Feet of Clay
By Mitch Horowitz
One of the most influential books I read in college was Barbara Ehrenreich’s brilliant critique of gender politics, The Hearts of Men. It was little wonder that as I neared my senior year I became an active member of the Democratic Socialists of America, the organization that Ehrenreich co-chaired along with my hero, author and activist Michael Harrington. I remain a member thirty years later.
I’ve attended political conferences with Ehrenreich, including one slightly zany retreat at a private zoo and estate in North Florida where, in between discussions of how to revive the American left, we toured open-air refuges for African wildlife (and I hoped that we hadn’t stepped onto the set of a remake of The Most Dangerous Game).
Like many of Ehrenreich’s admirers, I always found her trenchant, formidable, sometimes frustrating, and unfailingly insightful. That changed when she adopted her new role as the literary nemesis of the positive-thinking movement. When I write “positive-thinking movement” I do not mean Hallmark rhymes or coffee mugs with smiley faces, but rather an American school of thought extending back to New England Transcendentalism that holds that what we think, in some measure, determines the quality of our experiences, as popularly argued in the self-help classic The Power of Positive Thinking.
This American notion that thoughts are causative takes many different forms, varyingly expressed in metaphysical, psychological, or cognitive terms. Ehrenreich views this thought movement as proffering a myopic batch of illusions, which serve to reinforce existing power structures. She explored this thesis in her 2009 bestseller Bright-Sided: How Positive Thinking Is Undermining America, and in many interviews and appearances that followed. Ehrenreich recently revisited this perspective in a New Year’s Eve New York Times op-ed piece in which she critiqued what she saw as the vacuity of the current research into the benefits of gratitude.
But she quickly connected the “current hoopla around gratitude” with her real target: positive thinking. Ehrenreich sees the positive-thinking movement typified in the excesses of The Secret and the foolhardy exuberance that she blames for the Great Recession of 2008. (Goldman Sachs, take a breather – Norman Vincent Peale, brace yourself.)
Rarely has the Times published such an articulate (and damning) selection of reader objections to an opinion piece. My own didn’t make the cut, so I’ll provide it here:
To the Editor,
Polemics for or against gratitude, or certain kinds of gratitude, edge us toward angels-on-pinheads arguments. In essence, Barbara Ehrenreich pits her conception of gratefulness against someone else’s, whether in the form of platitudes, questionable studies, or the every-ready critical punching bag The Secret (which turns ten this year, by the way – maybe it’s time to give it a rest). There is, in fact, no innate tension between gratitude in the social sense, which Ms. Ehrenreich calls for, and gratitude in the spiritual sense, which she finds iffy. Given that most of us in the West are, by global standards, the wealthiest, healthiest, and safest people on earth, gratitude should be considered simply a form of realism.
Sincerely,
Mitch Horowitz
The Times has graciously used several of my letters responding to polemics against positive thinking – a topic that I have critiqued at length in my One Simple Idea: How Positive Thinking Reshaped Modern Life. But I believe that they made the right judgment in bypassing my most recent remarks in order to make room for other correspondents, including a UC Berkeley researcher who said that Ehrenreich misstated his and his colleagues’ research on gratitude by omitting the researchers’ key point that authentic gratitude must be accompanied by empathy and a feeling of a strengthened social ties, a topic he explored in an essay of his own.
That important critique falls second, in my mind, to a heartfelt statement from the very type of working person for whom Ehrenreich strives to speak – but barely seems to recognize:
To the Editor,
I was so disheartened by Barbara Ehrenreich’s leap to assume that it’s selfish to find personal empowerment through positive thinking and gratitude. It’s ironic for me personally that she points to the crash of 2008 as an excellent reason for people to have abandoned “silly” positive thinking.
When my husband and I almost lost our house that year, struggling with health insurance premiums and a new baby, I discovered the exact self-help messages that she’s dismissing, and they kept me afloat mentally so that I could focus on a plan to get work, and get us out of our hole. I was in despair, and found that making lists of things I could be thankful for brought me some happiness, then more happiness — and, yes, it did feel good, thank you very much!
