I recently was forwarded an article entitled "The Power of Negative Thinking" by Barbara Ehrenreich and was amazed by her attempt to paint "positive thinking" in a simplistic and negative light. She uses loaded adjectives to denigrate positive thinking by calling it; "delusional optimism", " and deluded optimist". She starts out by linking" positive thinking" with "greed and it's crafty sibling, speculation" and blames it for the financial crisis. A pretty extreme attack and devastating if it's true but it's not true and her simplification demonstrates her own bias. She creates straw men to argue against.
She goes own to contrast Calvinist thought as one extreme and "positive thinking" as the other extreme and she offers "realism" as an alternative to both. I think her analysis of both "extremes" are off base, simplistic and hides her point of view.
Ms Ehrenreich is no fan of individualism, capitalism, entrepreneurship, American exceptionalism, success or personal development.
Ms Ehrenreich is a leader of the Democratic Socialist of America. She supports "wealth redistribution" and she doesn't support personal success and personal wealth so it is no surprise that she dislike an optimism that leads to personal success and not so called group "empowerment".
So I say what is realism? Is there a middle ground between the two outlooks of optimism or pessimism? i don't think so. Both optimist and pessimist can be realist. Take a look at an example; If you lose your job you make a realistic assessment that you lost your job. Now what? Do you take an optimistic point of view of a negative point of view about the future and do you get busy turning it around or do you give up. A realistic assessment is a given but optimism or pessimism is a choice that will determine your future results.
Ms Ehrenreich lumps all schools of "positive thinking" together everyone from Oprah, megachurches, Tony Robbins and self-help best sellers. Yet they all have different approaches and perspectives on "positive thinking". I agree with some and disagree with others.
My optimism is always based on a realistic assessment of the situation at hand and a specific plan to achieve the results I am aiming for. I recognize there are no guarantees but I believe there is a solution to every problem and if it isn't the 1st one I try I will keep trying other ones until I achieve a positive outcome.'
My perspective incoporates the good in the Calvinistic hard work ethic together with the the need to make a realistic assesment of the situation and combined with that an optimistic mindset. I prefer to see it as a Optimistic Succcess Mindset.
So Ms Ehrenreich is welcome to her "realism". I will choose optimism over pessimism and realism any day
Read her article and draw your own conclusions.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/24/opinion/24ehrenreich.html
No comments:
Post a Comment