Bright-Sided: A New Book by Barbara Ehrenreich
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Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America
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When I first saw the smiley-faced balloon bobbing across the cover of Barbara Ehrenreich's new book Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of PositiveThinking Has Undermined America, I immediately hoped the book would be about exactly what it is about:
That is, the completely delusional embrace of inane positivity by American corporate culture, and the negative effects that embrace is having on both individual persons and organizations.
I had personal reasons for hoping Ehrenreich would write on this topic. I'll explain them after I review the book.
Ehrenreich has a politically progressive point of view, and if you don't share it, you probably never bother to read her. That's a mistake, because she's not a polemicist like Michael Moore.
Ehrenreich is a topnotch, seasoned journalist with a degree in physics and an advanced degree in biological science. Not only does she thoroughly research every topic before she writes about it (Well, Moore does too, but he's more inflammatory), she actually plunges herself right into the action and then reports from the front lines.
In an earlier book, Nickel and Dimed: On Not Getting By in America, Ehrenreich researched the working poor and assembled all the relevant statistics.
The best part of that book was her attempt to immerse herself in the daily reality of the working poor by applying for some minimum wage American jobs to see if she could live simply on what she earned at them.
In the course of writing Nickel and Dimed, Ehrenreich worked as a maid, and as a clerk at Walmart, among other things, and what she discovered was that it really isn't that hard to end up on the street in the U.S. even while working one's ass off. In other words, contrary to the popular aphorism, it's way lonelier at the bottom than it is at the top.
No surprise to those of us who have 'been there, done that', but very gratifying to see in print, backed up by statistics and available for purchase at major bookstores everywhere.
Bright-Sided was inspired by Ehrenreich's personal bout with breast cancer, during which she discovered that the politically correct attitude for today's breast cancer patient is--surprise, surprise--relentless positivity and an unspoken requirement that the patient purchase and wear an assortment of products with pink ribbons printed on them.
Ehrenreich details how her legitimate questions about the etiology and treatment of her disease earned her shaming lectures about the dangers of 'negativity' vis a vis her recovery from cancer. Her background in molecular biology told her that positivity and even the immune system have absolutely nothing to do with getting cancer or recovering from it, and in researching the basis for the 'think yourself well' philosophy, she discovered that nothing had changed: It doesn't work.
The cancer part of the book is painful to read but really should be read by anyone facing cancer. The second part of the book, the part that deals with the history of positive thinking in America and its wholesale adoption by corporate America is in some ways even more alarming, if less raw.
Drawing from previous research for her book Bait and Switch (about downsizing and the ubiquitous pseudoscience of 'life coaching' that has sprung up to exploit the market of the recently unemployed), Ehrenreich talks about how it is no longer enough to just perform well at a job--instead, the American worker must perform well while smiling relentlessly.
Today, the slightest hint of negativity can be cause for dismissal.
Ehrenreich dissects The Law of Attraction and books that promote its tenets like the best-seller The Secret. She reveals the magical thinking that underlies Law of Attraction principles and the bogus physics often invoked as 'scientific evidence' that it all works.
But the best part of the book is her analysis of how principles of positive thinking serve to insulate the uber-rich from the consequences of their actions. If success depends on having the right mindset, then anyone who is not successful is simply not thinking clearly, not generating enough positivity, not imagining wealth hard enough.
The corollary of this idea, though spoken out loud somewhat less often, is that the very rich are not just affluent, they are spiritually superior.
Who is best served by such a philosophy?
Ehrenreich talks about how forced positivity has replaced analysis and criticism in corporate culture with disastrous results. She notes that several well-placed executives at major financial institutions loudly criticized subprime mortgages and the lax underwriting principles that went along with them far in advance of the insanely creative securitization of these horrid products---and these people were fired. They were fired. Why?
For not having a positive attitude.
It isn't just that relentless inane positivity is annoying and false, or that such a philosophy falsely validates the superiority of the rich and the inferiority of the poor. The deeper problem is that relentless, requisite positivity has created a corporate culture almost devoid of common sense: A parallel universe in which critical thinking is a sign of personal weakness and a great attitude is more important attribute for a CEO than a detailed understanding of how his or her company works.
It is literally as if America has gone mad.
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Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America
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This Land Is Their Land: Reports from a Divided Nation
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For Her Own Good: Two Centuries of the Experts Advice to Women
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Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America
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The Smiley Balloon Incident
I spent eight years of my life working in corporate call centers.
Between 2000 and late 2008 I was what is euphemistically known in the trade as a CSR, or Customer Service Representative.
'CSR' is corporate-speak for 'lying wage slave'.
You know me, you really do.
You may have even spoken to me personally at some point. I was the drone you reached after dialing that 800 number, negotiating a 15-part phone menu and possibly having to start over several times before reaching the end of it, waiting on hold for anywhere from 3 to 20 minutes, and almost stroking out as you got angrier and angrier and angrier.
Just before you completely lost your mind (but not your temper...yet) you finally got ahold of me, "Hi my name is Pam, how can I help you today?": Another fake-cheerful automaton who patiently explained to you why your problem was not the corporation's problem but wouldn't you really like to buy something else from us since you're already on the phone anyway?