And I wasn’t selfish. I dug myself out of an onslaught of depression, and when we got back on track financially, I did practice a “vigorous and inclusive” gratitude by giving back to people who needed it. There’s another self-help cliché about putting your own oxygen mask on first, then helping others, and you simply can’t do that without first practicing personal (selfish?) gratitude.
Paula Tiberius
North Hollywood, CA
Ehrenreich’s critique of positive thinking in Bright-Sided rests on the notion that positive-mind therapeutics harmfully encourage people to see what they want to be there – rather than to deal with, challenge, and improve the world as it is. But when paddling into the waters of positive-mind philosophy, she imitates the same intellectual blindness that she aims to pillory. It is, frankly, difficult to tell whether this stems from laziness of research, or a willful neglect of facts for the sake of scoring a witty point. In Bright-Sided not one note is made of the longtime radical and progressive history of the positive-thinking movement. This thought school was deeply interwoven with the reformist ideals of the Progressive Era. Its early explorers and acolytes included feminist pioneer Elizabeth Cady Stanton, black nationalist Marcus Garvey, and New Deal icon Henry Wallace. Of course, there are also examples to the contrary (and she finds them). But to omit the progressive aspect of positive thinking is akin to omitting the history of civil rights and labor organizing when writing the history of the Democratic Party.
This historical shallowness is further seen in how she deals with the fundamental influence of Ralph Waldo Emerson on the popular American psyche and on the positive-thinking movement in particular: Almost all of her quotes from Emerson are referenced to secondary sources, primarily Catharine Albanese’s 2007 scholarly (and magisterial) study of transcendental religions in America, A Republic of Mind and Spirit. If a freshman quoted Emerson from secondary sources in a term paper, I’d have questions for the student. But how can the leading critic of positive-mind mechanics not have evidently read and yellow-highlighted essays by the very philosopher who made the movement possible to begin with?
In her recent Times piece, Ehrenreich dusted off criticism of the mega-selling book and movie The Secret – a work ten years old – to claim that its excesses have wholly exposed the “silliness” of positive thinking. I have criticized The Secret in blunt terms. But, more importantly than that work, we are living through a period of new findings in placebo research, ranging from effective placebo surgeries to the success of transparently administered “honest” placebos, and remarkable findings in the nascent field of neuroplasticity, in which directed thoughts are seen to alter brain biology. New developments in mental therapeutics are, in fact, deepening our questions about the potentialities of the mind. Given that these developments are widely and currently written about in places that Ehrenreich presumably reads, from The New Yorker to The New York Times Magazine, and in medical journals, it is intellectually lame to fall back on berating The Secret.
She also blames positive thinking for the 2008 financial crash, a point of view popularized in a 2009 cover story in The Atlantic by journalist Hanna Rosin. I disagree with Rosin’s challenging conclusions that prosperity ministries inspired a boundless faith in our shaky economy and triggered the crash. I think Rosin gives too much credit to the influence of prosperity ministers, and lays insufficient blame on coercive lending tactics. But, nonetheless, Rosin performed extraordinary reportorial legwork and research, exploring the lives of day-to-day people – a lot like the North Hollywood correspondent above – who staked part of their financial wellbeing, for good or ill, on the validity of positive thinking and affirmative prayer.
By contrast, Ehrenreich took the easy road: She visited mega-churches, such as Joel Osteen’s in Texas, and did her best to paint a depressing, Hopperesque canvas of lost American dreamers pinning their hopes on positivity ministers like Osteen, whose height and appearance she derided. What she omitted was any measured critique of what Osteen actually says.
After the 2008 crash, Osteen, speaking from his televised Sunday morning pulpit, addressed the question of what someone should do if he or she fears being laid off. He offered three pieces of advice: 1. Constantly learn new technology and skills. 2. Continually take on additional tasks at work. 3. Demonstrate a positive mental attitude at work. Ehrenreich would probably roll her eyes at this kind of page-a-day calendar advice, noting that it does nothing for any serious person – right? Wrong. This is exactly the kind of advice that I would give to any member of my own family, while at the same time working to restore the kinds of banking regulations, unionization, and transparency in lending that had protected us from this kind of disastrous crash following the Great Depression.
