Thought provoking stuff. Her dismissal of real positivity's effects on events is offhand at best, and her willingness to resort to "realism," a bit knee-jerk and naive in its own special way. Her portrait of the dangers and irresponsibility of mandated fake positivity as linked to major international crises, on the other hand, is spot-on. A thought/conflict provoking diatribe, I predict.
I do agree with her point that in an office setting people place far too much emphasis on comfort and being a chipper, team-player. As for the idea that this widespread use of positive thinking as an agent of social control, I don't think it's as overt or intentional as she presents it, but I'll admit, the thought has crossed my mind.
It's hard to not be skeptical of her when she starts out with, "Why are all these straw-men so unreasonable?!" I've never heard anyone try to explain effects of positive thinking in terms of magnetic or quantum mechanical forces or whatever. Whenever I've heard about positive thinking it has been on how it affects your own body. Our minds have amazing ways of physically changing our body, and as social creatures our behaviour can affect those around us.
Mesmer. Read and weep. (The blurb that is, not the book itself.)I've never heard anyone try to explain effects of positive thinking in terms of magnetic
or quantum mechanical forces or whatever.
As a young teen I worked for a chiropractor who also practiced what he called homeopathy/energy medicine. I had no understanding of science then, but thinking back on it, it's astonishing to see the number of white, middle-aged women who play into this type of thing. It sounds scientific, so it must be true.
The positivite thinking thing reminds me a lot of prayer. If you want something hard enough and it happens then hey! it worked! But if it doesn't happen that just means you didn't want it hard enough, and you need to be more positive. In this way it's inherently impossible to prove that positivity doesn't work. As a side note, that illustrator is super talented. I was mesmerized.