I was the person who said those inane things for eight long years. With a smile in my voice.
Or else.
It was one of the few jobs available around here, and now it's hard to even get that kind of job.
I worked for two different corporations during my CSR days: a multinational insurance company and a huge regional bank (that has since gone bust). Both places were obsessed with promoting a workplace culture of relentless and truly insane positivity.
Failure to smile or participate in endless parade of morale-boosting activities (for example, "Dress like a Cowboy Day," "Wear a Silly Hat Day," "Dress like an 80s Rock Star Day", and so forth) was grounds for losing all or part of your annual merit raise.
Critical comments or complaints of any kind could get you fired. Both places were alternate reality zones: Not so much workplaces as Disney-esque theme parks where all the rides were woozy rollercoasters on which customers cussed at you while your grinning supervisor slapped smiley faces on your cubicle walls and you kept grinning and working harder and harder for less and less money.
The supervisors were forever concocting 'incentives' to boost performance and reward positive attitude. (Anything except higher wages and real benefits.) Most of these incentives involved food that nobody should eat, much less people who are not allowed to move for 8-10 hours per day.
One week, in a fit of uncharacteristic creativity, someone hit on the idea of handing out smiley-faced helium balloons as a reward for meeting certain performance goals. (We periodically had contests--for example, to see which team could log the lowest pee time--which we had to quantify on our computers by logging out in under a specific 'pee time' code.)
This smiley balloon incentive came just after the call center director announced that the corporation had decided to do some 'right-sizing' to make us more competitive. One young man, who was on his 3rd crappy call center job at age 24, broke all protocol by shouting out, "Call it what it is! You're laying people off! 'Right-sizing' my ass!"
The first balloons to hit the floor after that resulted in a near-walkout. Supervisors were instantly deluged with complaints. I myself received a smiley balloon, and quietly tied it to the cubicle of an employee who hadn't 'earned' one.
By the end of the week, so much bad feeling had been generated that a public but begrudging apology was made to the plebes by a team of supervisors who complained about our ingratitude and bad attitudes in the same breath that they said they were sorry we turned out to be such ungrateful miscreants.
The last year I was a CSR (this time at the bank) I saw clearly that the bank was failing and said so, over and over. This earned me a reputation for being depressive and negative and for spreading lies about the corporation.
In January of 2009, to avoid being seized by FDIC, that bank was force-sold to a larger bank by the Treasury Department using TARP funds. At that time, the stock was (not) selling at $1.73 per share.
Bright-Sided was an enjoyable read, and a serious one, but more than that, it made me feel vindicated. At last.
Vindicated and unemployed.
If I knew where that kid who shouted out "Lay-offs!" at the corporate smiley face 'right sizing' meeting was today, I'd send him a copy.
For free.
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T'is true, if wishes were horses all beggars would ride.
Wanting it so doesn't make it so. And this philosophy you described runs far beyond the corporate world, or the medical world; it is a national mania.
Anyone with a few firing brain cells can look around to see all is not well with the world and certainly not with the nation, but still we are berated when we try to point this out, but those screaming mindless platitudes including the every popular "this is the greatest nation the world has ever seen" quickly drown out any reasoned attempt at intelligent discussion.
An attempt to speak the truth -- not left wing or right wing -- just the plain truth, earns the speaker nothing but the most rabid of attacks. Just look around these pages at some of the comments affixed to hubs where someone has researched, put forth logic and reason and is met with rant, sloganism and dismissal.
Positive thinking has its place, but not to the denial of reality.
An excellent hub.
Dusanotes--Thank you! I appreciate you stopping by and reading the review.
Immartin--Yes it's almost like "Don't make me think or I'll hurt you!" lol!
Seriously though, I've been fascinated for some time by what seems to me to be extreme paranoia at the top and upper middle incomes--the armored vehicles favored byt suburbanites, the gated communities, the fear of food (remind me of how the Kings of Europe used to have 'tasters' for their food to make sure it wasn't poisoned). It is as if they know their economic affluence is predicated on the suffering of other and so they live in a constant state of defensiveness that turns into a kind of mental illness after awhile.
I see the cult of positivity as an extension of this inequality and its psychological consequences. Really, what we have is bad for the rich too--but it's worse for us.
And yeah, the nasty irrational commentary on well-researched political hubs is a total drag. Thanks for reading and commenting. :)
Right On Girl!
So well written - thank you. I'm am however, one of those eternal optimists and in my life anyway, it has served me well. I will not allow anxieties about all my tomorrows ruin my present day. That is not to say that my thinking does not include a healthy dose of reality checks on a daily basis.... I think a good middle road between positive thinking without ignoring reality might be my answer. Really, great hub!!!
I love the way you expounded your feelings about the book and how you related them to your own personal experiences in a precise and direct manner.
A great hub.
Thanks,
MMS
Thank you JamesBenjamin, ThisnThat and msorensoon! I appreciate you all taking the time to read my review and comment. :)
If you get a chance to check out the book, it really is good and is a quick easy read.
