Positive thinking...

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Barbara Ehrenreich
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Read the article ”How Positive Thinking Wrecked the Economy” and about her new book ”Bright-sided: how the relentless promotion of positive thinking has undermined America” and also the article ”The Medicated Americans: Antidepressant Prescriptions on the Rise. Close to 10 percent of men and women in America are now taking drugs to combat depression. How did a once rare condition become so common?”

And also this artikel.

Addition October 17: Quite ironically and thinking loudly here. Yes, these positive thinking demands can be to scorn people with real and big troubles… All kinds of troubles the environment doesn’t want to deal with? Neither here-and-now problems (structural) nor other problems.

Maybe responsibilities (for the community, structural and human) the environment pushes away? The flipside of the individualism (or maybe the reason for the sort of individualism we see today)? (Can't both exist side by side; can't individuals AND the group exist side by side, WITH true, genuine respect for the individual who doesn't become invisible in the crowd? Where you both see and hear the individual? Wouldn't that be the healthiest community?)

Yeah, "positive thinking" can become (and has been and is) an oppression tool. But you should be entitled to think positively ONLY when there are reasons for it.

Of course, with all due respect, there are people who really need "help" (using the word "help" sounds like you are looking down, from above, on the person with troubles) with their negative thinking, i.e. real, genuine depressions, depressions there are (always) reasons for I think. Maybe reasons we don't want to know about or deal with however. Because they are touching our own early experiences (experiences that seem to be universal, as we all share more or less, experiences that aren't unavoidable however!).

Things not even professionals want to deal with really, either than on a not too, for their peace of mind, threatening level?

Also read "Traumatic childhood experiences take 20 years off life expectancy."

Addition in the evening (slightly updated October 18): In an article, on a new book about happiness by the Swedish neoliberal Johan Norberg, you can read that the Swedes were one of the happiest people in the world as recently as 2004. International inquiries on self appreciated happiness have shown this. But all Swedes weren’t equally happy. Happiness depended on class, gender, ethnicity, age, workplace and where you lived.

Drugs give ecstasies and are a global commodity of great proportions and give short term relief. It strikes against all, but the greatest maladjustment occurs in the most exposed and vulnerable parts of the society, in the suburbs and in industrial communities with high unemployment rates.

However, about those circumstances Norberg keeps quiet. He prefers to call us a “we.” And he on the contrary thinks that we are whining about things. Complaining without reasons.

Quite ironically: Where has he gotten this idea from? And is this really true? And what does he know about peoples' living conditions?

It was this with empathy deficits…

The article writer, however, finds that we often don’t give the show away (we are keeping the mask), and play cheerful sides up of ourselves. How many times have we answered sincerely on the question “How are you?” or “How are things going?”

Of course you can’t buy happiness for money. An unreflecting chase on higher standard doesn’t create any happiness, but instead enviousness and bitterness.

Even Norberg (surprisingly) writes that it’s directly damaging for the health to have the only prime motive force to earn money.

The unrestrained neoliberal capitalism, with maximization of profits as the only goal, doesn’t create happiness either. It presupposes a big social maladjustment and great social tensions.

A society with increasing unfairness’s nobody gains on.

In our hyper commercial age the chase for happiness has created a new line of business for hearty self-help books, lifestyle magazines about food, health, exercise, positive thinking and beauty.

"The corporation 'I' ["me, me, me! I want, I have to..."]" is valid everywhere. It’s up to you to find the happiness yourself and the meaning with the existence. And accordingly you just have yourself to blame. In that way the neoliberals have managed to push the conception solidarity away. I.e. to see yourself in other people, to be there for other people, because in fact, tomorrow it can be you who need a helping hand.

Norberg is drawing the wrong conclusion that the ego has to come first. An adult with a healthy maturity doesn’t have a big ego? Has a sound egoism? And is capable of protecting her/himself when necessary, neither more nor less than necessary? And is capable of doing this without harming anybody, neither him/herself or other people.

This neoliberal concept of the world is foremost seeing to selfish needs. But why not try to make another person happy without any demands on services in return?

The Dutch therapist Ingeborg Bosch actually writes about this. That a person with a healthy development can do things for other people and give without demanding anything back. And I think she is right. But it’s definitely also sound to start to call things in question at a certain point, if there’s ONLY one-way-giving!? It’s not sound NEVER asking anything back! As if you were invisible and had no needs. Yes, denying needs can be a defense too.