Ehrenreich seems to believe that practical advice and political reform are at odds. That is, simply, ridiculous. Practicality and protest go hand in hand. The revolution does not solve my problems next Thursday. For that, I need help that conforms to the boundaries we currently live in, while fighting to expand them. After all these years of the American left wandering in the wilderness, does this really require restating?
And, as one of the Times respondents points out, some of the most effective social reformers in American history have been “happy warriors” – hopeful, dynamic people who related to ordinary Americans, or who were themselves ordinary Americans, and who would never dream of casually debasing popular religious or therapeutic ideas. This was true, for example, of the Ehrenreich’s Democratic Socialists of America co-chair Michael Harrington, who died of cancer in 1989. Mike, as he was known to all, felt great affection for people, and evoked similar feelings in return. As one of my old comrades Dinah Leventhal recalled: “He really loved this country and thought that you had to love the country to be a radical, to be a socialist, and to want to change it.” You cannot love a country in any authentic sense when you offhandedly disparage – and make no effort to take full measure of – an outlook embraced by varied millions of Americans, of all backgrounds and classes.
Mike’s biographer Maurice Isserman noted, with trademark restraint, that Ehrenreich “did not get along with Michael.” (It is the sole mention of her in Isserman’s biography, The Other American.) This was pretty common knowledge back in the day – and it may have revealed the seedlings of Ehrenreich’s current jag against positive thinking. She is convinced – and tries to convince others – that the positive-mind tradition and expressions of American optimism represent an inherently selfish, capitalist-bolstering, mush-headed philosophy that serves to keep workers in their place. She may need to see it that way – such a view may affirm the oppositional tone and sense of outsider exclusivism that, in effect, tells her who she is.
Ehrenreich’s readers, who trust her as a straight-shooting social critic, are being misled about the history and varied approaches of positive thinking. But these readers do not and likely never will realize that they are being misled. This is because self-help and positive-thinking literature is perhaps the one form of writing whose detractors feel no obligation to read before promulgating an opinion. There is a word for this type of thinking: cynicism. It is the same type of predetermined thought that Ehrenreich perceives in positive thinking.
There is an important critical discussion to be had about the problems (and possibilities) of this hugely popular American philosophy. Ehrenreich could have begun that discussion with the note on which she opened her book, recalling the nightmarish conformity of being encouraged to think positively following a cancer diagnosis. I have recounted similarly appalling episodes in my One Simple idea. But Ehrenreich seems to have decided aforethought not to leave the door open – not even by a crack – for the possibility that there is more to this philosophy than a smiley face holding a mallet. That is a disservice to the career of a valuable social critic and the readers who believe in her.
In 1911, an Indiana socialist named Wallace D. Wattles, a famous acolyte of positive thinking and a candidate for various offices on the Socialist Party ticket, published his final book, The Science of Being Great. He paid tribute to American socialist icon Eugene V. Debs, who was, before Bernie Sanders, the most famous socialist ever to run for president:
Mr. Debs reverences humanity. No appeal for help is ever made to him in vain. No one receives from him an unkind or censorious word. You cannot come into his presence without being made sensible of his deep and kindly personal interest in you. Every person, be he millionaire, grimy workingman, or toil worn woman, receives the radiant warmth of a brotherly affection that is sincere and true. No ragged child speaks to him on the street without receiving instant and tender recognition. Debs loves men. This has made him the leading figure in a great movement, the beloved hero of a million hearts, and will give him a deathless name.
If the fortunes of the American left, as a cohesive and ongoing movement in American life, are to be sustained, this kind of ideal needs emulation. Positive thinking is not the enemy – nor is it the sole solution. Rather, positive-mind philosophy is a misunderstood and deeply felt aspect of the American psyche, which no one who hopes to reach the heart of our nation can afford to disparage or ignore.
A PEN-Award winning historian, Mitch Horowitz has written on everything from the war on witches to the secret life of Ronald Reagan for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and Salon. The Washington Post says Mitch “treats esoteric ideas and movements with an even-handed intellectual studiousness that is too often lost in today’s raised-voice discussions.” Mitch is a Science of Mind columnist and the author of Occult America and One Simple Idea , a history of New Thought.
