Toxic Positivity- "One Book Destroyed Western Civilization"

Post Reply New Topic

My friend showed me this article, it's so true.

https://www.okdoomer.io/one-book-destro ... the-bible/

I agree - I consider it unsustainable happiness.

There was a thread about it once before and people argued with me about it.

Toxic positivity can cause a lot of harm in my experience. It can keep people in harmful relationships, work environments, and religions/cults.

The Law of Attraction seems ableist. It appears to be suggesting that people are in complete control of their lives when they aren’t.

I agree with both of you, Isabella and Twilight.

I was brought up by one of these Toxic Positivity people, she had me fooled. But eventually I realised she was full of shite and so was everyone else who insists on being positive 24/7.

It's impossible isn't it! People have a range of emotions, we can't be positive 24/7. That's crazy.

It's awful that this idea has pervaded Western society and people are brainwashed...

I agree that a positive outlook can make things better. My life has been better since becoming less pessimistic after my diagnosis.

Like with most everything else if you take things to an extreme it is harmful to you and others.

Look up Rob Henderson and his concept of Luxury Beliefs.

Also when you're a 'have' and incur the embarrassment of realizing that where you're at is luck and that just about everyone has 'hard work', it's way better to grab at anything that'll justify your position including Victorian new thought from the likes of Neville Goddard and Napoleon Hill.

All the while the genome is trying to cull as many superfluous (unlucky) people from the pool as possible so - nature loves the inequality as much as it loves ideologies that convince people to remove their genitals on a whim because it puts really bright lines around who it considers worthy of life and who it doesn't.

The "law of attraction," in its pure form, is magical thinking and victim-blaming nonsense.

There are some grains of truth to the "law of attraction" and similar ideas: (1) Other factors being equal, most people are more attracted to cheerful people than to unhappy people, as potential friends, lovers, employees/employers, etc. (2) Prolonged grief makes it harder to get necessary things done, both on the job and elsewhere. (3) People's emotions do have a real effect on their physical health (though they are not the sole or main determinant of physical health).

But there's a longstanding tendency in American culture to carry the ideas of positive thinking and personal responsibility to ridiculous extremes. I agree with the article's conclusion:

My mother believes in the law of attraction, to the extent of outright blaming children for their cancer.

I don't think it's nearly as commonplace a belief as the author states. Yeah, it's sold a lot of copies, but people don't read everything they buy, they don't believe everything they read, and they don't even remember everything they believe. I suspect the "soft" versions about optimism generally being more productive than pessimism (which sucks for a natural pessimist like me!) are more widely believed. Also, think it's worth pointing out that The Secret's readership is not evenly distributed throughout the population - it's much more popular with women, for example. I don't think those traits that the author picks out, like behaving inconsiderately or as if they are invincible, are more commonly associated with people who have read The Secret.

And in any case, its ideas are really easy to debunk.

Ah, the idea that happiness is a choice, the can-do culture that has no answer when you can't do. I don't think I've ever not wanted to be happy, yet sometimes life has stopped me achieving it for a while. I think the trick is to think carefully and to try to correct any bias, either negative or positive. It's probably true that a bit of positive bias in the mix can be helpful in some specific situations, but I think it can also backfire in others. There's also a big difference between getting habitually morbid and just venting negative feelings in order to move on.

I don't think happiness can be directly pursued with much sustainable success. It's only partially under our control. Better to avoid books by life gurus that claim to be able to upgrade your life. They don't sell so well in the UK, but I doubt the British are smarter than Americans. I think it's just that the USA is a much bigger place so there are bound to be more gullible idiots, as well as more smart people who don't believe silly books.