I love this! Living in a new age community I'm confronted with this ** constantly and it makes me sick (or am I just being too negative, lol!) Anyways, I think aiming to add some positivity to the mix is fine as long as it's not in your face every second as a cure for cancer, the current state of world and local affairs, and is used to make you feel guilty for truth telling and facing reality. Oh, and I loved Nickel and Dimed and Barbara Ehrenreich is fantastic - I now must read her new book! Oh, did you ever see the movie Clerks? It's all about the moronic corporate morale boosting culture.
Hi Kartika! Clerks is one of my all-time favorite movies! Kevin Smith is too cool. The sequel is pretty good too--not always true but in this case it was great.
I'm with you on the positivity. To some degree, setting goals and trying to stay upbeat is a good thing for anyone and can really help people achieve what they want. But it's gotten to be a way of blaming people for problems that aren't really their fault at all, and that really gets to me.
You see this so much in the health care debate for instance and in the discussion of Swine Flu. When I wrote about getting Swine Flu, I heard from so many people who were all about "if you have a strong immune system and a good attitude you won't get it," or "I never worry about it and I won't get the vaccine because I take 'fill-in-the-blank' daily and have a good attitude."
Well, fine. But infectious disease doesn't really care if you have a good attitude or not if it's virulent enough, and here's the thing: Taking that tack blames sick people for their own illness, which is not just nuts, it's cruel and inhumane. You can have a great attitude and get cancer or get run over by a bus. It happens. No one wants to deal with reality anymore, it's too 'negative' and upsetting. There's a lot of superstition in that, I think.
In the health care debate we hear all this lip service to prevention. Eat right, exercise, etc. OK, I'm all for that. But it isn't as though that is an ironclad guarantee that nothing bad will ever happen. Remember runner Jim Fixx? Really healthy guy, wrote book after book, died of heart attack while running.
There's a t-shirt: Eat Right, Exercise Daily, Die Anyway.
Similarly, while obesity is linked to a number of chronic diseases, saying so is VERY different than saying "Americans get sick because they are fat and smoke and so it's their own fault." Europe has a higher rate of disease than the U.S. (largely because smoking is more accepted and so are fatty rich foods, even though Europeans tend to be thinner) but their medical outcomes are BETTER than ours and they have lower infant mortality and a longer lifespan. Why? Accessible medical care. So we use this kind of thinking to bash people. It's messed up.
Thanks for commenting. :)
It's the dumbing down of the actual thought of intelligent writers/philosophers to use it in a very political way to justify an ends to a means. How they did it is another story - it's like they play on people's sense of decency and desire to be responsible...beyond successful. Makes me sick.
Yes, the dumb-@ss 'treats,' token balloons and Disney land antics of the corporate world. Even beyond the CSR level. I'm in a 'good' situation now, but that is only because I networked my way in through a woman who is now my boss--who does have some decency about her. But then again, I don't take it for granted either, and am prepared for whatever way I may leave the fold... It's like there is this false, above-board happy smiley culture--but the real vibe is subterranean, told in whispers, usually, out of fear for watching your back.
Haha. Good call on the armored vehicles anectdote, ;). A marketing director was fired about 6 months ago who drove a HumVee. Evidently, he lived in an exclusive, lovely, gated Santa Fe housing development.
Hi Lita~ Yes, you nailed it with the subterranean 'watch your back' vibe in the corporate workplace. At my jobs it broke down kind of like this: About a quarter of the plebes were company drones who believed every word of crap coming down from corporate and would slit your throat in a heartbeat to keep their $12 an hour job. Another quarter were enraged to the point of insurrection and were in some stage of being pushed out or fired. And about 50% were in the 'keep quiet talk to no one' mode of knowing the truth but needing the money and trying to stay out of the gunfire.
It was kind of an intentional process though--I mean, it was engineered for sure. Newbies were all grinning drones (me included) hoping to do well and be promoted. Then reality sunk in (no promotions, forget that) and newbies moved to quiet drudgery. Finally, most people went into meltdown rage mode and quit or were fired. Supervisors admitted to an 'up or out' management policy-- two years at the insurance job, one at the bank. Since only a very small number COULD move 'up', most were 'out' on schedule.
Saves on benefits and raises.
If they ever pass EFCA the first thing that will happen is employee on employee violence--those two 25% camps wailing on each other. But they'll never pass EFCA.
Most of the corporate jobs will be overseas by the time it's even a possibility.
Good luck on your position. They are lucky to have you for sure. :)
I think much of Gen X is cynical. The people I work with in the basically creative end of marketing are all happy to have their jobs...happy to be professional and have a decent salary, but I've had discussions with more than one who wouldn't want to move up the ladder--no way, no how. Once you get in the corner offices, they are fond of saying around the building, you are visible & that's dangerous. Lotsa firings, :).
The 'presumed privilege' of the managers and execs is often comical...and Pam (lol, our boss is named Pam, too) lets us laugh (she's sorta decent, as I said). Our new marketing director, however, is at least a seasoned professional who is enthusiastic and a nice guy...he even drives a truck which needed a jump start. lol So who knows, maybe it will be OK.
