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Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America

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Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America

By: Barbara Ehrenreich  

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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.

Barbara Ehrenreich is the author of numerous books, including Dancing in the Streets and TheNew York Times bestsellers Nickel and Dimed and Bait and Switch. A frequent contributor to Harper’s and The Nation, she has also been a columnist at The New York Times and Time magazine.

In Bright-sided, Barbara Ehrenreich reveals how the positive thinking movement, though seemingly harmless, has in fact deluded America and played a role in some of the most destructive events in recent U.S. history. Far from just a “healthy mindset,” bright-siding is an epidemic of self-deception that has spread to all circles of American life, from preachers who celebrate the power of prayer, to doctors who promote optimism’s healing abilities. It led officials to overlook clues of 9/11 and overestimate the strength of New Orleans’ levees, and enabled the business world to make egregiously unsafe loans that caused the worst financial crisis since World War II. Ehrenreich exposes the consequences of the belief that positive thinking is the key to achieving success and prosperity—a notion which, at its most dangerous, prevents people from even considering the negative outcomes of major events or their own actions. 

“In this hard-hitting but honest appraisal, America’s cultural skeptic Barbara Ehrenreich turns her focus on the muddled American phenomenon of positive thinking. She exposes the pseudoscience and pseudointellectual foundation of the positive-thinking movement for what it is: a house of cards. This is a mind-opening read.”—Michael Shermer, author of Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time
“We're always being told that looking on the bright side is good for us, but now we see that it's a great way to brush off poverty, disease, and unemployment, to rationalize an order where all the rewards go to those on top. The people who are sick or jobless—why, they just aren't thinking positively. They have no one to blame but themselves. Barbara Ehrenreich has put the menace of positive thinking under the microscope. Anyone who's ever been told to brighten up needs to read this book.”—Thomas Frank, author of The Wrecking Crew and What's the Matter with Kansas?
 
“Unless you keep on saying that you believe in fairies, Tinker Bell will check out, and what’s more, her sad demise will be your fault! Barbara Ehrenreich scores again for the independent-minded in resisting this drool and all those who wallow in it.”—Christopher Hitchens, author of God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything
 
“In this hard-hitting but honest appraisal, America’s cultural skeptic Barbara Ehrenreich turns her focus on the muddled American phenomenon of positive thinking. She exposes the pseudoscience and pseudointellectual foundation of the positive-thinking movement for what it is: a house of cards. This is a mind-opening read.”—Michael Shermer, author of Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time
 
“Once again, Barbara Ehrenreich has written an invaluable and timely book, offering a brilliant analysis of the causes and dimensions of our current cultural and economic crises. She shows how deeply positive thinking is embedded in our history and how crippling it is as a habit of mind.”—Thomas Bender, author of A Nation Among Nations: America’s Place in World History

“Oprah Winfrey, Deepak Chopra, Andrew Weil: please read this relentlessly sensible book. It’s never too late to begin thinking clearly.”—Frederick Crews, author of Follies of the Wise: Dissenting Essays
 
“Barbara Ehrenreich’s skeptical common sense is just what we need to penetrate the cloying fog that passes for happiness in America.”—Alan Wolfe, author of The Future of Liberalism
 
“In this hilarious and devastating critique, Barbara Ehrenreich applies some much needed negativity to the zillion-dollar business of positive thinking. This is truly a text for the times.”—Katha Pollitt, author of The Mind-Body Problem: Poems
 
"Ehrenreich convinced me completely. . . I hesitate to say anything so positive as that this book will change the way you see absolutely everything; but it just might."—Nora Ephron, The Daily Beast

"Accomplished social critic Ehrenreich eviscerates the positive-thinking movement, which she blames for encouraging us to 'deny reality, submit cheerfully to misfortune, and blame only ourselves for our fate.' The author argues that the promotion of unwarranted optimism began in the early days of the American republic, was taken up by 19th-century philosophers and mystics—William James urged people to repeat to themselves 'Youth, health, vigor!' while dressing in the morning-and entered the American mainstream in the 20th century, when it became an integral part of consumer culture. Ehrenreich's quarrel is not with feeling upbeat but rather with the 'inescapable pseudoscientific flapdoodle' of life coaches and self-improvement products claiming that thinking positively will result in wealth, success and other joyful outcomes. Such magical thinking has become a means of social control in the workplace—where uncheerful employees are ostracized—and prevents action to achieve social change. With life coaches, business motivators and evangelical preachers promoting delusional expectations . . . positive thinking can claim partial credit for a major role in such recent disastrous events as the Iraq war and the financial meltdown. Ehrenreich's many interviews include meetings with psychologist Martin Seligman, whose 'positive psychology,' she finds, offers little credible evidence to make it any different from the wishing-will-make-it-so thinking of writers from Dale Carnegie (How to Win Friends & Influence People) to Rhonda Byrne (The Secret). The author's tough-minded and convincing broadside raises troubling questions about many aspects of contemporary American life, and she provides an antidote to the pervasive culture of cheerfulness-reality-based critical thinking that will encourage people to alter social arrangements in ways that improve their lives. Bright, incisive, provocative thinking from a top-notch nonfiction writer."—Kirkus Reviews

"Ehrenreich delivers a trenchant look into the burgeoning business of positive thinking. A bout with breast cancer puts the author face to face with this new breed of frenetic positive thinking promoted by everyone from scientists to gurus and activists. Chided for her anger and distress by doctors and fellow cancer patients and survivors, Ehrenreich explores the insistence upon optimism as a cultural and national trait, discovering its 'symbiotic relationship with American capitalism' and how poverty, obesity, unemployment and relationship problems are being marketed as obstacles that can be overcome with the right (read: positive) mindset. Building on Max Weber's insights into the relationship between Calvinism and capitalism, Ehrenreich sees the dark roots of positive thinking emerging from 19th-century religious movements. Mary Baker Eddy, William James and Norman Vincent Peale paved the path for today's secular $9.6 billion self-improvement industry and positive psychology institutes. The author concludes by suggesting that the bungled invasion of Iraq and current economic mess may be intricately tied to this 'reckless' national penchant for self-delusion and a lack of anxious vigilance, necessary to societal survival."—


Publisher: Metropolitan Books

Release Date: 2009-10-13

Customer Review: 2 out of 5
Good premise, bad proof - I've been to a few motivational seminars (usually mandated by my employer) and I often have the experience that, while listening to the speaker, I find myself thinking "yes, yes, yes!", but as soon as I walk out the door and out of the grip of the contrived enthusiasm, I think "no, no, no!" Unfortunately, that was my experience with this book.

This book could be described as "far-reaching." Or it could be dscribed as a "random hodge-podge." Barbara Ehrenreich bounces from one subject to another like a rocket propelled superball.

The first chapter after the introduction is actually fairly well focused. It is about Ehrenreich's exposure to the "cult" of positive thinking through her experience with breast cancer. Ehrenreich weaves her personal experience in with scientific explanations (in laymen's terms) of the biology of cancer and the immune system and scientific studies of the efficacy (and lack thereof) of positive thinking in the treatment of cancer. So far, so good.

The next chapter is also reasonably well focused - perhaps too focused. Ehrenreich traces the development of positive thinking to a nineteenth century reaction to Calvinism. She credits rather obscure historical figures such as Mary Baker Eddy, Phineas Quimby and Williams James with revolutionizing American attitudes and introducing the "cult" of positive thinking. Ehrenreich pulls a few threads from this bit of history and a few thread from that, but it leaves her with a rather thin tapestry with many holes. Interestingly enough, Ehrenreich's own roots include both Calvinism and Christian Science.

But from there on, all bets are off. Ehrenreich bounces recklessly from business to religion to politics to current events to the global economy, touching briefly on examples, anecdotes, articles and research to "prove" her "point" (such point being, I believe, the ubiquity and the destructiveness of this "cult" of positive thinking). If you went to your local library, checked out a random sampling of 200 or so books, magazines and journals, found a paragraph or even a sentence from each with which you either agree or disagree, and assembled them, along with your own thoughts and musings, into some sort of loose order, you might come up with something loosely like the last half of "Bright Sided".

Furthermore, Ehrenreich cheapens what points she makes with personal attacks and sarcastic snipes. For instance, she describes in detal an interview (or attempted interview) with Martin Seligman of positive psychology fame, making no attempt to disguise her own contempt. Seligman does not come off positively in this portrayal, but neither does Ehrenreich. Also, Ehrenreich devotes a full paragraph to the physical appearances - not flattering - of Joel and Victoria Osteen, which makes her ensuing rant about the Osteens' vapid devotion to the prosperity gospel seem like simply a personal vendetta.

The book could also do with a good editor or even copy editor. Several times Ehrenreich begins to lay out what looks to be points in a coherent argument. She begins with "First," ... but there is no "second." It leaves the reader hanging and groping for the threads of her argument.

My final criticism with the book is simply that I'm not convinced the problem is as dire as she paints. The America I see is not drowning in positivity. "The Road" was one of the most popular books in recent history, along with the Harry Potter series, each book of which gets progressively darker. Violent and otherwise dark movies sell as well, if not better, than ever. Irony and sarcasm are alive and well in venues from "The Onion" to children's cartoons. Every worker bee in corporate America gathers to gripe at the water cooler. Sure, the corporate world is trying to sell us a vision of happy while they lay off our co-workers and multiply our workloads, but I don't see America as a whole buying into it. Sure, some unscrupulous "religious" types are trying to profit by selling a bill of goods, but I don't think today's market for religious hucksterism is any larger or worse than in previous generations.

