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This evening I'm honored to welcome Dr. Barbara Ehrenreich. She joins us to discuss her latest book Bright side and How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America. Bright side presents Dr. IRNA belief that much of what's wrong in America is rooted in our addiction to positive thinking. In a scathing and very lucid book she takes on what she calls the quote inescapable pseudo scientific flapdoodle that permeates our culture in the form of life coaches preachers and even CEOs at the heart of the mortgage crisis. Kircus in a starred review Hayles the book as bright incisive provocative thinking from a top notch non-fiction writer and bookless calls it a wide ranging and stinging look at the pervasiveness of positive thinking that's hard pervasiveness of positive thinking we're in. Ehrenreich warns us against a reckless optimism that causes individuals and nations not to plan for inevitable downturns and disasters. Dr. Ehrenreich has been defined in many many ways. She has been called passionate funny salacious a premiere reporter from the

underside of capitalism and my personal favorite the soul mate of Jonathan Swift. Barbara Ehrenreich is a social critic activist and highly highly regarded investigative journalists and also knows a thing or two about molecular and cellular biology. She's the author of 16 books including The New York Times best sellers Nickel and Dimed and bait and switch. She's also the author of Dancing In The Streets A History of Collective Joy. Lest you think all of her books have a somewhat negative slant. A frequent contributor to Harper's and the nation she's also been a columnist at The New York Times. Time magazine's as Will's mother Jones. Ms. Magazine and others who work has also appeared in The Progressive Salon.com and Atlantic Monthly. In 2006 Dr. Ehrenreich founded United Professionals a nonprofit nonpartisan partisan membership organization that you can learn more about at United Professionals network. And you also find more Barbara Ehrenreich work on her blog at online at Barbara Ehrenreich dot com. Ladies and gentlemen thank you so much for joining us on this cool fall evening.

Please join me in welcoming Dr. Barbara Ehrenreich. Thank you. No more. That's Dr. stuff all right. It's just Barbara. Now it does seem a little odd to be speaking out against positive thinking. And I had a hard time as I have been working on this book explaining to people what I was doing. You know it sounds so twisted and mean like taking a stand against peace or motherhood or Ellen DeGeneres you know hey positive thinking. So let me explain. I am not against having a nice day or smiling at strangers or partying or anything like that. In fact as I mentioned I wrote a book about Joy called Dancing in the streets right. So OK. I'm not a sourpuss. The new book is about the ideology of positive

thinking. The idea which has been so prevalent in our culture that we we barely even notice it that you have to be positive. You have to be cheerful. You have to be upbeat and if you're not already that way you better work on it. And believe me there are the books and the DVDs and everything to help you work on it. In fact since we're near Harvard and Harvard people here form Yeah. Well you know I refer to in 2006 the most popular undergraduate course was called positive psychology on how to be happier. And the students wrote gratitude letters enough to send them they just had to write them and you know thought about things that made them happy a lot and they actually got credit for this. But I first encountered this ideology. It was eight years ago I was being treated for breast cancer. You know I felt

scared. I felt very angry angry for you know several reasons. What's with this breast cancer epidemic. Nobody knows what causes it. And also why are the treatments so barbaric. It's a treatment you really suffer from. So my very first thought of course is you know old time second wave feminist was to reach out for support you know from other women who were going through or had been through the same thing you know on the Internet or sending for books and or books by doctors by breast cancer sufferers and so on. But what I found was not support was not what I was looking for at all. First there's the pink ribbon thing. Now I don't know but I had trouble. Now this is Breast Cancer Awareness Month where I was supposed to be really you know in the into the pink thing this month I could not get into the pink thing. I don't know what's wrong especially when I

began to find all the ads for pink breast cancer Teddy bears and that really had a profound existential effect on me I realized I am not afraid to die but I am not going into the last good night with a teddy bear tucked under my arm. You know a very important realisation and then there's another thing that goes on particularly with breast cancer. But I've been told since just in the last few days that I meet you know talk to people about this applies to some other cancers. Is infantilization of the patient. And I found out that there was a breast cancer foundation in New York City that was giving a tote bag full of gifts to women who were undergoing treatment. Nice you know. I managed to get hold of one of these tote bags in it. Why were you. Well there were some cheap some cheap jewelry. There were some moisturizers there were you know

