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Smile or Die: The Tyranny of Positive Thinking

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Can Happiness Cure Cancer? Not Likely Says Ehrenreich

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soulerflare

Posts: 1

Posted: 02.17.10, 08:59 PM

I think Barbara is a highly intellectual person and I think she makes some good points. Her experience certainly gives credibility to her arguments and she is absolutely entitled to her experiences and her feelings about them.

That said, the theme that runs through her approach, and that of others who share it, is that being positive is somehow less realistic than being negative. She even talks about "the burden" of being positive on terminal patients.

Being positive is no less realistic than being negative and it's certainly not more of a burden unless that's how you choose to see it. There is a lot in this discussion/debate about how you choose to see things.

I, too, have experienced very difficult health issues in my life. My experience has been nearly the polar opposite of hers. I have found positive thinking to make the journey much more bearable and later helped propel me to a better life.

No one in their right mind says smile at the nice lion as it's about to eat you. However, the arguments that thread throughout Barbara's writing and some sympathetic research happening seem to be telling people that thinking positive is somehow a delusional.

Humanity's much longer and destructive delusion has been remaining disempowered by the very pessimism and "realism" being described. Do some people take positive thinking too far? Absolutely. On balance, though, a more fulfilling life is more likely if you look at the world through a positive lense.

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glennd1

Posts: 5

Posted: 02.17.10, 11:55 AM

Wow, do we need to have this conversation, particularly in "corporate America". The intolerance of dissent and the nasty bludgeoning those of us who dare speak up with the cudgel of "being negative" is endemic in that world. It's a major reason why I've left it. I'm actually a huge believer in positive thinking - the real version of it - which looks for solutions to problems and recognizes that cynicism is often damaging to forward progress, being the opposing delusion to positivtism. I also think that at some level, this topic leaches into the idea of goal setting and resiliency, which are very important traits to being successful in any endeavor but somehow get incorporated into the positivity gobbledy-gook. I did enjoy the last minutes of the interview when the interviewer mentioned Obama's 'hope and change' rhetoric: this seemed to bring Barbara up short, revealing her reflexive progressivism/socialism/liberalism - whatever we are calling it these days. As someone so committed to 'realism', perhaps she should check her own political biases more carefully?

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diavel

Posts: 9

Posted: 02.17.10, 10:01 AM

And how does this "law" pass double blind test? I'm glad she recovered though.

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