Barbara Ehrenreich examines the flip side of the bright side. The flip side to forced optimism and the new age philosophy of the ‘law of attraction’ is that “If you’re not doing well, if you’re sick or poor or lost your job… it must be because you sent out the wrong type of vibrations to the universe”
Ehrenreich contends that forced ‘positivity’ reveals: “an empathy deficit in our society: don’t tell me your problems; just be positive. I don’t want to hear it.” Ehrenreich further traces the crash of 2008 to this forced positivity in that any naysayers or ‘non-positive’ employees in the financial realms were deliberately rooted out as ‘negative’ ‘not team players’.
Barbara Ehrenreich Interview:
Canada: http://watch.thecomedynetwork.ca/the-daily-show-with-jon-stewart/#clip226294
USA: http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-october-14-2009/barbara-ehrenreich
Book Review:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/08/books/review/Rosin-t.html
Book Excerpt:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/10/books/excerpt-bright-sided.html
There are many articles lately about the need for negative thinking in order to clarify an issue and proceed to overcome it. Negativity often brings efforts to improve while a positive attitude, or seeing the bright side, leaves one uninspired to proceed and any possible change and betterment, both personally and in the world-at-large often stagnates