Barbara Ehrenreich discusses the negative outcomes of positive thinking! I agree with a lot of this, but I feel that she ignores the crucial idea that if you think negative thoughts then bad things may happen. Not with cosmic waves causing unpleasant events, but if you start to lose faith in a property market or the value of a your corporate shares, and others get wind of this, they too may lose faith. This causes a general sense of disquiet, verging on panic, then the run on the bank ensues (It's a wonderful life: George). Should we advocate for keeping shtum about our concerns to artificially keep float certain economies? Should we modify economies so that value is based on real things not expectations of what something might be worth or could cost based on guessed willingness to pay by assumed buyers in some future time period? Can we remove the financial economy from modern society? Probably not, but it may be worth contemplating how much we want to place our trust (and our trust funds) in the hands of people who cannot guarantee security, but hope that everything will be okay.
Doubt-free optimism can back-fire, but are we too deep to pull-out? Should we just keep going forward in this way and hope everything evens out, with us ending out on top?
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