JREF Swift Blog

Bright-Sided

In Barbara Erhenreich's new book, Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking has Undermined America, Ehrenreich begins by recounting her own recent experiences with breast cancer and the oddities she encountered within the cancer-survivor positive thinking movement, which Erhenreich refers to as the “Pink Ribbon Culture.” It's hard to say whether it's sad or merely pathetic that when she expressed a pragmatic attitude -- instead of the ultra-positive attitude that's expected from those battling the dreaded scourge -- she was viciously attacked by those who would never even consider a negative thought about their disease. Ehrenreich recounts how many cancer sufferers wax philosophic about how their lives are so much better now that they've had life-threatening cancer, and that cancer itself is a "gift." Ehrenreich ultimately discovered that mere annoyance at her breast cancer was enough for other members of her support groups to castigate her and even attack her for her attitude.

Ehrenreich is down on positive thinking, and while remaining positive in the face of adversity certainly isn't pointless, she does have some very good points to make about how the Oprah generation "drank the Kool-Aid," believing that if they want something, they need only think positively about it -- and if they don't get what they want, then it's their own damned fault for not being positive enough. After discussion on cancer and health-related positivism, the author looks at how it pervades the white-collar working world to the point of functioning as a core belief for many workers.

Bright-Sided takes a long and hard look at positive thinking movements in the workplace and in white-collar society in general. From people who make their living hocking various elements of the positive thinking product menagerie, from coaching to products that help consumers feel better about consumption. Erhenreich actually goes through the process of job-hunting with recently laid-off white-collar workers and the time she spends following one gentleman from job hunting sessions to positive thinking sessions if frankly a little depressing. During this process Ehrenreich is subsequently exposed to a series of positive thinking courses, books, pamphlets, and PT evangelists who offer not much more than a constant barrage of hackneyed sayings and trite reassurances.

Her thesis is that ultimately all of this positive thinking rhetoric is based entirely on a false premise. Indeed, she dedicates an entire chapter to examining the roots of the positive thinking movement in America, beginning with its Calvinist underpinnings and it’s breakout bible — Norman Vincent Peale’s The Power of Positive Thinking — and interviewing positive thinking ‘luminaries’ such as Martin Seligman, who according to Ehrenreich seemed standoffish and pettily hostile, due to Ehrenreich’s previous negative articles about positive thought. Ehrenreich goes into great detail about Seligman’s apparent attempts to brush her off and make a proper interview impossible.

Ehrenreich doesn't have to stretch very far to show that blindly following a positive thinking pseudo-religion can be detrimental to society. Indeed, Bright-Sided is chock full of examples of positive thinking leading people down the path of financial destruction, emotional emptiness, or both. Ehrenreich dedicates a chapter to the way that PT has been interwoven with Christianity to produce a bizarre and disturbing trend toward combining PT, religion, and greed. She devotes another (appropriately titled “God Wants You to be Rich”) to this phenomenon, examining televangelists such as Joyce Meyer and Joel Osteen, among others. The messages that come out of these organizations are portrayed in a frank and honest way, and it’s sobering to realize that real, live people believe them. Ehrenreich reproduces Osteen’s suggestion that PT and God can work together to get you seated in a crowded restaurant, if you simply pray: “Father, I thank you that I have favor with this hostess, and she’s going to seat me soon.”

Ehrenreich's thesis is that the positive thinking movement is nothing more than a method of rationalizing why only the top few really reap the benefits of the "American Dream." If you are a marginalized minority, unemployed, sick, without healthcare, it's certainly not because you’ve been victimized. It’s because of your attitude!

This is an attitude with implications beyond the socio-economic sphere. When I worked as an RN in the oncology ward of a major hospital, the staff often spoke of a "cancer personality," claiming that people with negative personalities were often those who came down with various forms of cancer. It's doubtful this is true, and in fact no scientific studies have born out the theory. Indeed, it seems clear to me that the cancer-personality concept is just a way for people to place blame victims for a disease that is largely blameless. Confirmation bias allows doctors and nurses to carry this belief through even very long careers, causing them to remember cancer patients with “bad” attitudes and forgetting those who suffered with a smile.

While I’ve read a few reviews that have expressed disappointment in Ehrenreich's attack on the positive thinking movement, her examination of the entirety the movement should serve as a warning to a culture that has effectively decided that attitude is everything. Ehrenreich ultimately wades into deep waters when making judgments about the detriments of positive thinking — even seeming to suggest, at times, that optimism itself is our enemy. Of course it’s not. The enemy, as always, is any notion carried to its irrational extremity.