I'm only too aware that anything could change in an instant, however. I've been in too many situations where planned obsolescence of employees and turn-over were key parts to the business management plan. The last job I had at a newspaper they managed to force us out when they needed to 'downsize' - telling us we were bad employees who did something wrong. The big joke on them is that both of us 'forcees' went on to better things...and I'm bad enough that (and the Sedona area is pretty small) I sink a few verbal knives in and around the unethical witch manager/publisher who instigated the forcings. Not hard to do...she has kind of a reputation. She lives in a 'nice' look-alike gated community, too, :).
I guess the trip to survival and keeping your soul is to live in a constant state of quiet range, no?
Pam-this positivity is all so damned depressing! Though I have not worked in a corporate climate, I have been 'encouraged' to be happy-or else.
Thanks for this hub, I recently heard an interview with Ehrenreich on NPR-she's a fabulous social scientist.
Being a CSR for a failing bank must be worse than being water-boarded. Good review of Ehrenreich's new book. I read "Nickled and Dimed" which was quite good. She's one of my favorites.
This sounds like a fun book. Really. I've run into that a lot.
Like most big lies, this corporate positivity takes a grain of truth and misapplies it out of context.
Optimism has some benefits. It can make the difference between believing I can land on my feet in a bad situation or not and set me looking for a way out. Planning ways to get past the trouble is more effective than worrying about what can go wrong, sometimes that does turn up ways to deal with the bad situation. Knowing it's not the end of the world -- even just "I'm not dead yet so it's not over till it's over" is good to keep the grief from interfering with survival activity. Optimism has kept me moving forward and not giving up on my self-set goals for decades.
At the same time I'm aware that it could easily have nothing to do with any cultural ideas I read or absorbed. It could be an accident of brain chemistry that turned me into an optimist. It would make sense on a biological level for a population to have a range between optimistic explorers and worrywarts who do notice dangers before they happen. Either can be adaptive in a given situation. A group with both may actually have both advantages, just like a group that includes both early risers and nightowls will not lack for a midnight sentry.
A critical view of life, honestly critical, is essential because most people face greater risks from other people than anything else in nature. We're only now beginning to consider that it may not be that bright to stamp out all other predators in our size range who like the taste of our prey, an instinct all meat-eaters have. Lions kill cheetah cubs. Humanity is close to wiping out the lions, big surprise.
Successes have consequences.
Every cloud has a silver lining and every silver lining will generate another toxic cloud, a set of new conditions for which the old solutions do not always work. Everything is going to have side effects. Everything is going to have unanticipated consequences.
I oon't see some worldwide conspiracy of junk food manufacturers, call center bosses, banks and governments to deprive individuals of their liberty and sanity and health. I see a random confluence of consequences building up, things that can be dealt with but only if they are recognized as prbblems before they collapse.
I never stuck in companies with that type of structure very long. Early on, I got bit. I never fit in well enough to go along to get along and I walked out of bad jobs so fast that the door spun behind me hitting them in the nose -- for irrational reasons they could not understand. Because I never thought of those jobs as important, didn't define myself by them at all, didn't think of that job as who I am or give anything to the company but my time and services.
I always had that completely internal goal of someday becoming a full time novelist and viewed every "job" as a temporary expedient step on the way to getting up whenever I wanted, writing a lot of good books and getting moderately famous at least among readers of my flavor of sleeping aid. I have come to comprehend that the truest value of what I've chosen to spend my life doing is that if I do it well, people can get their minds off their troubles for a few minutes at bedtime and go to sleep far more interested in what happens next chapter than what that bloke in the next cubicle thinks of them.
Which is nothing to sneeze at, it doesn't suppress the REM cycle and it may even make them think about things from a different direction. But my writing is mostly a sleep aid.
I would find it difficult to believe these social beliefs persist if I hadn't seen them in action time and again.
Some companies don't have this culture as far as I can tell. I spend a ludicrous amount of my spending money on art supplies because several good companies don't seem to think or act that way. The customer service people are knowledgeable and they genuinely help. If they don't know, they get back to me with the information I want. They take minor company errors in stride and resolve them in my favor, I can count on the right color of paper or an unbroken pencil getting shipped as soon as I inform them of the goof and sure enough, next month 90% of my spending money goes into another order because they were generous about an 89 cent pencil and took my word that it arrived damaged or was missing.
They're probably aware of their error percentages statistically and know that some brands of art supplies have a higher chance of factory errors than others.
So I know that it's possible for quite large companies NOT to take this kind of attitude. I've had long friendly interchanges with customer service from art supply companies with people who don't keep pleading that there's nothing they can do but would I like to buy something else since I'm on the phone. That's phone-ocmpany flavor BS, that's bank-flavored BS.
So now I'm looking at -- what makes this pattern so different between a giant mail-order company and a bank or a phone company?
The founders of the art supply companies that I deal with -- and Blick is sure not the only one with good policies either, one of them cleaned up its act after a brief time of having nasty-normal customer service with plenty of BS and we can't help you vs. sorting out shipping problems and correcting erroneous ads -- is that a lot of the art supply companies are founded by artists.