some little cosmetic type things and there was a box of crayons. So I called the foundation and I said this is really nice what you're doing but what's with the crayons. And the lady who I had put it in but I did speak to said that that's in case you have anything you want to write down or jot down about your experience. I said I'm a writer we don't use crayons you know. And it's just you know men are treated with somewhat more dignity at least when they're diagnosed with prostate cancer they're not given gifts of matchbooks cars box cars. So the other thing I found is I entered this pink ribbon culture was a kind of mandatory optimism the constant advice in fact exhortations to be positive about the disease. Think of this in fact as a growth

experience as a chance you know that you won't come out of this with being more evolved and more spiritual and sensitive. And I have to say I just got nastier as a result of this disease. But anyway in fact just goes so far this sort of bright side of cancer that you're expected to think of it not as a problem not even as an annoyance but as a gift. There's a book called The Gift of cancer called to awakening which tells you that cancer is your passport to the life you were truly meant to live. And there's even a T-shirt you can order right now that says on it. Thank you. Cancer wants just enough to make you want to go and get an injection of live cancer cells or something. I did not feel grateful. That's not how I felt at all. All I could think of is

if cancer is your idea of a gift take me off your Christmas list please. So you know at one point I even as an experiment posted a statement on the the common Foundation's message board the Komen Foundation is the nation's largest breast cancer fund raising organization and they you know the people behind most of the runs and the walks for the Cure. And so I posted something under the subject line angry said I was angry that nobody knew what causes the diseases. Angry about the treatments being so debilitating. And I also felt that the pink ribbon stuff trivialize the whole issue. Well I got responses like this one from a woman who said Barb you need to run not walk to get some counseling. You know that this is not permissible to be negative. I have since learned in fact that I'm in the last couple of years some

breast cancer support groups have actually expelled women whose cancer has metastasized. You know why. Because to be a downer for everybody else you don't want that around. Everybody is supposed to keep in this good mood because the dogma has been that this positive attitude is essential to recovery and that's what's going to pull you out of it. And that's certainly that's been applied to just about any kind of cancer or any other illnesses too. So you know I've done some research then and there's more information available than eight years ago. And you know how do they think a positive attitude is going to cure your cancer. Well they think that one it's going to boost the immune system. And to that the immune system fights cancer two problems with that one there is no clear evidence that the immune

system is responsive to your mood unless it's extreme stress you know enough laboratory animals have been tortured in labs to discover that if a creature is stressed out enough it gets sick. All right. We know that. But the other theory that you're just happier does not mean that you're going to get better. There is more importantly though no evidence that the immune system fights cancer. You know think about it. I mean cancer is these are your own cells the immune system exists to fight foreign material that comes into the body. Microbes come into the body so it doesn't recognize most cancer cells as foreign at all. More to the point we now have big studies as some of them done by a new friend of mine knew from working on this book James Coyne at the University of Pennsylvania that has shown you know that people who have these better attitudes supposedly are no more likely to survive

breast cancer neck cancer throat cancer or lung cancer. But there it was in 2001. Being told essentially if I didn't recover it was going to be my own fault. Right. I had worked on my attitude. Now that was my first encounter with mandatory positive thinking and I kind of put it out of my mind for a while. It seemed you know maybe is just part of the weird breast cancer we have going in this country. But I have since found that it is pretty much ubiquitous in American culture. There is no kind of problem in which you will not find that the advice is to just change your way of thinking change your attitude. Don't have enough money. For example a widespread problem today. There are hundreds of self-help books DVDs and things to tell you how you can attract money to yourself with

your thoughts on method it is supposedly so reliable that you are encouraged to begin spending it right now. You know why has wealth eluded you so far. Well things like low wages or unemployment and medical bills those are excuses. The trouble is in your own mind you have blockages to add to the idea of wealth. You there are so many things you could do to upgrade your your move your positive thinking. All of which takes money from you. You might if you had a lot of money go on a weekend retreat in an exotic location with a really heavy hitting motivational speaker like Tony Robbins. Of course the sad sad case last week where some people were on it was a $9000 weekend in Sedona Arizona where the motivational speaker and they were all packed into a sweat lodge which for some reason

had some toxins in the atmosphere. And two of them died. And and about 12 others were made sick. Not positive thoughts not withstanding you know you know you don't have that kind of money and you can just read a book or you can get inspirational posters. There's a company called successor's that manufactures nothing but inspirational tchotchke as you know to put it on your desk and in your office and on the walls. My most recently there is a candy retailer who has invented I don't know if you've seen these. The life is good. Line of products I have nothing on. There's nothing wrong with that proposition. But you have to wonder about the person who feels they have to assert that on the tire cover on the back of their jeep. Life is good. I was you know oddly enough I was in the grocery line the other day and

