Perspectives on positivity
Yesterday’s post has generated some interesting comments, particularly a debate between Daniel Snell and Andrew Old concerning the distinction between positive thinking, low expectations and low aspirations.
There is a link between the debate and a row today over advice to the parents of unemployed graduates being offered by the Department for Business Innovation and Skills. The advice, penned by a career coach, encourages parents to show ‘tough love’ (itself an idea which is becoming suspiciously fashionable); give your offspring support but discourage them from being unrealistic, and don’t make life so comfortable that they become couch potatoes.
The Conservatives are no doubt echoing a wider public response when they say that Lord Mandelson’s department ought to be putting its energies into getting the economy on track rather than paying consultants to provide trite advice on parenting.
The point is not whether the advice is correct, but whether this is the appropriate role of Government. I suspect that Barbara Ehrenreich might see this as another example of trying to pin the blame for socio-economic problems (ie the recession and graduate unemployment) on individual attitudes.
This is an incomplete line of thought, but it occurs to me that the key dimension of the debate over positive thinking and happiness is whether the focus is on society or the individual. An interest in aggregate social happiness has been associated with left of centre thinking: On the one hand, the Layard critique of free market consumerism that rising prosperity is no long associated with greater well-being; on the other hand the Wilkinson Pickett thesis that - in developing countries – the key to well-being is not greater aggregate prosperity bu lower levels of inequality.
But, as Ehrenreich argues, if the focus is the individual the tendency is to down play the impact of social factors like inequality or exclusion in favour of an emphasis on what every person can do to change the way they think about things, and through so doing up the chances of a material improvement in their circumstances.
This is obvious, I know.
The value of the debate lies in those who lean towards social determinism having to engage with the importance of culture and attitude while positive thinkers might usefully examine how certain social arrangements seem to have measurable impacts on well-being. This takes us back to the evidence, about which we can say; first, that there is a lot of interesting research being published at both the individual and social level, second, that it is not nearly as conclusive as many of the debate’s protagonists would have us imagine, and third, that even if the evidence was much stronger it would never resolve profound philosophical differences about what constitutes the good society and the good life.
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Comments
12 Comments on Perspectives on positivity
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Tessy Britton on
Tue, 29th Dec 2009 5:54 pm
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daniel snell on
Tue, 29th Dec 2009 7:44 pm
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daniel snell on
Tue, 29th Dec 2009 8:03 pm
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graham hitchen on
Tue, 29th Dec 2009 9:38 pm
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graham hitchen on
Tue, 29th Dec 2009 9:40 pm
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matthew taylor on
Tue, 29th Dec 2009 11:35 pm
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Ian Leslie on
Tue, 29th Dec 2009 11:37 pm
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daniel snell on
Wed, 30th Dec 2009 9:20 am
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Livy on
Thu, 31st Dec 2009 4:43 am
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daniel snell on
Thu, 31st Dec 2009 7:03 pm
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Livy on
Thu, 31st Dec 2009 7:59 pm
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Livy on
Thu, 14th Jan 2010 4:12 pm
Yet another blog post I am trying (and failing) to ignore!
Barbara Ehrenreich has so much to contribute to this discussion. Having seen the negative effects of ‘mandatory positive thinking’ on three close relatives who passed away from cancer, Ehrenreich’s own experiences of being made to feel responsible for her survival from cancer based on her positive (or not) attitude really resonated with me. Ehrenreich is also qualified to comment on this saddening and almost inhumane belief having a PHD in cellular immunology herself.
What I do take from the vast literature on happiness is that *some* forms of optimism can direct our actions more positively – and also have the potential to reduce clinical depression. Our willingness to envisage a better future, coupled with the self-efficacy to create change seem to me to be essential ingredients for civic participation.
Equally, there are some studies which suggest that our actions have an impact on our levels of optimism too, which seem to me to offer a deeper and more grounded form of optimism, which is significantly more difficult to trivialise than ‘positive thinking’.
Optimistic thinking, when deployed (consciously) in the same way as any other form of ‘thinking’ e.g. critical, creative, divergent, synthesising etc, can only have real value where it impacts our actions rather than just our demeanour.
