Barbara Ehrenreich: Smile or Die

This book takes a incisive look at the (mostly American) culture of "positive thinking". Tracing the roots of this world view to a backlash to Calvinism, that, perversely, incorporated Calvinism's penchant for psychic self-flagellation, Ehrenreich analyses the effects of positive thinking in business, religion and academia.

On a gaming tangent: This is the thinking heavily satirized (and lethally enforced) in the Paranoia RPG, where open critical thinking, dissatisfaction and unhappiness in general is grounds for immediate termination. Unsurprisingly, everybody smiles in Paranoia.

This is not a book that offers the reader comfy shudders of doom and gloom. Ehrenreich would rather see us all happy. But she makes a convincing case that positive thinking is used as a highly sophisticated means to squeeze more work (and tacit compliance) from workers at the cost of their own well-being, that it put powerful and dangerous blinders on key decision makers in the ongoing economic crisis and that it, ultimately, is not going to make you happy and successful. Instead, the industry-grade variants described in the book tend to lead their adherents into a sugary solipsism characterized by unrealistic expectations and self-reproach - if you fail, you didn't think enough happy thoughts.

4.5 of 5 crucified motivational speakers

Highly recommended