Essay Sample on Optimism in the United States

Introduction

Positive thinking has been continuously encouraged in contemporary society as a means to overcoming numerous life challenges and obstacles. As society progresses and becomes more complex, adhering to the positivity psychology has dominated modern America encompassing different personalities from entrepreneurs, business people, mega-religious leaders to educators. Nevertheless, it is acknowledgeable that the socio-cultural nature of most Americans is positive, which drives many individuals to believe that through frequent indulgence into positive thinking, all the socio-cultural and economic issues shall be resolved. However, as revealed by Ehrenreich Barbara, positive thinking ideology significantly results in more suffering and relentless weaknesses that undermine individuals' ability to resolve their contemporary challenges. She adamantly discourages the preordained and preconditioned mindset that frequent positivity improves individuals' situation. Since the world is dominantly dystopia characterized by constant socio-cultural and economic conflicts and regression, embracing positive thinking as a strategy for propelling America towards a utopian society is an idiocy philosophy that must be rejected and discouraged. Incorporation of pessimistic attitude to always recognize obstacles and challenges in every opportunity substantially enable human to prepare for the worse rather than clinging to a relentless theory (Cieslik, 379). Therefore, the investigation acknowledges that positive thinking is dandy and Americans need to embrace realism and pessimistic attitude to enable them to solve and revolve difficult obstacles in the country.

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Positive thinking is a mental and emotional attitude of embracing the bright side of every phenomenon and always expecting optimistic results.it encompasses optimistic visualization and confession of desirable outcome irrespective of the situation or circumstances (Cieslik, 380). According to positive thinking activists, it adequately helps in the eradication of regressive mindset that propels individuals into massive unbearable obstacles. Nevertheless, according to Ehrenreich, who has constantly drawn great examples from her deplorable medical condition when she had cancer, she exposed the domination positive thinking philosophy that most cancer patients have been forced to adhere to without deviating. Despite considering America and a visionary and optimistic society, it is vital to conceptualize that the contemporary society does not require positive thinking that only recognizes the bright sides of obstacles but a mindset that acknowledges the problems and negatively impacting the society and diligently searching for adequate and resourceful solutions as having a positive mindset and positive visualization has constantly resulted in negative outcome. For instance, between 2001 and 2006, many home buyers, real estate investor and bankers kept a positive attitude that the real estate market will always escalate due to the frequent increasing home values irrespective of the adverse socio-economic dynamics, however, they were extremely disappointed and incurred massive losses when the real estate market crushed causing great epidemic that its impact still exists today (Hanna, np). It such individuals possessed a realistic or pessimistic attitude to always expect the worse in every situation, they could have relatively avoided such deplorable situation and loss. Therefore, possessing a positive mindset only deters individuals from assessing the multidimensional dynamics that characterize the contemporary society, hence must be discouraged.

Nevertheless, many positive thinking activists and advocates argue that changing the mindset to embrace optimism like feeling gratitude, self-confidence and contentment often lengthen peoples live and improve health (Long, np). Like vitamins or daily exercise, many positive psychologists acknowledge that optimism plays a significant role in propelling America towards the realization of its national goals and objective as it promotes socio-economic development, which has inspired economists to feel the need of adhering on happiness rather than gross national products to measure and evaluate economy's success. However, such claims of the positive impact of an optimistic mindset are extremely exaggerated. Despite the dominant notion that America is a "positive nation," Ehrenreich convincingly argues that such doctrines spread by motivational speakers and religious leaders significantly represent symptoms of the noxious virus that has continued to infect most corners of the American heritage. For instance, the contemporary statistics greatly contradicts that America is a happy or positive nation characterized by the healthy ideology of an optimistic attitude. In 2011, America was ranked twenty third among the positively prosperous nations, it consequently accounts for more than two-thirds of the global antidepressant markets. Embracing positive thinking only places pressure and massive anxiety among its subscribers as it encourages narrow thinking that does not consider the constant challenges of modern American society hence undermines both American integrity and productivity (Hanna, np).