The artists were successful, supplemented their art income selling supplies, got really into making supplies and drifted gradually into selling supplies. The companies grew word of mouth within artistic communities and the founders continued to paint and innovate. Someone who doesn't have the color he wants for his painting and experiments to formulate it will still be creative three decades later thinking "I wonder if I can do a lightfast sort of iridescent shimmery version of that blue" or "Maybe people want a set of colors that would accurately reflect Florida sunlight instead of northern woods in this pastel series... I needed that turquoise, lots of people paint tropical scenes, maybe this will sell."
They're connected with what they're doing and it's tangible.
Another reason is perhaps that art supply companies are more directly connected between the customer and the production of the product. Most of them have house brands of the product. Most of them will actively seek out manufacturers who themselves are companies founded whenever by some artist who got more interested in how to make paint than how to use it. The ones that still have artists working for them -- Winsor & Newton is a good example -- stay closer connected to the reality of what they're producing.
I read up on W&N and when they're looking to fill their min-wage jobs, they look for people who paint for a hobby or are working to supplement art career incomes. The phone answerer is also a customer. The employee discounts on the products are a valuable perk to the people who work at W&N or wherever. The min-wagers hang onto the jobs partly for being a better atmosphere than the phone company and partly because it's easier to get the discount on their weekend goodies and they get the new stuff sooner.
So there's a complete alternate type of corporate culture going on in another industry. There may be many reasons why a tradition of better customer service and its implied corollary -- that the employees who do it are being treated better in a healthier work environment than the phone-company, bank-call-center, etcetera.
Wal-mart is an interesting case in itself. For a long time under Sam Walton it was not the worst offender at all. Walton had some definite ideas about quality, price, management and fairness that while not quite as niche-affected as the art supply companies, still made it a better place to work than a lot of others. It succeeded in using economy of scale for a great deal of its initial success and had some common sense in management.
Then it changed and became one of the worst corporate-positivity big-lie customer and employee abusers around for a long time. I'm not sure what it's doing now. I haven't checked on it lately a
There is a big difference in positivity and denial. Positive thinking is at the root of productivity. Can't never did anything. But, the fact is you can jump off a roof and say, "I don't believe in gravity" all the way to the ground.
Thanks for your comments everybody. :)
Lita--It's been quite a few years since I had a corporate job that wasn't a grunt job. It probably is better in positions like yours. I know that even at the bottom as a plebe CSR I understood pretty quick that being average and invisible was the way to go. The spattering of supervisory positions were NOT a good deal--not really a promotion. A little more money, a lot more grief. Really, middle management jobs have just been gutted--but the ones that are left are worse than entry level jobs if you ask me--you get lots of grief above and below for little additional money.
I worked for PBS before my kids were born, then went back to college when they were school age, taught college for awhile part-time and did route sales and service for a book distributor. By the time I had to get a corporate job I had been out of the loop for years, working in my husband's landscape design business. The world had changed radically--it was all cubicles, all the time, all crap. So depressing. I don't miss it at all.
Ralph--I've never been waterboarded but I suspect working at the bank was indeed pretty close. Hey maybe they could close Gitmo and just give all those guys CSR jobs at Citi. Nah--too cruel.
Robert--Yeah, I think that there are still some CSR jobs that are not crap. LLBean is often held up as an ideal example. But the push for more and more profit without adding more and more value to get it has naturally resulted in a degradation of the American workplace and a loss of wages and benefits. The next step is outsourcing these jobs for good. I made $14 an hour at the insurance company and $10 an hour at the bank, and the bank had sales thresholds I had to make to not get fired. That's not good money IMO. You can't live on it alone--unless you're living at the YWCA. I figured up my costs for working at the bank one day and realized, this isn't worth it. It just isn't.
papajack and lorie6--I think positive thinking can be good, but I like papa's analogy: You can't jump off a building and declare "I don't believe in gravity" and expect that to go well, which is what is happening now in a lot of workplaces and in terms of dime store philosophy.
I also think that we put too much emphasis on happiness and cheer. It's nice to be happy, but only insofar as it contrasts with being unhappy. Requiring happiness is oppressive and unnatural and obscures the reality that life is often hard and people suffer: It's part of the human condition.
"The corollary of this idea, though spoken out loud somewhat less often, is that the very rich are not just affluent, they are spiritually superior."
I hadn't spotted the implied social Darwinism there - thanks for pointing it out.
Money's whole purpose is to represent value. These days the concept has been turned on its ear, and money practically represents the reverse: the misery you accept for yourself and spread to the world in order to acquire said money, which you will then spend on products and services that are brought to you by people who are doing the same thing themselves. It's self-evident that the opposite of value is debt or detriment, and it's little bits of detriment that people swap around for goods and services their whole lives through. A rich person has simply collected more detriment, and has a greater stake in ensuring the continuation of this system of harm. Currency as a form of abuse - I love it. Why is it so difficult to pin down like this? The average person will say to you, "Why no, money is a perfectly fair and above-board system. You earn money, you buy groceries. Where's the abuse in that?" Perhaps it's /how/ we do what we do, rather than so much /what/ it is we do, that determines abuse. Anything in life can be done with grace, compassion and dignity, or it can be rendered into a caricature of itself in subtly abusive ways. And you're right, the economic system has done just that. Accountability would require defining the problem in concrete terms, although human rights abuses are pretty straightforward when someone's called on it. Thoughts?
