Miles to go before you can smile

When Barbara Ehrenreich was diagnosed with breast cancer, she was fearful, angry and depressed. She also wanted rational and practical advice. But as she navigated the endless cancer support websites, “the greater my sense of isolation grew”. She had entered a world of facile optimism and deliberate self-deception.

Cancer is “a ‘gift’, deserving of the most heartfelt gratitude”. Why? Because it opens your eyes to the joy of living. And, by being persistently upbeat, you can both cure the disease and “evolve to a much higher level of humanity”.

The attitude of racing cyclist, Lance Armstrong, in remission from multiple cancer, sums up this philosophy; “Cancer was the best thing that ever happened to me”.

Welcome to Cancerland, where there are no “victims”, only happy, happy “survivors”. There is no room for despondency. A woman, whose breast cancer had spread to her lungs and bones, wrote to the feel-good guru, Deepak Chopra; even though she was steadfastly “positive”, meditated, prayed and ate the correct diet, the cancer kept coming back; “Am I missing a lesson here?” His reply? “You just have to continue doing (this) until the cancer is gone for good”. In short, it’s your choice. You can “Smile or Die”.

In this wry and compelling study of America’s obsession with optimism, Barbara Ehrenreich explores how relentlessly positive thinking has pervaded every aspect of American life and how delusional, infantilising and dangerous this can be.

It wasn’t always so. “In the Declaration of Independence” Ehrenreich writes, “the founding fathers pledged to one another ‘our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honour’. They knew that they had no certainty of winning a war — and that they were taking a mortal risk”. Many of them did indeed lose their lives and fortunes, but they fought anyway; “There is a vast difference between positive thinking and existential courage”.

Contrast that with Bill Clinton who, in 2000, triumphantly declared “Never before has our nation enjoyed, at once, so much prosperity and social progress, with so little internal crisis and so few external threats”. Months later, the dot-com bust descended and then 9/11 struck. George Bush made Clinton seem Job’s Comforter. Condoleezza Rice dreaded giving him bad news; “The president almost demanded optimism. He didn’t like pessimism, hand-wringing or doubt”.

The point Ehrenreich makes is there was nothing to warrant Clinton’s and Bush’s unbridled optimism. On the contrary, there were any number of warnings 9/11, for instance, might well happen. The fact that no one heeded the warning signs was later attributed to a “failure of imagination”. But, as Ehrenreich comments, actually “there was simply no ability or inclination to imagine the worst”.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in Corporate America. As the economy soared ever higher, no one wanted to bring ants to the banquet; and risk being overtaken by one’s rivals; and forgo the fat bonus that was theirs for the picking. Optimism, rampant and unchecked, was the order of the day, even when there were straws in the wind that the party might finally be grinding to a halt.

In 2003, Armando Falcon, a government official, warned the White House that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were in parlous financial condition and might trigger a national financial meltdown. His “negativity” resulted in the White House trying to fire him.

In 2006, Mike Gelband, head of real estate at Lehman Brothers, expressed his fears of a national property bubble to his CEO. He was promptly sacked. No one, not in government or in business, wanted a doomsayer.

And which business executive has not attended endless courses of “team building”, “vision quests” and “positive thinking”? Even mass sackings in tough times became an opportunity; the focus of a huge “motivation” industry. AT&T sent its staff to a motivational event the same day it announced the layoff of 15,000 workers. Naturally, they were not termed layoffs, but “releases of resources”. Sacked staff were sent to outplacement companies, whose slogan was “losing a job (is) a step forward in life — a growth experience”.

Nor is there solace in religion. In a Time poll, 61 per cent of Christians “agreed with the statement that ‘God wants you to be prosperous’ ”. How do you get to be prosperous? Why, through positive thinking, because, as Televangelist Joyce Meyer explains, “God is positive”. (He certainly has been positive to her; she owns “a private jet and a $23,000 antique marble toilet”).

But isn’t positive thinking good, the alternative to despair? Ehrenreich quotes Ronald Reagan, “Trust but verify”. “We want our airline pilots to anticipate failed engines as well as happy landings”.

Smile or Die is a witty, incisive and frightening study on the dangers of false optimism. A clear and present danger, one might add. Obama, after all, was elected on the slogan of

“Yes we can”.

Smile or Die
Barbara Ehrenreich
Granta
£10.99, 240pp