now this man behind me was wearing a T-shirt saying life is crap and my man you know. Now this is not entirely voluntary. It would be another thing if this were all voluntary you know there are people making money off of people deciding to buy all of this stuff. But there are ways in which it is imposed on people especially at the workplace. It's in the starting in the late 80s and moving you know increasing up to about 2000 and eight conscious efforts on the part of management to induce positive thinking especially in the white collar workforce. And that means bringing in the motivational speakers distributing the positive thinking books for free to your to your workers and all of this I link my

research to the onset of the era of downsizing in American corporations and that was the attraction to management because it was you could when you laying off a bunch of people then you send them to the outplacement firm where they get pep talks on how this is really not a bad thing that's happening to them and all being laid off. It's actually a great opportunity. There are going to be grateful for some they sound familiar here. And the the other thing is that you and then you have people left behind from who survived the layoff. How do you extract the most work for them when they know how disposable they really are as a result of the layoff. So you bring in motivational speakers for them. You send them on little retreats or outward bound expeditions so that they can you know completely rethink their their attitude is

this you know it's very widespread and you can see you know the parallel here between the layoffs and the people with cancer is you take a person who's in some kind of crisis in their lives either from a disease or it's spiraling down toward poverty as a result of job loss. And you tell them it's not it's not a bad thing it's an opportunity for change for deeper spirituality for character. Well they don't say character development that's too old fashioned but you know if you try to turn it into a good thing you also tell them at the same time that the cure for whatever bad happened to them is going to be positive thinking whether it's cancer or whether you're looking for a job over and over again you will be told it's not your skills that matter. It's not what you know or you're you know on your resume it's your attitude. You know you have to. You have to beam out a positive attitude.

But the biggest incentive to think positively probably is not you know quite so coercive but is the idea this idea that you can attract good things to your self with your thoughts visualize what you want and it will come to you. Recite affirmations saying that you're going to get it and you're going to overcome obstacles you're going to get better. You're going to get land that's terrific job and it will happen to you. This was the premise of the mega bestseller in 2006 called the secret. Anybody here read The Secret and feel embarrassed but you did. Right. Somebody read this book. It was a book and a DVD. And it's it's all about attracting stuff to yourself with your thoughts like there's a woman in the book and one of the examples is in Myers a necklace in a jewelry store

window and she manages to draw it to herself by thought alone. Another woman who wants to find a boyfriend or a husband so she empties out one of her bedroom closets and she you know it just moves her move stuff in her garage so there's room for another car. In other words she visualizes his existence and sure enough poor guy gets dragged into this. And I'll even share with you how to get rich. It's a shame to keep these kinds of secret This is from another book not the secret. But it's called Secrets of the Millionaire Mind. And you want to get the money. You really deserve. Put your hand I'm quoting now. 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.

And do that often enough and it it'll happen to you. Or if you're a Christian Evangelical you might want to use God as an intermediary in attracting whatever you want. And it's interesting that this trend in Christianity and evangelical Christianity I think by this at this point far overshadows the fire and brimstone fundamentalism of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson types. This is the new Christianity of mega churches in America is that you can have whatever you want. God wants to quote prosper you if you will let him. And so you just don't even have to pray. You just thank him in advance. And Joel Osteen is you know the most popular preacher probably in America heads up the largest mega church in America. And he in his books tells all the things the Lord has done for him like he just had to say God thank you for getting me the best parking space in this lot.

And he's got it. Tables in restaurants whatever. He thinks the Lord and he gets them now you may be wondering well what's wrong with this. I mean what's wrong with thinking positively What's wrong is thinking even if there's no basis for that idea that you're going to you're going to get them in this job and you're going to recover or whatever. Why not live with the comforting delusion that everything is going well and that God exists to serve your most petty needs etc.. Well two big things wrong with this and I may be a little old fashioned here but I think delusion is always dangerous. It is a mistake to delude yourself. And I think the biggest example of that in our society has been the financial meltdown of 0 8. Many things contributed to that meltdown and I'm

not giving a full kind of analysis at all. But one thing that is nobody else has really pointed out is this mandatory optimism that had permeated the corporate world and also the economists. I mean there were very few economists I could probably name them all. You know in one breath who said there might be a problem that things might or might be very unstable. Mostly they said housing prices will go up forever. Stock prices will go up forever. There was a book in the early part of this decade that was called Dow 36000. You know nothing. Nothing wrong could happen but and also on the part of many ordinary people there was this idea often you know it propagated by Oprah propagated by the prosperity preachers that God would back you up if you took on heavy debts. And if you'd never been able to get any credit before

