Bright-Sided - How the Relentness Promotion of Positive Thinking has Undermined America
by Barbara Ehrenreich (also brilliant author of Nickel and Dimed)
I loved this book! I found myself mentally high-fiving Barbara and thoroughly enjoyed learning about a subject I've been aware of for a while but have never really found time to explore.
Barbara Ehrenreich has written a powerful book about a subject that is bound to be a difficult one for some people - and yet really important pivotal - with both humour and candid decency.
There is an almost insane pressure on everyone – although this book is mainly about Americans - to be positive and cheerful these days. Being positive, smiling, upbeat and (as Ehrenreich noted) shallow is 'The Secret' to success, good health and riches. Imagine it - dream it, taste it, smell it and smile a lot - and the good life will come to you. If you don't, heaven help you. Scary news - if you believe it.
Employees have been 'let go' - fired - because they don't look happy (and grateful?) enough. Cold-hearted 'wisdom' tells us to jettison spouses, family and friends who, according to the standards they will help learn, are 'too negative'. This is crazy! Perceived ‘negativity’ from our spouse and friends often points to work that we need to do on ourselves and noticing their behaviour is a valuable clue that can help us find our way.
NVC (non violent communication) aka compassionate communication states that every single one of our feelings has a vitally important role to play and to stifle them and condition oneself to smile disconnectedly through our experiences is to further alienate ourselves from our real selves. A sure-fire way to hurtle toward depression. Our feelings point us in the direction of our needs, a knowledge of which can allow us to address everything that makes us whole. To deny our true feelings and camouflage them with pink ribbons or a confident grin is a recipe for personal disaster.
Ignorance of our own needs encourages a feeling of helplessness – a precursor, I believe, to unhappiness and depression. Among the hundreds of human needs are integrity, rest, comfort and ease. And I wonder: how can we rest and enjoy ease and comfort when we are constantly worried about an uncertain future? Or when we have to be constantly on the alert for what may be unfair competition (from phoney smiling super-people or mega-corporations)?
Motivational speakers and coaches abound to help keep you on track to compete in a world that is ever more cutthroat. Peak performance will definitely earn you more success. However, performing at your peak all the time as we try to maintain our ‘spoiled’ western lifestyle - while we now have to compete with workers from other less affluent, cultures and countries - is a guaranteed way send your stress through the roof. Which in turn will make you more susceptible to unhappiness, depression and just about every physical disease and, eventually, death. (Although I suppose that supports natural selection and will weed out the less economically and mentally healthy on a global basis?)
This is a recipe for craziness and unhappiness, documented clearly and with clarity and an accurate sense of realism and the ridiculous by Ehrenreich.
Cancer patients, in particular breast cancer patients and many other women’s cancers, are surrounded by sickly sweet pink toys and coerced into insisting that their cancer has ‘rescued them from a life of meaninglessness’. Which is a huge insult, presuming that someone who becomes sick has a meaningless life?
To add insult to injury, if they don't do well on the horrendous chemotherapy, surgery, radiation, it's implied that it's 'their fault' for not ‘believing properly' somehow and they're excluded from the survivors club. If I have to have cancer, I wish it could be prostate cancer where I can just treat it as a simple disease and feel comfortable not liking it.
This book is a ‘must-read’. It will open your eyes to the lunacy of the system we live in. Which will allow you to start sending the necessary feedback to the powers-that-be to change our course to a more sane society. This is our society and our future - and that of our children. Thank God we live in a democracy and can choose the leadership we follow...
Happy reading! Julie
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