Really looking forward to seeing Barbara Ehrenreich speak at the RSA next month!
aha – good to see you here too Tessy.
Matthew, how you draw us in.
there’s a saying a friend mine uses (he’s from Atlanta) which goes something like this – ‘if you need to tell people you’re a lady – you ain’t’.
another way of saying that is ‘what is, is not’ or if you hear someone speak a lot about ‘positivity’ be watchful they’re not trying to sell you something and keep your hand on your wallet.
positivity is needed, it is our connection to the other (and each other) to our Godhead, and yet when ungrounded, or used to disguise, confuse, manipulate, control it is saccherine(ly) dangerous. Ungrounded – it’s so Californian!
There are a good deal of self help organizations, religions, guru’s based on getting happy, being positive, generating success from a PMT (positive mental attitude – as the yanks call it) be careful, as you will end up paying for their boat – which they positively describe as a example of ‘how they made it’ through this or that amazing insight or technology and you too can have some at $$$$ if you sign up today. RUN A MILE or don’t it’s up to you.
slightly different subject matter – but worth a read non-the-less
Not so hot on befell, but the early Marx was very animated by the relationship between determinism and choice, and the concept of agency. EP Thompson and Raymond Williams of course are also interested in this. Positive thinking is a very new-left idea, so long as one understands that it is always pursued within a particular economic and social context. That’s the (early) Marxist dialectic!
Sorry – spell-check quirk: that should be ‘hegel’ not ‘befell’!
It is playing on my mind that the argument in this post is so facile. I guess what I am trying to get at is that it is not necessary that those who address well-being in individuals underestimate the importance of society or vice versa. For example someone who provides smoking cessation for individual smokers might still believe that a collective action – like a smoking ban or a price hike – would be more powerful than their own efforts. And there is also no reason why someone might not accept that it is social contexty which most determines well-being but conclude that we need a conservative social order; that it is not a lack of social justice which makes people feel negative but instead aspects of modernity like less deference to authority or greater ethnic diversity..
A few rather random thoughts on this debate:
- In America, New York recently came last place in a state-by-state happiness ranking. To me this says more about the absurdity of happiness metrics than it does about New York. I find the whole GNH, Layard project to be horribly glib. Anxiety, uncertainty, and yes, unhappiness are all part of what makes life satisfying. Otherwise we’d all want to live in Copenhagen.
- I don’t know if BE covers the effects of positive thinking and/or self-esteem on the education system in the US and to a lesser extent here. Angela Duckworth speaks eloquently about how a generation of kids have grown up feeling pretty good about themselves without being good at anything, because they’ve learnt self-esteem without learning self-discipline (or ‘grit’).http://www.incharacter.org/article.php?article=147 I don’t think the advice from DBIS that MT quotes above is so facile.
- I would tentatively defend Seligman and the PP movement from blanket derision. Seligman’s original point was that psychologists have for years studied only our problems and pathologies – shouldn’t we also be trying to understand our virtues, so that we might develop and improve them? This seems to me eminently sensible and, well, positive.
Matthew,
Right. .. I grasped the broader point you were making, which might be summed up like this – the individual vs. the state (politics) as a focus for positive human change, or perhaps both.
Haven’t we been kicking this around since the birth of philosophy?
Is this not what Plato’s Republic is trying to address – That ‘intelligent’ beings, pull the levers and the public are made better/more positive by it.
Clearly clever people making the right collective decisions for the benefit of the many is also essential, but it is the individual that must do the personal development. Complex ideas are made simple my simple minds so that they can understand the complex.
RE Hegel: who followed on from Kant and was as you know a massive influence on Marx, can be simplified by saying that he focused his philosophy upon ‘the unreality of separateness’, which is an illusion, nothing he believed was ultimately and completely real except ‘the whole’.
We have a divergence and perhaps a cross roads in society like never before. And (I believe) must watch very closely what plays out, that separation is the individual and or vs. the state or community.
