I’ve always been skeptical of people who seem a smidgen too happy, exuberant, or optimistic, who see the glass not as half-full but brimming, who flatter everyone with a pulse. I think of the English teacher who responds with affirmation no matter how preposterous or inane the student’s interpretation is; what do we learn from undifferentiated, unadulterated praise? While everyone benefits from a compliment from time to time, doesn’t indiscriminately dispensing praise dilute that value? Or perhaps I’m just a captious curmudgeon.
In her short NYtimes op-ed, “The Power of Negative Thinking,” Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickled and Dimed, speculates that unbridled optimism may bear as much blame for the current subprime crisis as the dearth of liquidity. The infectious power of positive thinking has quietly built a following from Oprah to Daily 6 Lotto devotees, and the titans of Wall Street were not immune to its allure:
What’s more, for those at the very top of the corporate hierarchy, all this positive thinking must not have seemed delusional at all. With the rise in executive compensation, bosses could have almost anything they wanted, just by expressing the desire. No one was psychologically prepared for hard times when they hit, because, according to the tenets of positive thinking, even to think of trouble is to bring it on.
Optimism may be as American as hot dogs but isn’t an optimistic outlook untempered by at least a tincture of skeptical realism a complete delusion?
