Delusional Optimism?

Barbara Ehrenreich has has written a book.

Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America

 

Somehow this women has been greeted as a "intellectual giant" for suggesting - loudly -  that America's "Big Business" is suffering from Delusional Optimism. (Which is a little odd as she seems to be taking on the same guise.)

Here are some of the points I got from the CBC/Ehrenreich interview (Anna-Maria herself not showing her most critical thinking and ability to challenge):

• Artificial positivity has become ubiquitous in America.
  
• Ehrenreich claims it caused the US Financial market meltdown b/c no one wanted to hear "negative/critical" opinions at the major banks when they strayed too far into dubious financial lending. (actually sounds true)
• She got this idea when she got a cancer diagnosis in 2000/1 and was told she had to take on a positive attitude.  Someone gave her her crayons to write down some "happy thoughts" about her condition to fend off the negative "energy" of "bad thoughts - and she rebelled against this as an infantile state of minds that was to encourage her, but disabled her from taking action, to fix problems and seek solutions.

Some of this may be popular wisdom, but I suspect these arguments are mostly "straw Men" that she uses to easily knock down.

• unfortunately she reveals her true (feminist) ideology when she blames "male doctors who encourage women to think positive and chase away that cancer" rather than the hard work.  Her comments also railed against the tendency for religious dogma to be similar
  
• As a "scientist" (someone needs to fact check this as it reminds me of David Suzuki falling back on his Biology degree to gain credibility for Environmental Science!) she says' there are lots of study's that bad thoughts do not "kill germs" and have no impact on recovery (no reference at all to these quoted "big study's").
• Her biggest concern is why women in Developed Countries get Breast Cancer? 
  
• She has "evidence" like the whistle-blower at Freddy Mac who was fired, but was hired back again after things went bad.
  
• Telling people to "don't worry - be happy" is really a form of "social control" to discourage dissent, similar to the way the Soviets used "positive messaging" to eliminate social dissent.
  

However, one point of hers is valid - and it applies to Stelmach Government - they are suffering from an "Empathy Deficit" - they blame the "victim" (voter) for H1N1 Vaccine problems - among many others , like the media.