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Loading... Bright-Sided: How Positive Thinking Is Undermining America (original 2009; edition 2010)by Barbara Ehrenreich
Work detailsBright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America by Barbara Ehrenreich (2009)
 usefuljack | May 17, 2013 |  I was really looking forward to this book, but I'm now convinced that I find more to love in Ehrenreich's immersion journalism. That being said, the chapters where she detailed her own struggles with cancer were the most compelling in the book. I get this uncomfortable bandwagon feeling every time I read one of her books. I want to start championing and stop thinking so much. I eventually begin to feel dangerously uni-dimensional, as though I have been up all night watching Michael Moore movies. (  ) usefuljack | May 17, 2013 | I read this after reading Martin Seligman's Flourish because I wanted to hear from someone on the other end of the spectrum. Seligman thinks that the common treatment for depression, antidepressants with a dose of analytical therapy for why things go wrong, should be replaced with positive psychology. He concentrates on "perma" that is positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning and accomplishment. Ehrenreich's book takes on Seligman the man more than his thesis and so is weak in that area. But her writing on the pink ribbon movement surrounding breast cancer is finely observed and poignant since she herself is a breast cancer survivor. What she exposes is an infantilizing of women's needs. Must we be positive in the face of suffering? Why can't we suffer with dignity and not be called failures? When the US was warned that the terrorists were ready to attack in early 2001, Bush's optimism blinded him to the reality that was to come. I respect Ehrenreich, and Seligman, but see the need for both skepticism and optimism. It is too simple to pick one over the other. (  ) paakre | Apr 27, 2013 | The only thing left for America to manufacture is happiness. ( ) KidSisyphus | Apr 5, 2013 | Quite honestly how upbeat of a review do you expect from a book that debunks positive thinking? Many points well taken with her usual engaging style, but don't read it all at once or it may be too depressing! ( ) lindap69 | Apr 5, 2013 |
 Vindicated at last! All of us misanthropic misery guts, whingers and whiners, Seroxat-refuseniks, "walking nimbus clouds"; we grouches, saddos, naysayers, demoralisers and party-poopers – our day has dawned. Time to gather and strike for the right to snigger, sulk and be sceptical, for the whole purpose of the cult of positive thinking is the beatification of bullshit.  I must confess, I have waited my whole life for someone to write a book like “Bright-Sided”... Now, in Barbara Ehrenreich’s deeply satisfying book, I finally have a moral defense for my apparent scowl. The myth-busting Barbara Ehrenreich takes on the ``cult of cheerfulness'' in her latest book and shortly after diving into the icy plunge pool of Chapter One readers will find themselves asking: Can I really make it all the way through a screed that starts off with a roundhouse punch at the positive thinking of cancer patients? You can. And you should.  [Ehrenreich's] argument has the makings of a tight, incisive essay. And each chapter eventually delivers a succinct reiteration of the central point. But this short book is also padded with cheap shots, easy examples, research recycled from her earlier books and caustic reportorial stalking. Ms. Ehrenreich starts out with her ideas firmly in place, then goes out hunting for crass, benighted individuals whose perniciousness helps her accentuate the negative.  While Ehrenreich is entertaining and instructive as she has been in the past, "Bright-Sided" is probably her least persuasive book.
Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0805087494, Hardcover)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. (retrieved from Amazon Sun, 28 Nov 2010 12:55:52 -0500) A sharp-witted knockdown of America's love affair with positive thinking and an urgent call for a new commitment to realism, existential clarity and courage. (summary from another edition) |
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Wikipedia in English (2)
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I get this uncomfortable bandwagon feeling every time I read one of her books. I want to start championing and stop thinking so much. I eventually begin to feel dangerously uni-dimensional, as though I have been up all night watching Michael Moore movies.
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