Barbara Ehrenreich on Optimism

10 Jan 2010

Speakers: Barbara Ehrenreich

US author, social commentator and activist, Barbara Ehrenreich likes to tell it as it is. In this secular sermon she calls for a new commitment to realism. Far from making us happier, she argues that undue optimism and a fear of giving bad news sowed the seeds for the banking crisis – and that an insistence on being cheerful actually leads towards a lonely focus inwards and to political apathy.

Ehrenreich’s argument is formed using her personal experience of contracting breast cancer and being overwhelmed by positivism. During her treatment, from 2002, she was advised that it was her positive thinking that would enable her to recover, a theory which she explains is desperately medically flawed and insulting to someone suffering from terminal illness, and in no way a 'gift’.

Realism is what Ehrenreich asks for. Alternatives to both positive and negative thinking are determination and courage. Sentiments that have formed Ehrenreich’s own philosophy and that can achieve greatness without delusion