"Requiring happiness is oppressive and unnatural and obscures the reality that life is often hard and people suffer: It's part of the human condition."
I agree Pam. This artificial pursuit of whatever they call happiness gives rise to disappointment and often, despair.
Anyway, when you encounter them, it's so obvious the difference between an automated cheer and a truly cordial smile that comes from the heart.
Hi Satori--I always think of how the Biblical warning 'The love of money is the root of all evil' gets shorthanded to 'Money is the root of all evil'. Really, loving money is precisely the problem, not money itself. Money is a symbol--it only has whatever meaning we ascribe to it. It used to be that money was a sort of receipt for grain or gold or whatever it was you didn't want to haul around with you, but now it is so disconnected from any real value that it is almost backed by madness. The more you have, the crazier and sicker you are likely to be. I am to the point where I have to not care about money. It's gotten so insane and evil, the rat race and what we are expected to do to be 'good' productive members of society--which is just another way of saying good slaves. At some point a person just has to say no. Just say no to Satan, or something like that. There's this idea in Buddhism of taking refuge in the dharma. I think of money and the rat race as the thing people might be inclined to take refuge FROM. Good to see you!
Rosario--Yes, I agree with you. It isn't maudlin or depressive to acknowledge that suffering is real and we all will have some of it in our lives--some more than others. Ironically I think it's the willingness to feel pain that creates real empathy and kindness, so if we refuse to even look at suffering or acknowledge it in the service of false cheer, we become harder and harder. Thanks for stopping by!
Oh God Pam, thsnks for this. I loved Nickeled and Dimed and now am definitely gonna read this one. Ehrenreich rocks and is a good writer on top of it all.
You still describe a cube farm better than anyone I know even though you are no longer in bondage to the bank ( thank God) Love this comment thread too. Thanks
Hi Roberta! Thank you! You know, you kind of remind me of Ehrenreich, seriously. She's one of my favorites too. Thanks for the cube farm accolade too--I think it's sort of like PTSD for me--burned into my psyche! lol!
Oh, my. You really nailed it this time. You put into words things I've felt but not quite formulated as thoughts for the very longest time! You really hit it right on the button. Not only did your personal experiences speak to me, but the executive who spoke out against toxic mortgages got FIRED! For being NEGATIVE! Though he was absolutely correct.
I find it so hard to believe someone as obviously talented and articulate as you was in those type of wage-slave employment situations, though I know many, many, very good people who are so underemployed.
Pam, I remember the swine flu converstions when you posted that you'd had it. I see this all the time - blaming the victim - if you'd just have taken your vitamins, or if you didn't ever entertain a negative thought, you wouldn't get cancer, or the flu, or laid off, of be poor, or bad things wouldn't happen to you. I think people feel if they can control these things by doing everything "right" they can keep the bad things at bay - When in fact, a guy in our town who was a vegetarian, and avid exerciser just died in his sleep of a heart attack - so it's really about their fear - they don't want to face the fact that life is hard and that no one knows or can control what is around the corner. As you say, its actually a lack of compassion.
Lita, hey liked your points too! I hate corperate - bottom line! But, sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do! I agree with the Buddha - life is suffering! lol
I didn't recognize the author's name at first, but also loved Nickel and Dimed. Made me squirm and think at the same time. This new one sounds like a doozy.
Bless her for busting the positivity cult wide open.
Talk about opiate of the masses!
And bless you, too, for sharing your personal adventures.
I bet you really miss those dress-up days in the call center:-).
Hi Paradise 7--Thank you for the vote of confidence! I've never made lots of money in my life, ever--In fact, the insurance CSR job was the highest wage I've ever earned doing anything. I don't take it personally though. I mean, seriously, the only people around here I know who make much more are doctors, lawyers, nurses, or plumbers. Most of the good jobs in the rust belt have been gone for awhile now.
Kartika--Amen, amen!
Mighty Mom--I can dress up all I want now! lol! (That reminds me...time to put on that gorilla suit and type up some foot powder copy!)
I'm glad I previously joined your fan club. You often come up with some real gems. So many comments here, I haven't read all, so apologies if I restate some. E.g.,
1) If illness is all due to "attitude", why do animals get sick?
2) We don't need to worry about overpopulation and resultant resource, energy, and pollution problems. "We will find a way." And if perchance we don't, the "V"s or Obama or Exxon or Tony Robbins or ? will fix it by providing us with or enabling us to discover unlimited "zero point energy" from the ether.
Thank you so much pgrundy.
You mention feeling vindicated after reading the book. That's how I feel after reading the hub.
CSR. Been there, done that. Four years in various cubicles at the corporate HQ of Office Depot in Delray Beach, followed by three more managing a contract sales office for them in Albuquerque. Since I apparently had a way with words on the phone, I found myself being "promoted" to the call groups responsible for handling "escalated" issues. Every time I was pushed along, the escalation was proportionally unpleasant.