Tim Botta’s artwork appears at http://timbotta.tumblr.com/ and Fine Art America.
Norman Vincent Peale was a friend of Ernest Holmes.
He was indeed. Peale didn’t often mention his New Thought sources, but he did single out Ernest and Science of Mind on a few occasions.
I think that Joel Osteen is influenced by New Thought as well, although he won’t say so.
There used to be an ezine from INTA known as “I Am Spirit”. The founder, Russell Brumfield, interviewed Joel and asked him about his influences. Let’s just say that he didn’t completely answer the question.
That’s fascinating, Tim — would you have a copy? Actually Joel did acknowledge to a Guideposts editor that Norman Vincent Peale was an influence, which I admire because within Joel’s world Peale is about as welcome as Noam Chomsky at a GOP convention. Critics miss that about Joel. I touched on this aspect of Joel’s career in this piece on Oral Roberts (who I also admire): http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/12/oral-roberts-changed-religion-113886
Unfortunately, the site no longer exists. It was an ezine, and when the founder moved on nobody kept it alive. Perhaps someone at INTA headquarters could direct you to it.
http://www.newthoughtalliance.org
Acknowledging Peale is one thing — Donald Trump grew up at Marble Collegiate Church — but Joel is a little more inexact, so to speak, on the subject of wherther he was influenced by New Thought.
Of course, if he was influenced by Peale, then he was influenced by New Thought at least indirectly, as the Peale-Holmes connection shows.
Good article, Mitch. I suppose it’s a testament to the bigness of positive thinking as an idea that practically anything you can say about it – good or bad – is true to some extent. As you and others have noted, it’s inspired both progressives and hard right conservatives. Those who can understand the complexity of mind have used it positively and effectively, while too many believe just wishing for the bike will make it appear at the door.
You can find plenty of examples of how the “you create your own reality” idea keeps weak people weak – as Ehrenreich and other charge. (A recent study found that lower income Americans are no longer supporting progressive social programs because they increasingly believe they’re where they are due to their efforts. They got what they deserve).
We know too much about the impact cultural, economic and political conditions to take that idea at face value. The fact that we have collectively created the world in which we live should make it obvious that no one person is in complete control. Positive thinking in all its forms can make your life better by helping to shape reality (in both mundane and surprising ways) and allowing you to see opportunities you might otherwise miss by “being realistic.” It’s not magic – although it can sometimes seem that way.
Thanks, Randy — I am trying to devise a more muscular, intellectually defensible iteration of positive-mind metaphysics, which can coexist with, and speak to, vagaries of life, including tragedies. (The old school way of thought, while I don’t want to generalize, does not have a theology of suffering.) Part of my challenge is that my personal view is, in large part, metaphysical. I am not strictly interested in cognition and psychology, but in testing the theses that Holmes, Neville, and others put to us. A metaphysical “fact” can coexist with a measurable, empirical fact, such as what we see in the placebo response. It would be easier if I concluded that “positive thinking” is a psychological and cognitive therapy (which I think can be defended), but it’s tougher to deal with the existential and metaphysical aspects of the outlook which, in all honesty, interest me far more. For me the question is: Is there a nonphysical aspect to intelligence? And, if so, does that realization make us fuller, more complete individuals? My instinct is “yes.” Anyway, wish me well….all best, m
Is there a nonphysical aspect to intelligence? should be one fo the great questions of our age. I’m glad you’ve taken it on.
I do believe considering science — particularity evolutionary biology — and psychology is essential to developing an understanding of the way metaphysics works in our lives. As you indicated, the way our brains function determines the way we see the world and that influences how we use positive thinking or spiritual mind treatment to shape our lives.
For example, stress adversely affects our ability to make decisions and can enhance addiction. Research has shown that the stress of poverty causes people to make bad financial decisions when they can least afford them – so to speak. The better off then look down on them and say they’re poor because they made bad decisions when really they make bad decisions because they’re poor. Yes, our thoughts create our reality, but how our thoughts are created is not entirely under our own control.
For me, that also calls into question the idea often expressed in New Age circles that we shouldn’t interfere in someone’s “path.” If they fall in the ditch we should just leave them there because that’s what they wanted to experience. Life and God are more complicated than that.