I was disappointed in "Bright Sided". I really wanted to enjoy it. I agree with the basic premise and I'm certainly no fan of the positive thinking/motivation industry. But I just don't think Ehrenreich pulls it off. There's little depth to what she says and little that she says is new. There are moderately interesting parts of the book, and I think she's headed in the right direction, but the book needs a lot more focus to get there. If you have time on your hands, it may be worth checking out of the library, but save your money.


Customer Review: 4 out of 5
Thought-provoking, a bit too long - still worth reading. -
Barbara Ehrenreich is an author I admire, for her ideological commitment, the passion she brings to her writing, and for making me think. Her recent book, "Bright-sided", has much to recommend it: her usual willingness to question received wisdom and dig deeper for answers and her characteristically clear thinking, expressed in clear and forceful prose. Her central target in "Bright-sided" is a U.S. trait that is both a strength and a weakness - the uniquely American faith in the power of positive thinking.

In the opening chapter, which I found the most powerful in the book, Ehrenreich describes her experience as a breast cancer patient. There is an extensive, well-organized network to which someone just diagnosed with (breast) cancer can turn for support. One of the most prevalent messages promulgated within this "support" network is that maintaining a positive attitude towards one's disease is imperative. Ehrenreich argues persuasively that, in many cases, this rigidly enforced dogma of positive thinking (to the extent of asking patients to view their disease as a "gift"), is in no way supportive, and actually ends up making people feel guilty about a bad situation beyond their control. Nonetheless, the belief that maintaining a positive attitude can actually affect the course of one's disease remains prevalent, accepted unquestioningly by the majority of cancer patients, despite an almost complete lack of objective scientific evidence to support it.

In subsequent chapters, Ehrenreich shows how variations of the same belief, which is essentially little more than magical thinking, have taken hold in different aspects of American life, and different sectors of U.S. society. The popularity of books like "The Secret", the practice of advising people who have been laid off to "take control" of their situation through positive visualization, the explosive growth of the "motivational seminar" business, the rise of evangelical churches peddling the message that "God wants you to be rich" -- all are manifestations of the same fundamental belief, not just in the importance of a positive attitude, but in its ability to bring about change.

Ehrenreich believes (and I agree with her) that it's essentially a steaming heap of crap. The prevalent faith in positive thinking not only exaggerates its potential benefits, its effects can be actively detrimental. For instance, the amazing lack of outrage within the lower classes at the obscene excesses of the super-rich is due in no small measure to the belief that, with hard work and luck, anyone can achieve a similar measure of financial success*. This leads to a focus on the individual's own status, but works against genuine social change, of the kind that might make a real difference. And, of course, the recent financial meltdown had its origins in the exaggerated confidence that blinded investors to the (real and substantial) risks of subprime mortgages, or versions thereof, repackaged in the guise of assorted shady financial instruments. Throughout the book, Ehrenreich makes her case articulately and persuasively.

Why not five stars? Because I think the book is about twice as long as it needs to be. The point that Ehrenreich wishes to make is not particularly difficult, nor is it sufficiently important to warrant 225 pages of exposition. Much of the material in the middle chapters feels redundant - crowding in one more anecdote about yet another ridiculous motivational speaker, long after the point has been made. The phrase "methinks the lady doth protest too much" flitted unbidden across my mind, leaving me feeling slightly guilty, as Ehrenreich's books usually seem to do.

Though it's a little bloated, "Bright-sided" is nonetheless well worth your consideration.

* : In the words of a 1996 Brookings Institute study: Strong belief in opportunity and upward mobility is the explanation for Americans' high tolerance for inequality. The majority of Americans surveyed believe they will be above mean income in the future (even though this is mathematically impossible).

Customer Review: 5 out of 5
Whiners Unite! - When Barbara Ehrenreich was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2000, she was surprised to see that not all members of the breast cancer community viewed the disease with horror and dread. Many sufferers viewed mastectomy favourably as a `makeover opportunity', and the thinking of positive thoughts in the battle against the cancer was believed to increase the chances of survival. On a cancer survivor website, she was taken to task by the cheerfulness vigilantes for being `negative'. This experience was Ehrenreich's first exposure to an ideological force in American culture that she had not been aware of before - `positive thinking' - a belief system that "encourages us to deny reality, submit cheerfully to misfortune, and blame only ourselves for our fate".

The `positive thinking' industry of life coaches, book authors and motivational speakers (including celebrities like Colin Powell, Bill Cosby and Rudolph Guliani) rake in the dough. People facing major illnesses, laid-off white-collar workers, those who want to lose weight, find a mate or strike it rich are the most vulnerable segments targeted in this multi-billion dollar market.

