you
in a few years I began to encounter the
same ideology of positive thinking being
applied to people who were downsized
from the corporate world white-collar
middle level people being sent to
support groups or networking groups
there all kinds of names for these
things where the message was it's not
bad to be laid off it's actually a good
thing it's actually an opportunity it's
a growth opportunity and you will come
out of it much better and if you want to
come out of it all of course you better
work on your attitude because the key to
getting a job in today's corporate world
is not knowing things or having skills
or experience but having a positive
attitude somebody who's in a an absolute
low point in their lives and certainly
losing a job can be that and just tell
them that's nothing wrong you know just
put me on put on a smiley face and get
on with it
don't complain whatever you do so then I
began to see a pattern and find it in
more and more aspects of American life
this kind of mandatory optimism and
cheerfulness one area where it is very
strongly concentrated now and has been
for some years is the corporate world
the workplace where the idea has been
yes indeed you better be positive
because you're not really there to do X
or Y tasks you're there to spread good
cheer and make the other people around
you comfortable and happy all day now
you might think what's wrong with that I
mean certainly many people have asked me
well all right so it's delusional to
think everything is okay or to go to the
real delusional extreme you know
embedded in all this is the idea that
you change the physical world with your
thoughts when you send thoughts out from
your mind they exert a force that brings
things to you that you want so if you
know if I were you know we're doing this
right we could all concentrate on
getting a million dollars or whatever
and indeed it would come you know
there's been a lot of attempts to
explain this scientifically for a while
it was magnetism that thoughts must
exert a magnetic force that draws things
to you as we know however our heads are
not attracted to refrigerators the
magnetic force that is so tiny that is
exerted right now they talk about
quantum physics I love that you know at
quantum physics for some reason our
annex is become an excuse to mock all of
science see is nothing real nothing
through and whatever you think that
other world is so if you think
positively you remake the world
positively according to this pseudo
scientific explanation but anyway what's
wrong with this why not blued yourself
into thinking you know everything's fine
and you can change the world with your
thoughts and I have two problems with it
one I'll be hardline about this I think
delusion is always a mistake if there's
no safe delusions although one of the
messages of positive psychology United
States's yeah it's a good different
positive delusions about yourself I
think the biggest evidence to that is
the financial meltdown of oh seven a lot
of things went into that you know it's
extreme class inequality of the United
States and was your country to you know
greed and economies based increasingly
on Finance rather than manufacturing or
anything but certainly one element was
the grip of positive thinking in the
corporate world and particularly in the
financial sector I mean people who tried
to raise problems in the middle of the
last decade would be shut up or fired
you couldn't be inside countrywide
mortgage company which was the one it's
almost single-handedly set off the whole
collapse in the US and say I'm worried
about our subprime mortgage exposure or
you'd be out and I got to interview some
Wall Street guys there
a successful Wall Street guys okay they
said this is just out is you can't you
know people who tried would say within
Lehman Brothers to point out that the
pot the housing prices could not rise
forever
we're fired and so it was just willful
ignorance nobody could think bad
thoughts
nothing bad and if you didn't nothing
bad would happen and I think the other
thing that I find very very disturbing
about it is I think I just think it's
cruel
I mean it's taste cruel to take people
who are having great difficulties in
their lives and tell them it's all in
their head and they only had to change
their attitude and I you know my
favorite example of this moral
callousness is from the author of the
secret that was a best-seller here to
admit it the book on how you can have
anything you want tracked anything to
yourself by thinking and she was asked
about the tsunami of oh-6
and how you know how could this happen
you know and she she said in kind of
paraphrasing that those people the
victims of it must have been sending out
tsunami like vibrations into the
universe to attract that to themselves
because nothing happens to us that we
don't attract and I think that's beyond
a morality and I don't even know where
to locate that I'm not advocating gloom
and pessimism or negativity or
depression those can also be delusional
I mean you can go around you know making
up a story to yourself that everything
you undertake is going to fail and that
there's no reason to think that I might
very radical suggestion is realism just
trying to figure out what is actually
happening in the world and seeing what
we can do about those parts of it that
are threatening or hurtful my background
is in science and I think you know
there's not one fix truth or reality but
we're we close in on something and we
then we think this is as good as we can
understand for now you know until we get
better information but try to act on
that I think I would make a case that we
are hard-wired to be vigilant I mean yes
we have many other capabilities you know
to be jolly to be experienced
camaraderie solidarity all
those great things but we're also we're
hardwired to be vigilant and on guard
that's how our very distant ancestors
survived not by saying oh it's
everything's probably okay don't worry
about the motion in the total grass over
there the people who survived said move
its a leopard you know let's go
george w bush george w bush was a
cheerleader in college not an athlete
the cheerleader and i think he construed
the presidency as a continuation of that
role he is one of those people who
closed himself into bubble of positive
feeling Condoleezza Rice said a way too
late that she had had doubts about the
invasion of Iraq but she didn't dare
express them because the president hated
to be around quote pessimist see the
equation of pessimism was doubt so
nobody nobody raised any questions about
that war within the hearing of the
president or those it did like the
general who suggested that we were only
putting half as many troops on the
ground as would be needed to accomplish
whatever we were trying to accomplish he
was pushed out of the way he lost his
job what could be cleverer as a way of
quelling dissent than to tell people or
in some kind of trouble
poverty unemployment etc that it's all
their attitude you know the death all
that has to change that they should just
get with the program no smile and and
get no complaining you know that I mean
it's a brilliant form of social control
which by the way was practiced in the
Soviet Union I mean one of the
principles of Soviet Communism was
optimism so it's a form of social
control by the way that you know is
quite widespread has been widespread in
totalitarian types of societies but I
think it has worked very well in America
take the issue of class inequality how
could that be a problem anybody can
become rich by thinking about it you
know if if any one of us can just
attract wealth to ourselves and no issue
simply raised up the parallel to what we
call market fund
mentalism right you know the idea that
the market invisible hands will
straighten everything out that you don't
have to intervene you're going to
policies you're planning because there's
this miraculous force it just irons out
everything well maybe a couple of
generations get crushed along the way
but it's basically I think it just it's
completely overlaps with the positive
thinking ideology you don't really have
to do anything because there is a spinel
and invisible deity the market that will
there everything up and right oh you
want to really take a mental leap as
sort of a kind of belief believe that we
could change things this is that it's
the powerlessness of positive thinking
because it always just thinks it always
just envisions you as a lone individual
changing the world or not changing the
world redesigning the world fit your
ideas but we do have strategy we do we
do have power our way of collective
power which we could use to make changes
that would end a great deal of
unnecessary suffering in the world