New Age Book Review: Bright-Sided, by Barbara Ehrenreich
If Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret was a missive from the New Age movement to the rest of the world about how one should think to be happy and successful, then Barbara Ehrenreich has just written a stinging response that should be required reading for all who have turned their minds over to the dictates of the Law of Attraction. Until I read this book, subtitled How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America, I assumed that manifestation mania was a unique twist of New Age thought– or, to be more precise, New Thought thought. (Contrary to popular belief, New Age and New Thought are not the same thing.) But Ehrenreich makes an ironclad case that American culture is now steeped in positive thinking, to our own great detriment.
Ehrenreich first encountered the positive thinking police while a cancer patient. She was surprised to find herself being constantly chastised for any negative emotion and so, she went investigating. This book is the result, and she has bluntly laid bare most of the unsightly implications of the Law of Attraction: “It requires deliberate self-deception, including a constant effort to repress or block out unpleasant possibilities or ‘negative thoughts’,” she writes. It also drains of us of empathy by shifting blame for what happens onto victims of crime and illness and injustice.
The result, she notes, is that the Law of Attraction has become “a water carrier for the business world, excusing its excesses and masking its follies.” The push toward this way of thinking “has made itself useful as an apology for the crueler aspects of the market economy,” giving cover to an unjust system that exploits workers and widens the gap between rich and poor.
Worse, she concludes, it contributed greatly to the destruction of our economy by fueling the irrationality of the bankers and brokers on Wall Street. She describes positive thinking motivational speakers being invited frequently to Wall Street to help keep employees upbeat and optimistic and willing to make risky decisions even in the face of evidence that things were not likely to turn out well.
While the book is thorough in describing all the ways in which positive thinking has crept into every corner of the culture, Ehrenreich does not delve too deeply into how and why this is the case, other than to point out the addiction to positive thinking is born of a deep insecurity and lack of trust in life. (The more the middle class becomes squeezed, the deeper our insecurity, and the higher the demand for Law of Attraction products)
I wish she had explored other reasons why the Law of Attraction so attracts us in the holistic spirituality movement, and acknowledged the ways in which people feel it has been helpful to them. I know many who feel The Secret helped them examine their habitual thoughts for the first time, and understand how they often sabotage themselves through negative assumptions. If she had gone there, perhaps Ehrenreich could have pointed out you can get these benefits, through meditation and other techniques, without having to adopt a philosophy that has proven to be so damaging to our society – not to mention our own psyches.
Yet while the book is not balanced by the personal, I think Ehrenreich’s criticisms are fair and her conclusions accurate. Unfortunately, the sharp tone might push away the people who most need to consider her arguments. We New Age-y types are not used to being challenged (“I’m right for me, you’re right for you”), we are used to gentle validation at every turn, so I don’t have a lot of hope that this book will be widely embraced in New Age circles. But for those burned out on The Secret, those weary of floating around isolated in their own wishful dream world, Bright-Sided is a bracing blast of reality.
Tags: holistic spirituality, Law of Attraction, new age movement, New Thought, positive thinking, The Secret
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