because of your credit history or your race or whatever then you know God was stepping in to bless you. When along came this mortgage that didn't require a down payment or any proof of income or anything else. But mostly I think the big problem was within the top echelons of the corporate culture themselves. They had been taken over by positive thinking not just as a tool for controlling people being laid off or something but as what the work what the corporate world should be like. There was you know a bad thing to be a negative person to be negative was to be marked for dismissal. Has anybody here ever been told at work they're too negative. Yeah right. And you have to become more positive and chirpy and everyone being negative might mean just raising a question

like I think we you know don't we have a little bit too much subprime exposure in this bank or for a very poignant example. Lehman Brothers remember them. The man who was in charge of their real estate division in 2006 went to the CEO Richard Fuld and said he thought what was happening with housing prices was a bubble and they better change their business plan fast. So he gets fired for saying this because he wants somebody around like that it's like the person the person has metastasized in the breast cancer group you don't want anybody who will bring you down and that you know created this sort of bubble of nor yet was not possible to see what was coming. People who tried to say something were called out. The other big problem with this ideology of positive thinking is

it's cruel and I think it's it's especially clear you know when somebody is suffering through something very difficult and you just tell them to put on a smiley face and get over it and move on or don't be a downer at work. I think that's cruel that we have an empathy deficit in this country or something. You know if we're if someone is bereaved or ill nobody wants to hear from them they're called a whiner a complainer and nobody wants to be a whiner or a victim right. That we all have to perform. Put forth is positive performance. And there are people for example in the cancer world who are beginning to speak up now and say this is an additional burden for a very sick person. It's like having a second disease. You've got to work on your attitude or else you could you know die. The author of The Secret when the tsunami happened in

2006 she you know said that those people the victims were probably sending out tsunami shaped vibrations into the universe and that's what brought it down on them. You know it's complete victim blaming. Now I want to emphasize that the alternative to positive thinking is not negative thinking that can be just as delusional you know to go around it thinking everything is going to turn out badly that nothing is ever going to be any fun. That's that's also delusional. I have a very radical alternative to both. And that's called realism. Just you know remember when Karl Rove put down the reality based community well there are a few you know members a few of us have remained in this sort of reality based culture all along or try to hold it up and trying to get at the truth of the situation. Now I'm not

saying that's easy. I'm not saying that you know it's completely obvious but you try to understand it as best we can and see what we can do about the problems and the threats and the obstacles. I had somebody on the right on the Internet a criticism of my book I cited saying well all she talks about is she wants realism that won't make you happy. Not necessarily. But I can guarantee there will be no happiness without it. Because what are the major you know major things causing human suffering. Well I'll throw out the one that you know as as preoccupied me for so many years and that is poverty and you have to start with that not say Oh well the poor they just have bad attitudes and they could just change their attitudes and there is a whole industry by the way in uplifting their attitudes. But to address the actual circumstances that are causing it which means politics

which means an agenda which means creating social movements. I you know what I have to say about happiness the last thing I'll say right now is my own personal secret of happiness is when you know we may not be able to bring about all the changes we need to in the world but we can have a good time trying. Thank you. There is a law there are a lot of studies purporting to show that a positive attitude has you know certain facts on longevity or health or something and I have looked at all of these very carefully brought out my Russky Ph.D. in cellular immunology by the way and I'm not convinced by them. There's just as much on the other side as for the immune system. You know the there's there been I've seen a study that was heralded as saying Ah the

immune cells are activated it's wonderful they're activated by being positive. She she repeated she repeated experiments didn't work or year later. It's a mess. I mean I could give you give you more examples of very dubious studies about longevity and supposedly positive attitudes or self-reported happiness or something. So that's one of the things my book takes on. I am not convinced by those. I think they've been hyped and I think it's partly Well it's partly because psychologists need to have a career problem. You know once antidepressants came in and a general practitioner could prescribe them what were psychologists going to do when anybody here who is a psychologist knows that it's a problem. And so what they began to get into in beginning in about 1998 was saying well we will not want to treat the sick. Nobody wants us to do