I agree — there’s a great deal of complexity, and many contributing factors, to what people experience. Plus, I think our emotions and physicality are more powerful than our thoughts; if I pit a thought against an emotion, an emotion will win almost every time. And yet…thought is the one thing that makes the individual in the “image” of the Creator. Animals have a similar range of emotions and physical drives. We are the sole beings in this sphere who think. I have no doubt that there is a non-physical aspect to intelligence: basic ESP tests have proven that in lab settings — but, unfortunately, that data has been discredited and is either little-known or known only through the lens of the critics. Once we’ve made that leap — that there exists a non-physical dimension to intellect — then our questions deepen about what “positive thinking” actually is, what the placebo effect is, etc. Now, one could say that we possess extra-physical abilities and we are constantly “broadcasting” our thoughts to others, which may be why positive thinking seems to “work.” That may be so. Taken further, we might participate in what Emerson and the Ancient Greeks viewed as an “over mind” of some sort, a participatory form of intelligence, which would account for Napoleon Hill’s theory of the “Master Mind,” and so forth. And, taken a step further, we might be physical creators, following from the ideas of Neville or Ernest Holmes. These are the balls I have in play. I’m not wholly impressed with all the cognitive studies out there today because, frankly, I think they are no more or less repeatable than any other kinds of studies (including ESP), and I think they fail to take into account the limits of thought in face of emotive or physical drives. If I wanted to study cognition, I’d go get a degree. But I want to reach for something much higher about the possibilities of human nature. And, of course, I may be wrong. In which case I hope that trying will be reward enough! Anyway, thanks for giving me the chance to air some of these issues. Cheers, m
“if I pit a thought against an emotion, an emotion will win almost every time.”
I’m not sure it’s quite as frequent as one might think. I have found that often in my experience, I can think my way beyond the emotional response.
You might enjoy this quote from lyricist Yip Harburg, about music, but relevant here (to an extent):
“Words make us think a thought. Music makes us feel a feeling. But a song makes us feel a thought.”
To me, New Thought at its best is like a song. It’s not about feeling (or emotion) vs. thought — Ernest Holmes tells us, after all m that what makes a treatment work is the technique AND the fire (i.e., the mental and the feeling). To me, it’s about feeling the thought. When you do that, you’re using these principles most effectively.
“The old school way of thought, while I don’t want to generalize, does not have a theology of suffering.”
This is an interesting comment. Ernest Holmes wrote that “the world has learned all it must from suffering.” You may have to have negative conditions, but you don’t have to suffer through them. A positive attitude helps to mitigate them and to reduce or eliminate them sooner and more fully.
But none of us lives a 100 percent positive life. Sometimes, things we view as negative happen. The question is what to do with them when they come up. Do you amplify them with negative energy or mitigate them with positive energy?
Quantum theorists would tell us that all is energy and information. And scientists such as Dr. Amit Goswami say that “consciousness is the ground of all being” and “the Universe is self-aware through us.”
Interestingly, we’re told a similar thing in the newest Star Wars movie — “The Force is in and around all living beings.” (I’m pretty sure Lucas got a lot of the Star Wars philosophy from SOM.)
The NY Times once ran a photo of George Lucas and his son in front of a bookcase with The Science of Mind prominent on the center shelf. Dr. David Walker, then president of Religious Science International, ran into Lucas in a movie theater lobby and mentioned the photo. Lucas responded, “Where do you think the Force came from?”
Yes, I remember that photo. It accompanied an article in the magazine, I believe. I do wish I could find it online — or even the exact date, as I probably could track it from that information.
It would have been in the 1990s. 1997 or 1998 runs in my mind.
Lucas is with his son in the picture, as I recall. Can anyone help me find it?
I suspected that he was influenced by SOM when I saw that photo. It’s nice to have confirmation.
You might find this interesting:
celebrationcenter.org/star-wars-the-force-awakens-awakening-the-power-following-the-call/
http://www.celebrationcenter.org/star-wars-the-force-awakens-awakening-the-power-following-the-call/
I am a 4th generation Religious Scientist. This is a story I often hear repeated in the many churches, meetings, etc. that I have attended over the years.
