punitive foundational theory of predestination -- Americans came to loom large among the presumptive elect -- and the cult of personal power that dominates today. The link is self-discipline, especially in the form of work. Workaholism, we might call it. By the end of the 20th century, that had developed into one of the twin pillars of the evangelical Right: not only does God want you to spread a particular brand of muscular Christianity, armed if necessary, across the globe, but God wants you to be rich! The sober writings of ministers and moral philosophers were, by then, eclipsed by handy paperback books by motivational gurus. Norman Vincent Peale, who had a bestseller on his hands in 1952 with The Power of Positive Thinking, was a Reformed Church minister. His book spawned a whole industry based on personal salesmanship, and helped turn US society (and those that emulate it) towards the solipsistic narcissism of which influential critics such as historian Christopher Lasch came to despair. Its a lucrative business. ``Positive thinking is not only a water-carrier for the business world, excusing the excesses and masking its follies, Ehrenreich writes. ``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 professional cadre of psychologists who seek to train them. She reserves her most biting criticism for Martin Seligman, the father of positive psychology. In a scant decade, he has become widely admired, his advice modishly followed by individuals and corporations, and his professional services expensively retained. In Ehrenreichs view, Seligman deodorised the smell of hucksterism that hung about the motivational business by dignifying it with first an academic, and then a medical, justification. Where, she asks, is the proof that his methods work? The figures are inconclusive, the arguments unpersuasive. She is scathing about the pseudo-algebraic formulae Seligman invented to quantify his findings and describes in alarmingly funny terms an interview she conducted with him. Ehrenreich is an entertaining writer and as her previous books have shown (she went undercover to research the world of low-paid work in Nickel and Dimed) an indefatigable researcher. Her advocacy for return to a saner, more discriminating world is a timely corrective to the spin that enfolds us. ``A vigilant realism does not foreclose the pursuit of happiness; in fact, it makes it possible, she writes. ``How can we expect to improve our situation without addressing the circumstances we find ourselves in? Positive thinking seeks to convince us that such external factors are incidental compared with ones internal state or attitude or mood. The critique runs deep. In her conclusion, Ehrenreich examines the special pleading involved in these upbeat American modes of self-expression. ``Soviet-style communism, which we do not usually think of as cheerful sort of arrangement, exemplified the use of positive thinking as a means of social control, she writes. When communism fell, however, the people who had lived under it embraced ``the fresh breeze of positivity from the West. The Cold War had been cast in such Manichean terms, it was difficult for people to differentiate between substance and style. ``The big advantage of the American approach to positive thinking has been that people can be counted on to impose it on themselves, she writes. ``Stalinist regimes used the state apparatus -- schools, secret police -- to enforce optimism; capitalist democracies leave this job to the market. Miriam Cosic is literary editor of The Australian. Caption: TOM JELLETT Illus: Artwork IllusBy: TOM JELLETT Column: Books Section: REVIEW Type: Book Review If anyone ever accuses you of being negative because you want to talk about serious things like politics, religion or war, tell them that it is not negativity, but rather healthy skepticism and what is more, it is your duty as a citizen to practice dissent and scrutinise Government. https://psychologytoday/articles/201501/beyond-happiness-the-upside-feeling-down
Posted on: Tue, 27 Jan 2015 05:54:05 +0000