But if I buy enough scratch-off lottery tickets with my unemployment check, I can get rich in ‘Murica!

Positive thinking is a secular way of declaring faith will solve all problems. When faith is the ultimate expression of inner virtue, rampant self-delusion just puts you closer to God.

Pollyanna Nation.

This is one of the best books I’ve read this year, but then I’m a glass half-empty kind of guy.

See, as a consultant, I’m the guy you bring in to tell you that it doesn’t matter whether the glass is half full or half empty. Your REAL problem is that you have twice as much glass as you need.

Thanks…one of the Bobs.

Your basic Tinkerbell Syndrome. If you clap loud enough, Tinkerbell will live! If she dies, it’s your fault for not clapping loud enough!

I saw Ehrenreich on The Daily Show last week. She was great.

BTW, doesn’t it make a difference re what the glass is half full OF — like water vs. poison?

The Poison is the Water.

The Way of the republiKKKan.

PS Pay fer it, bitchez.

And now for a brief defense of the benefit of a positive outlook.

Keeping a positive outlook does more than just prevent you from slipping into nihilism. It allows you to continue to explore for solutions. One of the things I try to get across to pilots during safety seminars is that there’s almost always a way to prevent disaster–you just have to find it. The U.S. with its positive can-do mindset produces demonstrably superior pilots, and I have found that pilots with an upbeat, positive outlook perform better by all measures.

So, yeah–overindulging the pollyanna can certainly do you in. But not believing that something better is possible pretty much consigns you to failure every time.

Bust their union, underpay ‘em, don’t train ‘em – positive outlook or not, they crash just like pilots in the Third World.

I want my glass to be half full of sapphire martini, extra dry, thanks. OK? Alright, 3/4 full.

…and Ehrenreich makes that point. Her main thrust is against enforced happy-happy and how you are made to feel guilty or are to blame when things go badly due to your appalling and inappropriately realistic outlook.

Was it not the estimable Dave Foley of Kids In The Hall that said,

An optimist says a glass is half full.
A pessimist says the glass is half empty, and I may have bowel cancer.

Indeed.

My grandmother was angry that my grandpa couldn’t see fit to laugh away his lung cancer. Her insistence on enforced jollification when he was sicker than a dog was cruel. Not only was he miserable, it was his own fault for not having the right attitude (thank you Norman Vicent Peale). This is just plain delusional thinking–not simply adopting a positive outlook.

“the question is not whether the glass is half full or half empty. the question is ‘is it water or vodka?’”
-Townes van Zandt

Wait–meaning, Derelict was in the group? I saw them twice! In Pennsyl-damn-vania!

Or is a reference to one of their songs?

You’re a “Donna”? So am I!!

Just go for a bigger glass. Then it won’t matter if it’s “1/2″ or “3/4″ full.

“Positive thinking”, like religion, is simply another ruse to distract the masses from taking effective action to eliminate the massive structural inequalities which are the real cause of most their problems.

I still need to read her book. I loved her interview on The Daily Show. Idiot America – which in a way is related – was very good, though.

You dreary dour douchebags can rot in hell.

I always keep an upbeat positive attitude.

So fuck you.

…and a stock market, Fed and Treasury based on Peter Pan and Snow White…

I’m a psychotherapist, and use a lot of cognitive behavioral therapy with my patients. I learned that there has been research that shows that the difference between depressed and non-depressed people is not that the non-depressed people have more positive thoughts than depressed people (they don’t), it is that they have more neutral thoughts.

Spoken like a true socialistic social sciences guy, and I bow deeply in your direction because of it. No one cut through the BS quicker when I was a college student than a professor of similar attitudes, and it changed my outlook (acquired from my rethug father, who has never met a fact he can’t ignore if it is inconvenient) and opened my eyes forever.

I hate these losers with their diseases, broken bones and complaints about losing jobs.

Can’t you just “Smile!”

Steven M at nomoremisterblog has a great post on Glenn Beck becoming a televangelist. it fits right in with the power of positive thinking industry.

“So now we see what Glenn Beck really is: He’s basically a televangelist. A huckster. A late-night pitchman selling seminars and book/DVD/audio combo packages that will allegedly help you get rich through flipping real estate. A human-potential-movement cult leader who promises life breakthroughs in exchange for participation in costly “religious” or “therapy” programs.”

I see Sara Palin cashing in on this in the very near future.