Related
Translate
Get RNB via RSS
 |
RNB's RSS feed What is this? |
Get RNB via Email
 |
 Subscribe by Email What is this? |
Follow: Twitter
Most Popular
This Week:
- Guyana’s Jonestown suicide site gets plaque
- Gaddafi preaches Islam to Rome beauties
- Scientology practices ‘putting people at risk’
- Recession: Muslim schools in UK under threat of closure
- Australian senator tells Parliament of widespread criminal conduct within the Church of Scientology
- When a child dies, faith is no defense
- Techie Holy water and geeky bishops
- Muslim terrorists smuggle fatwas promoting Jihad out of secure UK prisons
- Israel Charges Extremist With Attempted Murder Of Messianic Family
- Scientology’s feet held to the fire in Australia: Struggle between a church and the state
Overrated Optimism: The Peril of Positive Thinking
More articles on this topic: Americans have long prided themselves on being “positive” and optimistic — traits that reached a manic zenith in the early years of this millennium.
Iraq would be a cakewalk! The Dow would reach 36,000! Housing prices could never decline!
Optimism was not only patriotic, it was a Christian virtue, or so we learned from the proliferating preachers of the “prosperity gospel,” whose God wants to “prosper” you.
In 2006, the runaway bestseller The Secret promised that you could have anything you wanted, anything at all, simply by using your mental powers to “attract” it.
The poor listened to upbeat preachers like Joel Osteen and took out subprime mortgages. The rich paid for seminars led by motivational speakers like Tony Robbins and repackaged those mortgages into securities sold around the world.
Optimism wasn’t just a psycho-spiritual lifestyle option; by the mid-’00s it had become increasingly mandatory.
[...]Two years into the Great Recession, it’s time to face the truth: Optimism feels good, really good, but it turns out to be the methamphetamine of run-amok American capitalism.
Barbara Ehrenreich is the author of Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America (Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt & Company).
• More about the book
• Read the introduction to Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America
What You Can Do From Here
|
Read More Articles On These Topics
Share, Blog About, Bookmark, or Email This Article
Subscribe
Read Another Article
 Previous entry: Spiritual warrior ‘cleanses tweets’ after fatal sweat lodge ceremony Next entry: Waldorf schools: unconventional theories spawn believers – and critics
RNB Homepage with latest headlinesFind Related Information
Find Related Books
|
Share This Article
To share this page simply copy and paste one of these URL's:
