Barbara Ehrenreich on Optimism

US author, social commentator and activist, Barbara Ehrenreich, likes to tell it as it is. Christmas is over. The recession isn’t. It’s weeks till payday. And no amount of believing yourself thin will actually make a blind bit of difference.

Positive-thinking might have won over our Oprah-loving, ‘Have a nice day’ cousins in US, but surely us Brits can cling on to our cynicism?

However, as sales of self-help books rise – particularly in January – and positive psychology increasingly creeps onto the agenda here in business, health and education, Barbara will take to our pulpit to warn that we embrace the cult of positivity at our peril.

Far from making us happier, she’ll argue 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 toward a lonely focus inwards and to political apathy. 

This sermon won’t cure you, change your life or make you rich, but Barbara’s call for a new commitment to realism promises a more sober and ultimately uplifting start to 2010.

Barbara Ehrenreich is well-known in the US for her insightful, witty and engaging social commentary. She is the author of fourteen best-selling books. Smile or Die: How Positive Thinking Fooled American and the World, Barbara’s latest book is published in January. She lives in Virginia, USA.