Additionally, many positivists make the great assumption that America is the greatest place in the world with extensive political and military powers but such individuals ignore the socio-economic vices facing America ranging from inadequate medical facilities, poor sanitation oppression or the marginalized communities and poor educational system (Ehrenreich, 200). The philosophy assumes that America is equivalent to a utopia nation that every individual's dreams is adequately achievable irrespective of their financial differences, gender, religious beliefs or sexual orientation. However, deploying and encouraging such ignorant philosophy encourages narrow mindedness and degradation of socio-cultural and economic values by promoting elusive belief in positive visualization rather than accepting the challenges and daily obstacles, devising intensive strategies and eradicating the adverse socio-economic challenges. Despite many psychologists disapproving and discouraging Ehrenreich's views as pessimistic, it is relevant to consider that with the emergence of capitalism America needs active solutions to its problems such as crumbling infrastructure, poor health care, racial discrimination, gender inequality, gun violence, and massive economic debt and political instability rather than clinging to a visionless theoretical framework that has become outdated and irrelevant to the modern American society. Regretfully, the American allegiance to the optimism philosophy has adamantly resulted into an oppressive system and a suffocating culture of positivity that offers no genuine hope for the hopeless but rather promises an illusion of utopia society while only promoting dystopia nation. For instance, in what began as a response to Calvinism, optimism has become oppressive as everything is currently associated to positive thinking, from corporate success to healthy lifestyle while deviating from the dogma is considered religious heresy (Hanna, np).

However, as Ehrenreich affirmed the American society require a pessimistic mindset to enable people to identify and face the contemporary challenges rather than searching for an easy way out (Olick, 318). Possessing a skeptical attitude encourages critical evaluation and assessment of the modern trends and dynamics which discourages laziness and slothfulness that is adamantly represented in the optimism attitude through its frequent advocacy towards "righteous riches," and "positive success." The mystical view which has dominated the American modern society has from social, religious to economic spheres extremely contributes to massive degradation of American society which only realistic and pessimistic attitude that has the ability to assess and identify problems and drawbacks a solve. The positivity attitude has consequently turned corporate managers into mystical celebrities who embrace vision rather than sacrificial dedication to meet the stipulated targets, goals and objectives while religious leaders instead of focusing on promoting spiritual development and revelation, they have turned into motivational speakers. The positive thinking that encourages light at the end of every tunnel irrespective of an individual's effort is an absurd ideology that only worked in traditional society. The belief that only a change in attitude towards the universe attracts desirable results without factoring the diverse problems and tribulation that complicates life in current America is a colossal fallacy that only undermines the society resulting in immense poverty and socio-economic and political instability and vulnerability (Olick, 320).

Conclusion

In conclusion, positive thinking continues to dominate the contemporary society irrespective of its insignificant contribution to the socio-economic development of American society. Utilizing the positivity strategy to provide an illusion of utopia attracts many people to subscribe to the dominant notion. However, despite Americans being referred to as positive people with the optimistic, cheerful and upbeat mindset that reflects the national pride, in spite of emotional stability and healthy living, positivity has generally resulted in multidimensional negative impacts in the society that has returned the whole state backward (Cieslik, 380). For instance, the optimism attitude prompted into a great loss for real estate stakeholders and investors that believed the real estate market cannot be affected by economic crush hence in 2007, they incurred great losses. Nevertheless, embracing skeptical perspective like pessimistic attitude substantially helps people to identify, and tackle challenges in life having a mindset that always expect the worse promote adequate preparation that allows people to plan and strategize schemes to tackle future challenges. Therefore, Americans should adopt a pessimistic mindset to enable them confronts socio-economic and political obstacles and challenges in the country rather than embracing the baseless theoretical optimism notion.

Works Cited

Cieslik, Mark. "Book Review: Semiotics of happiness: Rhetorical beginnings of a public problem." (2017): 379-381.

Ehrenreich, Barbara. Bright-sided: How the relentless promotion of positive thinking has undermined America. Metropolitan Books, 2009.

Hanna Rosin. Happy days. The New York Times. 2009. Available at <https://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/08/books/review/Rosin-t.html> accessed on 2nd March 2019

Long, Grouches Live Just. "Good News for Grouches: Happiness is overrated." Skeptical Inquirer (2016).

Olick, Jeffrey K. "The poverty of resilience: on memory, meaning, and well-being." Memory Studies 9.3 (2016): 315-324.