Don’t Analyze, Act!

I’ve heard a few things about Barbara Ehrenreich’s book, “Bright Sided“, though I haven’t read it.   But the idea has intrigued me, because it’s the idea that our world of positive thinking is too much, and it’s somewhat dangerous.  She says that when someone gets cancer, and is told that positive thinking can heal them, they’re lying in a very cruel and dangerous way to those people.  And really, they’re blaming that person for not being positive enough.  If they don’t get better, it’s then their fault, for not keeping up that sunny disposition all of the time.  This reminds me of those who say some variation of, “God never gives you more than you can handle”.  This idea has always bugged the crap out of me.  If I were weaker, less strong, would my life be easier?  Would my mom still be alive?  No, I seriously doubt it.  Weak people have problems, too.   But the idea that God won’t give you more than you can handle is stupid.  People commit suicide every day.  People drink and do drugs and abuse their children, every single day.  They don’t do these things for fun.  They do them because life is too damn hard, and they can’t handle it.

Another part of her theory is that keeping this bright disposition at all times, sort of like Candide, the idea that things always happen for a reason, that this is the best of all possible worlds…it breeds a sort of intellectual laziness, where instead of thinking things through, analyzing and figuring out possible solutions or better ways to live in our world, we accept what is going on around us.  I think we are made, by God or by Nature, smarter than that.  We are made to question the world that we live in.  We should think about what we read, what we see, what we hear, and put it in the context of our world.  Don’t blindly accept what anyone tells you.  ANYONE.  As they say, “Question Authority”.  Yes indeed.  Please.

She argues that not only is this practice dangerous to the individual, it is dangerous to the culture as well.  If we decide to act without thinking, to accept ideas without putting them to the rigorous tests of our minds, we start to accept dangerous ideas and thoughts.  Ideas that get us into wars we don’t need to be in.  Ideas that get people killed.  Ideas that destroy economies, crash stock markets, because we are so willing to believe what we want to believe, we don’t take the time to stop and think things through.  Instead of thinking first, then acting, we decide to act, rather than think.

Reminds me of a personal story, when we had our house on the market.  Things were starting to crash in the market, but we didn’t realize how badly quite yet, and we were unwilling to drop our price as much as our realtor’s boss said we should.  He came by to talk some sense into us, sat down and told us, “Don’t analyze, act!”.  We were worried.  Worried that if we were to lower our price, and not be able to get a lower price on the other side, we would be in big financial trouble.  Worried that it would be foolish to get in over our heads.  Instead of reassuring us that we would make contingency plans, plans that would guarantee that we would not doom ourselves and ruin our financial nest egg, he said, “Don’t analyze, act!”.   Grrr.  Thankfully, we dropped him.  It meant firing our agent in the process, which sucked, as she is a neighbor and a friend.  But we couldn’t bear the idea of him getting a penny of our money.   And if we had sold then, we might have been able to get a deal on the buying side, and we might not have.  But our mortgage would have gone up quite a bit, and with Ted and I both losing our jobs within 7 months of each other, I don’t think we would have been able to afford the higher price.  We would have been in deep shit, as they say.   We might have lost our home.  So I, for one, and thankful that we were more willing to analyze, to think before we acted.

And while I agree with looking for the bright side of things, I agree that always dwelling on the dark side of life is dangerous and depressing and wrong, I still think that it’s also equally fair to be angry when things don’t go right.  If you get laid off from your job, or if you get cancer, or if someone you love is suffering, you don’t have to go around with an idiotic smile on your face.  Be angry.  Be sad.  Grieve for what should have been.  Don’t let the wounds fester and kill you and make you into someone you don’t want to be, but be angry while appropriate.  I agree with that.  I believe in being angry.  Being mad.  Getting over it, and moving on.  But that anger is a real emotion, and should not be glossed over in favor of looking on the sunny side of life, if for that time at least, you can’t find it.  Who knows, perhaps you might even be able to think for yourself, and decide how you want to feel.  Or at least, how you actually feel, whether you want to or not.

Barbara Ehrenreich was interviewed on our local PBS station, on a show called Forum.  You can hear the interview here.