Maybe so, Maybe not. We’ll see.
There is a Chinese Proverb that goes something like this…A farmer and his son had a beloved stallion who helped the family earn a living. One day, the horse ran away and their neighbors exclaimed, “Your horse ran away, what terrible luck!” The farmer replied, “Maybe so, maybe not. We’ll see.”A few days later, the horse returned home, leading a few wild mares back to the farm as well. The neighbors shouted out, “Your horse has returned, and brought several horses home with him. What great luck!” The farmer replied, “Maybe so, maybe not. We’ll see.”Later that week, the farmer’s son was trying to break one of the mares and she threw him to the ground, breaking his leg. The villagers cried, “Your son broke his leg, what terrible luck!” The farmer replied, “Maybe so, maybe not. We’ll see.”A few weeks later, soldiers from the national army marched through town, recruiting all the able-bodied boys for the army. They did not take the farmer’s son, still recovering from his injury. Friends shouted, “Your boy is spared, what tremendous luck!” To which the farmer replied, “Maybe so, maybe not. We’ll see.”The moral of this story, is, of course, that no event, in and of itself, can truly be judged as good or bad, lucky or unlucky, fortunate or unfortunate, but that only time will tell the whole story. The wiser thing, then, is to live life keeping as even a temperament as possible, taking all things in stride, whether they originally appear to be ‘good’ or ‘bad.’ Life is much more comfortable and comforting if we merely accept what we’re given and make the best of our life circumstances. Rather than always having to pass judgement on things and declare them as good or bad, it would be better to just sit back and say, “It will be interesting to see what happens.”
“As you and others have noted, it’s inspired both progressives and hard right conservatives.”
I’ve read that Peale was a Republican, and we have many libertarian-influenced New Thought people.
Wow ! Without knowing a lot about Ehrenreich’s history of work she has clearly fallen asleep at the wheel with this path taken..
Sadly to say Hack comes to mind to describe the non sense she is attempting to promote and has all the underlying pinning of the Republican agenda of foolishness that stems form fear and hate.
Certainly not worth a piece of paper being wasted with her thoughts on this topic.
I will stick to what I know works with Gratitude and Love being at the foundation for my actions over what this snake oil salesperson is attempting to sell !
Happily in gratitude for all the I have in the past, present and future tense..
Kevin McGhee Delaware
I wanted to let this gestate for a few days before responding. I think this is an issue of superficiality, not just on Barbara Ehrenreich’s part, but also that of the general public. What we do (perhaps “attempt to do” is the better phrase, as it is a continual growth process, at least for me) is much more complex than simple “positive thinking.” We are working to direct our thinking, to shape and give it a purposeful direction, to determine the stream of thought consciously. This is far from mere positive thinking. It’s hard work. Worthy of the effort, but hard work nonetheless.
I was intensely disappointed by Bright Sided. Being familiar with Ehrenreich’s work, I expected insightful observations based on immersive fieldwork, informed by grounded historical research. But in this book, she just comes across as a crank. The axe-grinding is not subtle. And when she starts whacking away, she cuts indiscriminately. All she does is attach a set of labels, connect them to The Secret, and then . . . time to go home. The research is sloppy, much of the writing is fallacious, and the generalizations are ludicrous.
Personally, I think the crux of the problem is her defensive atheism. In Living with a Wild God, Ehrenreich identifies herself as “an atheist by family tradition.” In Wild God, Ehrenreich undertakes a series of somersaults and mental contortions to write about an intense spiritual/mystical experience she had as an adolescent. She tries to force the ego mind to explain this experience in language that she is willing to accept. But her premise– that the material world is all there is– closes the door to explanation.
Yes, there’s a lot of hoopla & BS in the positive thinking milieu. As there is in every human milieu. But– if I can crudely paraphrase Ernest Holmes– all you have to remember is: don’t be an idiot. You don’t have to believe everything you read (or someone tells you). You can test these ideas out for yourself.
Well put, Maryjane. -m
I have my own issues with positive thinking based on the laboratory of my own life of practicing daily for a couple of decades. But I have to agree that cynicism is absolutely the right word to sum up her point of view. Did she even try the sticky note practice for a month? A day?