We are being told that we must be the masters of our own destiny, and that if we fail then that is in some way our fault. A powerfully flawed suggestion in my opinion. Especially as if you don’t have the right information to hand or are taught what to do with it – how can you realistically act successfully?
We were told that there is no society (community) only the individual, which pits man against man into competition. If there is no community, or ‘being with’ others, in reality there can be no state. Why should I care for some invented notion of Britishness (quite an inflammatory thing to write) if it’s all about me and my personal success? His loss my gain, as I drive into my gated community.
We are all hooked into notions of success (collapsed with positivity and wealth) and we are to admire wealth and success regardless of how it is achieved. I heard someone who worked with a very famous music mogul hay of his character he was in essence a materialistic, ruthless, driven brute and made bones about that and he was very, very rich. AND that was somehow OK. Say what you like about him – he’s successful – isn’t that what you are trying to do – you’re just not very good at it.
We end up despising ourselves for not being successful and will sell our gran for success. Why? Why do we so desperately want… at the cost of community or the state, others?
Is the state dead or is community? But all happiness as Hegel would suggest in the whole. It is the desire to be in connection with others that create happiness, it is the separation that creates unhappiness. Therefore, it is this sanitized version of happiness of ‘positivity’ which is the Prozac the oil upon our dysfunctional selves that has us survive this ‘insane’ society we have built for ourselves, where the rich get richer and the prisons get fuller, there are more wars, more medication, more mental health issues, and what do we do?…line up to take advantage of the boxing day sales to buy designer clutch bags at half price, like demented fools, we justify the savings (from £1000 to £500 or whatever), when the product was undoubtedly made in China for pennies. Madness. But look at me, I have to show you I’m important, otherwise, I’d be like the others, and they are Helots, the serfs.
Tessy’s are the only comments I invariably wish I made first. The force is strong with this one.
I didn’t want to come near these positivity posts once I realised how out of step I was. Suppose I could caveat the few musings I’m brave enough to verbalise with the admission that compared to all you fine, lucid and well read people I probably have half your age and a quarter of your experience. Then again, Shakespeare boasted a mighty library of fifty books whilst I have Google on my side.
Besides, I wanted to save most of my personal insights into happiness for the larger article and audio series I plan to release in 2010… Not only will I save my fellow brothers from their wretched negative lives but they’ll also enable me to finally buy that yacht I always wanted. Which I will earn…and so could anybody if they buy my pre-strapped boots.
To realise the ‘Form of the Good’ is analogous to what many of your detested, money grabbing, “$$$” owning, self help charlatans might today refer to as ‘unconscious competence’. It always amuses me when fierce opponents of self improvement literature, or even the mildest ‘positive thinking’ skeptics, tend to be people who already carry themselves with high levels of self esteem and live fulfilled lives.
Unfortunately for the philosopher king he must endure the burden of one day returning to the cave. A man who has seen the sun as the real source of truth now knows the ‘ideal’ world and has a responsibility to educate those in the ‘material’ world. Light must be spread into darkness as often as those levers are pulled or statues are moved; shadows on the wall don’t comprise reality. These days individuals know that for they were born outside the cave; society generally doesn’t and they aren’t being told, which is why the story describes the freedman being painfully blinded when stepping outside for the first time.
Who knows. Maybe rising prosperity doesn’t automatically correlate with greater well being because free market consumerism is divorced from any notion of learning and self awareness. With so many people unchained from the wall they may be in the second stage along the ‘divided line’, but still viewing the world through imagination and conjecture rather than real understanding.
Or then again Tacitus could have been right, if not under appreciated. Whatever the relationship between individual and society, studying the way a real state is governed could ultimately teach us more about darkness, light and ‘the good life’ through practical lessons about good vs. bad government. Certainly more than an over intellectualised and (sorry..) irreconcilable blog debate about where we should be.
Livy.
Livy,
there very first thing i learnt in therepy is that you externalise your internal belief – (you make external what you believe about yourself) what do you believe is true about you?
D.
So is now the part where I start talking about my relationship with my mother?
I’m a simple man. I believe what Wayne Gretzky said, that you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.
Then again, he does have a January birthday…just like all the other undeserving elite athletes in the NHL.
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