THE TELEGRAPH: The modern "tyranny" of positive thinking is to blame for society's ills and was the true cause of the financial crisis, according to a new book by author Barbara Ehrenreich.
She said the belief that everything will turn out all right in the end if we remain optimistic and upbeat is "delusional".
What began as a 19th-century "quack theory" has become the dominant mode of thinking in the United States, she argues, influencing everything from global business decisions to the treatment of cancer patients.
Ehrenreich's book, Smile Or Die: How Positive Thinking Fooled America and the World, sets out to demolish the "distinctive American ideology of positive thinking".
Speaking ahead of the book's publication in Britain next week, Ehrenreich said: "Delusion is always dangerous and the big example I would give of that is the 2008 financial meltdown. There are many things that fed into that.
"Many, many people got way over their heads in debt – ordinary people. And in what frame of mind do you assume large amounts of debt? Well, a positive frame of mind. You think that you're not going to get sick, your car's not going to break down, you're not going to lose your job and you're going to be able to pay it off.
"Mostly, though, I blame the top levels of corporate culture which, by the middle of this decade, were completely in a bubble of mandatory optimism and positive thinking."
Ehrenreich referred to the "cult-like atmosphere of high-fives" at Countrywide, the mortgage lender which became one of the biggest casualties of the subprime crisis, and claimed that executives who sounded warnings of impending financial disaster at Lehman Brothers were dismissed as "negative" thinkers.
"Corporate America had gone into this bubble of denial where bad things could never happen," she said. >>> Anita Singh, Showbusiness Editor | Saturday, January 09, 2010