At the sales office, it became my responsibility to put out fires started by our sleazy sales staff who would promise new contract customers anything to close a deal.
I am so relieved by the confirmation that one can't simply make everything alright just by willing it to be so. It has always seemed to me that if nothing more than that was needed, the world would logically be a complete paradise!
Hello, Pam. I worked in Corporate America a few times over and hated it, but not most of the time, mind you. My co-workers, cohorts, and customers kept me going day in and day out. I swore to myself that I wouldn't go back to doing that, but it looks like I might not have a choice. I could go on a rant right about now about all of those lying, cheating bastards but I won't. My time is way too precious to me :D
I really did enjoy your hub and will look into reading this book. If you say it's good, then dammit, it must be! Fight the Power!
I loved Nickel & Dimed. Wonderfully depressing reading!
Pam, how fantastic that someone is at last speaking out against the 'Good Morning, have a nice day!' brigade. A positive attitude gets you a long way in life, but it has to come from the heart. Most people are not good actors, and it doesn't take too much brain to differentiate between a salesperson's genuine concern for your well-being, and their genuine concern for their commission.
Personally I love the idea of 'The Secret'. How fabulous to 'think and grow rich'! If only life were that simple. Yes, thought, as in creative thought, and a positive attitude can get you a long way in life, but just desiring a great long list of life's bounties and thinking about having them is never going to cut it with the Universe. You have to put a little personal effort in too!
Maybe the cult of 'The Secret' is indirectly responsible for a great deal of the Western World's individual debt. After all, the prevailing attitude for much of the last decade has been about having your cake and eating it, and all financed by cheap loans.
Ohh! Thanks, now I at least know I'm not a freak. I've always knew positive thinking can go only soooo far! Then common sense has to intervene!I really enjoyed this read, and when I master this internet marketing thing I'm buying the book
Hi dabeaner--Good point about animals getting sick. And yes, overpopulation is a serious issue. Al Gore has a new book out but I'm going to have to work up to reading that one.
CWB--That's another thing we have in common, the CSR gig. Sometimes I think we are lost siblings or something. I was good at it too, until the very end at the bank. The last couple of months there, no way could I make my sales goal and my attitude suffered. But I never felt that 'good' about being good at it. So confusing.
Dohn--I might have to go back too--if I can. Doubt that I can get even that job at this point around here. I'm 56 and unemployment is unbelievable here. We'll see. Best of luck to you. We all do what we have to do.
Amanda--I know, wouldn't it be great if it really WAS that easy? I do think a positive attitude and goal setting can help some thing, but it's just been so overstated. Thanks for stopping by.
Hendrika--Take it out from the library! That's what I did. You'll like it and it does read fast. Thanks for commenting. :)
hey, one of the few hubs lately that I have read straight through and read over a couple of time. Thanks! I like the idea of the "Secret". Positive thinking in my line of work really serves well (as a Registered Nurse) but we are also slaves of the corporate world also. We constantly have to be on our toes and negative attitudes can be severely dealt with in a healthcare setting. I mean who wants to be sick and have to deal with a contemptible nurse. On the other hand all that nicety and sugar being crammed down your throut is very tiresome. That's why nurses get "burn out". It all comes down to the all mighty dollar.
Hi Pam, another great Hub expose, great to see loads of comments in support of the opposing view point.
For years I have felt this meet and greet, smile your way through the day was a false and wrong way to perform. I am glad the balance is being restored once more. While a positive attitude can't harm you, our negitivity is what makes us human too. Constant positivity is like a sugar rush, if you are down then there comes a point at which all the positive thinking in the world will not change things and you are hit with a crushing reality of your situation.
Off for a cuppa tea, that always works for me, have a nice day now :-).
Hey, it's everywhere and in every walk of life. When I escaped from my husband one of the first things a D.V. "Intake Counselor" said to me was "God never gives us more than we can handle." Ticked me off to no end I told her if that were true there would never be a single suicide. She wrote unco-operative in my "chart".
I'm a person that's action oriented not a wait and see things will get better kind of gal. Give me answers or goals and I'll go for them sit there and spout euphemisms and all I do is get angry. Guess I'll never fit in with the corporate world.
Hi Tammy--My partner is ill and is going into his fourth week off work after two hospitalizations. He may have another one in his immediate future and maybe another surgery or two. I know exactly what you are talking about. Two years ago when he got ill we went to a hospital where all the nurses seemed to be bashing each other and second-guessing the doctors to US--It was so stressful. I mean, we were worried about his illness and there they were bellyaching every time they walked in the room. This time we went to the other hospital and they were obviously on a "no negativity" regimen. It helped us, but I thought, wow, how stressful for them. I admire nurses a lot but could never be one. Such a hard job. Kudos to you and your profession.
knell63--Yes I agree. I think it's good to be polite and optimistic but not the point of delusional thinking. And it should be OK to tell the truth! Enjoy that tea. :)
Hi It's Just Me--Ehrenreich talks about how women are especially pressured to always look at the bright side. I'm like you--I hate those platitudes. Whatever doesn't kill us makes us stronger? Not necessarily! Thanks for stopping by!
