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Barbara Ehrenreich - Did Positive Thinking Wreck the Economy?

Barbara Ehrenreich - Did Positive Thinking Wreck the Economy?

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DATE : Thu, 05 Nov 2009 17:22:58 -0800
Entered in Database : 2009-11-06 01:22:58
length : 17435083
Link to the Show / Show Notes

Complete video at: http://fora.tv/2009/10/24/Bright-Sided_Barbara_Ehrenreich

Journalist and author Barbara Ehrenreich criticizes the "delusional" positivity that she believes has permeated American culture. She suggests that so-called "negative" realists are persecuted for their attitudes, particularly in business.

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Barbara Ehrenreich presents a sharp-witted knockdown of America's love affair with positive thinking and an urgent call for a new commitment to realism.

Americans are a "positive" people -- cheerful, optimistic, and upbeat: this is our reputation as well as our self-image. But more than a temperament, being positive, we are told, is the key to success and prosperity.

In this utterly original take on the American frame of mind, Barbara Ehrenreich traces the strange career of our sunny outlook from its origins as a marginal nineteenth-century healing technique to its enshrinement as a dominant, almost mandatory, cultural attitude. Evangelical mega-churches preach the good news that you only have to want something to get it, because God wants to "prosper" you. The medical profession prescribes positive thinking for its presumed health benefits. Academia has made room for new departments of "positive psychology" and the "science of happiness."

Nowhere, though, has bright-siding taken firmer root than within the business community, where, as Ehrenreich shows, the refusal even to consider negative outcomes -- like mortgage defaults -- contributed directly to the current economic crisis. - Commonwealth Club of California

Barbara Ehrenreich is the author of thirteen books, including the New York Times bestseller Nickel and Dimed. A frequent contributor to the New York Times, Harpers, and the Progressive, she is a contributing writer to Time magazine. She lives in Florida.