Abandoning the Rational (The Power of Positive Thinking) 6 March 2007
Posted by VARANGALI in Culture, VARANGALI.trackback
Place your hand on your heart and say… “I admire rich people!” “I bless rich people!” “I love rich people!” “And I’m going to be one of those rich people too!”
T. Harv Eker, Secrets of the Millionaire Mind: Mastering the Inner Game of Wealth
We live in a self-help world. We have to think positive thoughts, believe we “can do it,” and power through adversity with a grin. Perhaps the Cult of Positivity is but another iteration in the quest for individual freedom, or a crass result of our materialist society. Ultimately, however, it stunts our very ability to reason.
… the Cult of Positivity demands not only acts but faith. It’s not enough to manifest positivity through a visibly positive attitude; you must establish it as one of the very structures of your mind, whether or not it is justified by the actual circumstances.
Barbara Enhrenreich
This is the new religion – the scientists now share the temple with yoga instructors, therapists, and authors of self-help manuals. Martin Seligman, University of Pennsylvania psychologist and leading theorist in the positive psychology, believes that negative thoughts are an anachronism from our caveman ancestors:
Because our brain evolved during a time of ice, flood and famine, we have a claustrophobic brain. The way the brain works is looking for what’s wrong. The problem is, that worked in the Pleistocene era. It favoured you, but it doesn’t work in the modern world.
I beg to differ – then, as now, death is the only certainty in life, whether from a saber-toothed tiger or a speeding SUV. And it is this escape from reality that the cult of positive thinking induces. Socrates once referred to philosophy as “practice for dying.” We are sprinting towards the other extreme, where the celebration of life necessarily ignores the inevitability of death, through “positive thinking” – a byword for no thinking at all.
The new spirituality (whether new-age Christian, Scientologist, or stemming from some hazy notion of karma) is lock-in-step with the Cult of Positivity: it is but another channel through which we can go through life with pasty smiles and golden stickers on our foreheads.
I once glanced through a paperback manual of neo-pagan transformation, “Finding the Goddess Within,” or “Becoming a Wiccan,” or something of that ilk, in which the author described a complex series of ritual ablutions designed to awaken the latent power of the Divine Feminine. “But,” as she went on to assure her readers, “if you’re too busy for all this, a nice warm shower will probably work just as well.”
… one of my biggest [fears] is that somehow and in spite of all historical translations and historical precedents (or maybe because of them) I am going to wind up washing my brain out in that nice warm shower.
Garret Keizer
One of the biggest ironies of the Cult of Positivity is that it breeds intolerance and conformity. As Barbara Ehrenreich has noted:
Far from being a “culture of complaint” that upholds “victims,” ours has become “less and less tolerant of people having a bad day or a bad year,” according to Barbara Held, professor of psychology at Bowdoin College and a leading critic of positive psychology. If no one will listen to my problems, I won’t listen to theirs: “no whining,” as the popular bumper stickers and wall plaques warn. Thus the cult acquires a viral-like reproductive energy, creating an empathy deficit that pushes ever more people into a harsh insistence on positivity in others.
The temperature is twelve degrees outside, I have a social psychology class in ten minutes whose reading I have not done, and I slept through Arabic class this morning. And this is mid-term week. I don’t need to smile and sing kumbaya when I get cold-called. I need a solid kick in the butt. Now that’s a prescription that makes good, common sense.
i’m curious: how is it that a celebration of life means ignoring the inevitability of death? is it not, instead, that “positive thinking” means to be positive, always, in the moment and about the moment, be it life or death?
to relate it to our lives as Muslims, are we not supposed to strive to *not* fall into a cycle of despair or depression: but to be in a state of positivity always, through thankfulness and through patience; to always say “alhamdulillah”?
you quote a variety of writers and philosophers to make your point but i’d be curious to know how you’d support your argument using the teachings of Islam . . . :)
-s.
I don’t think the Cult of Positivity is celebrating life – fearful of death, sure – but not necessarily celebrating life. If life is to be lived through a spectrum of experiences and emotional states, then we have to accept that there is a proper time and place for sorrow as well as elation. Islam, for example, allows for three days of mourning after someone’s death. The Cult of Positivity would, conversely, consider the death a positive growth experience to be learned from with a grin and some Enya.
The Cult of Positivity equates a positive attitude with happiness – i.e. the way to reach happiness is simply to think happy thoughts. We need to accept failure as failure, and then learn from it; acknowledge that anger and melancholy are human reactions, and then seek to overcome them; and finally, sit back plenty and just contemplate our place in this world.
And for not using enough Islamic sources to make my point, ah well, I fear I am not knowledgeable enough… but do accept your suggestion. Jazakallah.