A big purchaser of the industry's products is American big business which uses them as tools to discipline the down-sized and demoralised white collar proletariat, turning them from complainant to compliant.

Dissenters from the new upbeat thinking within the corporate hierarchy are not tolerated. Those who warned that lending on sub-prime interest rates to low-income people was reckless, that housing prices were not resistant to gravity, that the bursting of the speculative property bubble would trigger off a global credit meltdown and recession were scorned for not getting with the program.

The flip-side of positive thinking, of course, was its "harsh insistence on personal responsibility". Failure in life means you aren't positive enough. Real-world problems such as long hours, low wages, unemployment and unaffordable medical bills are but mere excuses for a failure of mind.

The `prosperity gospel' movement, for example, offers a motivational message about getting ahead through positive thinking (oh, and tithing 10% of your income to the Church and its millionaire evangelists). 17% of all American Christians consider themselves part of this new corporate Christianity and 61% agree that `God wants people to be prosperous'.

For the more secular, there is the `science' of `positive psychology', a new discipline spreading like a weed through academia. The shift away from `negative', pathology-oriented psychology with its depressives and neurotics butting up against the hard edges of reality has opened up a huckstering, profitable line of "coaching the well".

The psychometrics of positive psychology gives this new `profession' an affinity with conservative values, measuring personal contentment with the status quo as its indicator of happiness. Business executives, too, like positive thinking for its conservative cachet - a happy worker is a hard worker.

`Positive thinking' promises happiness but doesn't deliver. A meta-analysis of a hundred self-reported `happiness' studies ranked the US, the mother-ship of `positive thinking', at a lowly 23rd, surpassed by even the "supposedly dour Finns" whilst anti-depressants are the most prescribed drug in the happy land.

Ehrenreich's latest book has her usual high quota of anecdotally-rich, theoretically-robust, humour-spiced, class-conscious sympathy for the underdog and antipathy for the overlord and their latest snake-oil of `positive thinking'. Ehrenreich's message is simple. Whiners Unite - you have nothing to lose but an unjust social structure.

Customer Review: 2 out of 5
Flawed by Ideological Prejudice - I think the author's basic thesis is important: that positive thinking is a destructive, irrational superstition Americans seem attached to. Unfortunately, the big flaw of this book is that she also makes it into an attack on conservatism. This colors all her views and blinds her to obvious inconsistencies in her own position. So when Joe the Plumber wants to expand his business, he is stupid and evil, but when President Obama blathers about "hope and change" while getting the US trillions of dollars in debt, he is wise and compassionate. Somehow positive thinking is a disease that only conservatives catch, according to Ehrenreich. The parts of the book about the history of positive thinking and the strange adoption of this magical worldview by church leaders like Rick Warren and Joel Olsteen are good, but the flaw makes it difficult to read for someone who doesn't share her love for the political left. A better and more entertaining book on the same topic is We Are Doomed by John Derbyshire.

Customer Review: 5 out of 5
Another "Thanks" to Barbara...reluctantly, but necessarily. - This book is not for the faint of heart "positive thinkers" of the world. You have to go boldly into it and be willing to keep an open mind. But look out, cheerful Americans - you will not emerge unscathed from this brilliant writer's sharp view of the world. You might say that Barbara Ehrenreich is the Jonathan Swift of her day. Like Swift, she can be wickedly funny. No, she does not recommend eating babies to end the famine; she's more direct than Swift. But she does something else dangerous in these shaky times. She rips away the veneer of "positivity" that has seemed to keep many going through a choking economic drought.Oh, no! Now those people will have to face some bleak prospects without their rose-colored shades. Believe me, I did not want to read her book. I had a feeling I knew what was coming. I am definitely a "New Age'y" thinker, as she so insultingly puts it. However, she does something that I find bracing, stimulating (as she did in all her other great, great books) and, in the long run is edifying: she makes me examine myself and my times for what might be called "false-positives." Frankly, Barbara, you are right in saying that having a constant demeanor of gung-ho, can-do is exhausting. Sometimes it's OK to be what the motivational gurus call "negative" when you are contemplating the grave issues of the day, whether that "day" is yours or another country's that's just been earth-quaked. I am now fore-warned"and thus fore-armed. I WILL complain if cancer comes creeping around. I am not going to pretend it's something that will make me more feminine or "enlightened" and therefore be so "glad" I got it. And I am going to stop exhorting myself and others to make the proverbial de-tarted-up lemonade. "Just for today" I'm going to let myself droop, kvetch and wince when I feel like it, and dump my purple "complaint-free-world" bracelet in the trash. Then I'm going out for hot and sour.

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