that anyway. We're going to treat ordinary people and make them more positive and that's positive psychology. His asking how much did the New Thought movement of the 19th century feed into this. I have never encountered anybody in an audience speaking to had ever heard of The New Thought movement. This is exciting. But yeah I have a whole chapter on that because this is a very American phenomenon. And I it's easily traceable back to some very interesting independent thinkers in the mid 19th century people like Phineas Parker Quimby who was a watchmaker in Portland Maine and Mary Baker Eddy who neither These were people with any formal education but they were bellowing against the dominant Calvinism of their time the idea that we are all wretched sinners and will probably spend eternity in

hell. And that was an idea that was making people like Mary Baker Eddy literally sick you know with a kind of invalidism was an epidemic in America. And they you know had I think the independence of mind to say hey no let's not think that way anymore maybe God doesn't hate us. You know maybe maybe there are opportunities in everything and that. So I'm very sympathetic to the origins of this rafał Waldo Emerson was another of this ilk. William James to an extent. But in the 20th century it sort of begins to fuse with all of this these get rich quick schemes and medical quackery and which are certainly was involved in the 19th century too. But I was fascinated by that history. They were like Oh yeah yeah. Who was the general who said we could we can't do this without you know so many more. I can't remember. So he gets you get demoted or are chopped off. Sure. Yeah

absolutely. I mention that I go into it in any great length. But George W. Bush was the most optimistic president since Reagan. And there is a distinction. And he was clear he was pretty bad in this way too. But Bush you know had been a cheerleader in college. And I think that's how he saw his role as president was just to do beam optimism at all times so you know Iraq would be a cakewalk. You know well into late 2001 well into 2000 even say the economy is fundamentally sound etc.. Could that have been. No. You know late 2007. So yeah I mean it was let. And Condi Rice said in an interview at one point that she had doubts about Iraq. Well thank you Connie for telling us that now. But that Bush really

could not stand pessimist's around him. So you had this kind of yes man group thing culture in the public sector as well as the private. Yeah that's a good point. I didn't talk about that but it's it's really kind of depressing the happy endings all the time. You know that you can easily predict by the you know the middle of the film and that's part I mean this is our international reputation that we're kind of naive a little bit foolish and insist on this artificial optimism at all times. And I think to a certain extent Americans have prided themselves on that too. But I think we could overcome it. I don't I don't know if there is a connection between what has happened to college education and in general and parts thinking. I

mean I my own feeling and I hesitate to say it in the vicinity of such an august institution is it to a certain extent. Higher education has become very scam like. You want a job. All right we can't guarantee you'll ever get one but we can give you the lottery ticket if you pay enough to put you in debt for years and years and years. And this is not working for people. I mean there are dark. Our economy is not generating and wasn't even well before the recession was not generating enough jobs for college educated people. The number that we have now doesn't make me think that college education is a bad idea because you know I think it's great. You know go study number theory Hungarian medieval history anything you know it's fascinating but it's been sold as a complete practicality as a credential that will get you a

job. And it doesn't work well. You know actually the recovery rates have not improved very much since the 1950s. So it's you know it's heartbreaking to say that but I think that you know breast cancer was really stigmatized number. Some of us will be old enough to remember what a big deal it was when Betty Ford went public and said she had the disease because it used to be unmentionable. So Obituaries would just say that so-and-so died after a long illness. It was you know I shameful or something. So I think that part of the awareness campaign is good. Getting past the stigma of being able to talk about it and recognize it but then is something else went on with breast cancer which is that it turned into a very important portrait part of corporate branding that that is a way of

corporations signals to consumers that it's woman friendly. I can't tell you how many things have pink ribbons on them. I mean I've worked with some of the most recent examples I have seen. I mean just you know supermarket Campbell's Soup has pink ribbons. Give me a break. You know so it's sort of got they got carried away with de-stigmatizing. In other words. And it went along with this positive thinking stuff. She said she was just taking issue with me. She's saying we do have a choice in how we respond to circumstances although we do not cause those circumstances she's not into the law of attraction. Right. And we do have a choice in you know to be sort of defeated or to be positive and optimistic and in how we handle things as they come along. OK I'm not going to disagree with you.

I actually I've thought of writing a self-help book How I snarled my way through breast cancer which you know I don't think that you know how everybody works and that's that would be silly to do we shouldn't impose moods on people or something like that. What is often missing is listening to where they're really at. And I have heard from so many people who talked about losing a loved one like a spouse or a parent who was everybody knew was dying for months and months. But you were not allowed to say that. And the dying person was creasing. Isolated in a way because they had to keep up this mask of complete optimism. Although the words were not allowing you know it's very threatening in fact to get in touch with those feelings in another person even