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Book: Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America
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  1. Barbara Ehrenreich _ Bright-Sided: How the

    Everyone, from software writer to accountant, was now subject to the same insecurities as the "lonely salesman" once targeted by Norman Vincent Peale.
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  2. Barbara Ehrenreich _ Bright-Sided: How the

    Positive thinking did not abolish the need for constant vigilance; it only turned that vigilance inward. Instead of worrying that one's roof might collapse or one's job be terminated, positive thinking encourages us to worry about the negative expectations themselves and subject them to continual revision. It ends up imposing a mental discipline as exacting as that of the Calvinism it replaced-the endless work of self-examination and self-control or, in the case of positive thinking, self-hypnosis. It requires, as historian Donald Meyer puts it, "constant repetition of its spirit lifters, constant alertness against impossibility perspectives, constant monitoring of rebellions of body and mind against control. This is a burden that we can finally, in good conscience, put down.
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  3. Barbara Ehrenreich _ Bright-Sided: How the

    We don't usually talk about American nationalism, but it is a mark of how deep it runs that we apply the word "nationalism" to Serbs, Russians, and others, while believing ourselves to possess a uniquely superior version called
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  4. Barbara Ehrenreich _ Bright-Sided: How the

    The advice that you must change your environment-for example, by eliminating negative people and news-is an admission that there may in fact be a "real world" out there that is utterly unaffected by our wishes. In the face of this terrifying possibility, the only "positive" response is to withdraw into one's own carefully constructed world of constant approval and affirmation, nice news, and smiling people.
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  5. Barbara Ehrenreich _ Bright-Sided: How the

    Tonight, unhappy with your love, your job, your life, not enough money? Use your head. You can think yourself into a lot better you. Positive thoughts can transform, can attract the good things you know you want. Sound far-fetched? Think again. It's supported by science.
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  6. Barbara Ehrenreich _ Bright-Sided: How the

    Just as layoffs were making a mockery of the team concept, employees were urged to find camaraderie and a sense of collective purpose at the microlevel of the "team". And the less teamlike the overall organization became with the threat of continuous downsizing, the more management insisted on individual devotion to these largely fictional units.
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  7. Barbara Ehrenreich _ Bright-Sided: How the

    We don't usually talk about American nationalism, but it is a mark of how deep it runs that we apply the word "nationalism" to Serbs, Russians, and others, while believing ourselves to possess a uniquely superior version called "patriotism.
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  8. Barbara Ehrenreich _ Bright-Sided: How the

    Yes, atheists pray in their foxholes-in this case, with a yearning new to me and sharp as lust, for a clean and honorable death by shark bite, lightning strike, sniper fire, car crash. Let me be hacked to death by a madman, was my silent supplication-anything but suffocation by the pink sticky sentiment embodied in that bear and oozing from the walls of the changing room. I didn't mind dying, but the idea that I should do so while clutching a teddy and with a sweet little smile on my face-well, no amount of philosophy had prepared me for that.
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  9. Barbara Ehrenreich _ Bright-Sided: How the

    As a recent editorial in the Journal of Clinical Oncology put it: "What we must first remember is that the immune system is designed to detect foreign invaders, and avoid out own cells. With few exceptions, the immune system does not appear to recognize cancers within an individual as foreign, because they are actually part of the self.
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  10. Barbara Ehrenreich _ Bright-Sided: How the

    Purge everyone who "brings you down," and you risk being very lonely or, what is worse, cut off from reality.
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  11. Barbara Ehrenreich _ Bright-Sided: How the

    At issue is not only knowledge of the world but our survival as individuals and as a species. All the basic technologies ever invented by humans to feed and protect themselves depend on a relentless commitment to hard-nosed empiricism: you cannot assume that your arrowheads will pierce the hide of a bison or that your raft will float just because the omens are propitious and you have been given supernatural reassurance that they will. You have to be sure.
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  12. Barbara Ehrenreich _ Bright-Sided: How the

    Sometimes we need to heed our fears and negative thoughts, and at all times we need to be alert to the world outside ourselves, even when that includes absorbing bad news and entertaining the views of "negative" people.
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