This has been soooo refreshing - I love hearing all of this positive thinking bashing - making me feel very positive!
Also, when the Secret make its way to my town and people were flocking to see the DVD, I noticed it seemed all about getting more stuff - like a mansion, a car, a perfect mate - all those things the American marketing media is pushing on us to keep us in consumer mode!
Hi Kartika--I checked The Secret out of the library when it first came out and was surprised at how incoherent it was. It seemed to me like this big mish mash of 'pep talk' type motivational quotes. I was surprised it became so popular so fast because it made no sense to me.
It’s a bit like telling us we’ll get our reward in Heaven - anything but a fair go, here and now.
But ‘positive thinking’ is different things to different people. When I meet (or read the words of) likeminded people I think and feel positive, others might get the same lift from listening to Fox News. Now, to me, that’s depressive thinking.
Hi amillar--Good points. :)
Thanks for coming by and saying hello.
Great Hub as always, Pam.
When trying to become positive, many people suppress their already existing negativity, fears, unhealed traumas, opposing beliefs...they just think that positivity is instant achievement. Many of them expect that just after reading one book their whole life will change...what never happens. It is long and painful process that someone really changes.
Part of the transformation is to accept one´s own "positive" and "negative" side. Nobody cannot be only optimist if there is no real foundation for that.
Constructive criticism - especially in world of business, as well as anywhere else- is necessary, I cannot agree more with you, some things cannot be changed only by quickly applying positive attitude, because that positivity is just on the surface and is big lie. And yes, this "wrong" positivity can become very big obstacle and cause further problems to the many.
In my country,majority of people are naturally depressive and more negative...they are very critical, ( not constructive though), but result of that is failure on all levels as well. And yes, they are ill because of their negativity, mentally, emotionally and physically. Even if everything works well, they do not want to see the positive side of their lives, it is horrible to live in such surrounding, such ones just make everyone else ill and looser. Fortunately, they are not all like that and many are willing to be positive, when needed.
I love The Secret, but this book came to me after many years of working on myself, and many years of analysing so I can tell all the best about it - it helped me a lot. From the another point of view, people who think while reading it, that they can change easily....well, they will be disappointed for sure and they can be misguided - but not by the book, more by their own expectations of instant results, what is very naive and book never promises. Anyone who tries to force the others into positivity (without deep understanding where this positivity leads) - fails.
I admire your criticism, because wrong understanding of that book leads to consumerism, I was also thinking a lot about that ...
BTW, s a healer, 13 years of my experiences say that only people who believe in themselves and their own healing powers become healthy. Negative ones - stay ill, or very soon get another disease. If person is optimistic on the surface, it does not mean that is not full of inner fears, and disbeliefs. Maybe this explains something.
USA is country which gave to the world the most precious gifts of teaching the world wisdom of self-worthiness...but from the another side many Americans are so paranoid, much more then the rest of the world...so combination of two of that cannot lead to overall success.
Thank you very much for your great and thought-provoking Hub.
I really love your articles.
Hi Tatjana-Mihaela! Thank you for your thoughtful comment. I have found that I enjoy reviewing books that were interesting reads for me, so I've been doing that on and off here. I like Barbara Ehrenreich because she tells the truth and she actually experiences what she writes about, and this book really rang true for me.
I will admit I have had some success with goal setting and creative visualization and so on, but like you point out, I think it is a matter of balance and truthfulness. Everyone has bright and dark in them and just pretending to be 'up' all the time will make a person as sick as staying down all the time. Thanks again for reading and sharing your thoughts!
I think in Canada this positive-attitude-stamp-on-your-face is even worse. People are so sugarly, you feel like throwing up or ... hitting somebody right in the face sometimes, and I am not a violent person. Thanks, Pam. I accidently pressed the wrong button and stopped being you fan,I think, but I am, truly, cross my heart and hope not to die too early... I love your hubs!
Hi Home Girl! I love Canada--but yeah, you guys are way nicer than us, and I guess it could get old up there, being around all that chronic niceness. Thanks for stopping by!
Great hub, Pam.
I have a close friend who works in a call center, so I hear about the indignities of that kind of work every time I speak with her. Of course, the wages are nothing to brag about.
Do not these companies realize that by paying these low wages, they are, in effect, putting a tourniquet on their arm and cutting off the circulation of money? I believe that if they would change their attitude, they would receive many times back what they put out. God said, "Thou shalt not steal." And they are stealing, both in the financial and emotional sense. Don't get me wrong, pay isn't everything -- it's just part of the puzzle. The quality of the work environment is so important too.
I am glad that I never worked in a corporate culture.
Hi gracenotes--Good points! You'll get no argument from me! If I never see another call center it will be too soon. Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts. :)
dusanotes says:
2 weeks ago
Thank you, pGrundy, for those insightful words. You called out a problem that you saw frequently and I enjoyed getting into your experience and viewpoint. Not all people believe the same, that's for sure. Don White