When author Barbara Ehrenreich was diagnosed with breast cancer, she In her new book, Bright-Sided, Ehrenreich explores the negative. Ehrenreich (Nickel and Dimed) delivers a trenchant look into the burgeoning business of positive Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America. Barbara Ehrenreich, Author. Barbara Ehrenreich’s examination of the history of positive thinking is a tour de force of well-tempered snark,culminating in a persuasive.
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It was promoted on some of the most widely watched talk shows, like Larry King Live and the Oprah Winfrey Show ; it was the stuff of runaway best sellers like the book The Secret ; it had been adopted as the theology of America’s most successful evangelical preachers; it found a place in medicine as a potential ehtenreich to the treatment of almost any disease.
Author Barbara Ehrenreich says Americans cannot simply wish themselves into better conditions.
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Of course, I am an English professor, so understanding rhetorical moves is part of my job. Once our sidec material needs are met — in my utopia, anyway — life becomes a perpetual celebration in which everyone has a talent to contribute.
When you feel like you are not in control of some aspect of your life your health, your job, your financesthinking positively gives you that control. By highlighting the evil aspects of ‘being positive’ this book should be essential reading — a mild, but hopefully effective antidote to the poison that inhabits every extreme position.
There’s so much pop psychology, career faith healing, and apoplectic fiscal cheerleading out there contagious in our communities that it’s a wonder there aren’t more Stepford families next door. The ehrenreihc in a false world where anyone can believe whatever they want. I swear, if anyone ever suggested to me that any kind of cancer is a fucking gift, I would [edited for content].
Erenreich’s discussion of this phenomenon, as well as how positive thinking is twisted to the service of repression by totalitarian regimes, was one of the most disturbing parts harbara the book. Actually, that’s just the introduction, the teaser, if you will. Your mileage may vary.
Ehrenreich includes whrenreich of examples. Want to Read Currently Reading Read. Happiness cannot be intrinsically good of itself, it has to be good for something and be alleged to cause longer life, greater wealtha sudden ability to leap buildings in a single bound and so on, all of which it appears rests on extremely sandy foundations when one chases down such evidence as there is. There is little point writing a review of a book once Lena has written one – http: Barbara Ehrenreichwho exposed the underbelly of the service economy in Nickel and Dimed: Sure, you may be sad, but you can also send money to funds after a natural disaster, for example, to help those ehrenrelch need.
And we hope–the author eyrenreich I–that the global financial meltdown has stopped Yes.
And sidfd five hours of wandering in the pitch dark, we did find our way home and we were fine. Though the recent phenomenon The Secret is a textbook example of how badly the idea of positive thinking can be misused in the service of personal gain, Ehrenreich also explores how certain Christian “prosperity” churches have gotten into the act, convincing their parishioners that God wants them to be rich and will help them get that way if they just show a little faith by giving money to the church.
So I spent a month anticipating the day I’d be able to fly. What a horrifying judgment to put on people, and to think that they lapped it up, these moronic sheep constituting the middle part of the US’s economy.
Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America
View all 12 comments. To the extent that positive thinking had become a business itself, business was its principal client, eagerly consuming the good news that all things are possible through an effort of mind.
If that helps them “focus,” go for it! View all 3 comments. There is no natural, innate affinity between capitalism and positive thinking. I was surprised and disappointed that I was so bored by this, especially since Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed: Eventually she gets round to the ‘science’ of this, which turns out to be as flakey as one might expect of an outlook which endorses to ‘infinity and beyond’ coupled with a refusal to acknowledge criticism – the smell of money attracts more than just flies.
And global warming too! Sometimes things just suck!
Why only three stars? Okay, so this is not the best time in my life to read this book, ’cause on Monday I am having a diagnostic mammogram.
‘Bright-Sided’: When Happiness Doesn’t Help : NPR
Aug 09, Deborah Markus rated it really liked it. Joy Unlimited The American Dream has been a con-job from the start but those forever optimistic Americans are made to see layoffs, poverty, bowls of watery gruel and anal lice as challenge.
Here’s a random pull. And Coelho is not the only one going around saying such vacuous platitudes.
