[Originally published on September 24, 2008, without the image.]
This morning [ten years ago] I read in the New York Times a very short op-ed piece, “The Power of Negative Thinking,” by Barbara Ehrenreich. Ms. Ehrenreich assails the pie-in-the-sky optimism that I myself subscribed to for many years:
As promoted by Oprah Winfrey, scores of megachurch pastors and an endless flow of self-help best sellers, the idea is to firmly believe that you will get what you want, not only because it will make you feel better to do so, but because “visualizing” something — ardently and with concentration — actually makes it happen.I believed this so ardently in 1989 that I suffered an excess of mania and on its magic carpet sailed for most of the summer, believing that I would win the Publishers Clearing House $10,000,000 Sweepstakes and publish a best-selling book that would tell the world how Youie (a.k.a. “God”) Herself revealed these wonders to me in advance.
Over the years since 1989, I came to see that the psychotherapist who helped me when the inevitable happened and my carpet crashed me into depression was right, it really was mania and not divine revelation.
Ehrenreich’s article concludes:
When it comes to how we think, “negative” is not the only alternative to “positive.” As the case histories of depressives show, consistent pessimism can be just as baseless and deluded as its opposite. The alternative to both is realism [emphasis mine] — seeing the risks, having the courage to bear bad news and being prepared for famine as well as plenty. We ought to give it a try.I hadn’t thought in these terms, but one way for me to think of the turn my thinking about god and religion took last year [2007] is as a turn to realism. Of course, you may dispute whether this is valid, because what is real is, ultimately, a matter of belief, perhaps even “religious” belief.
Of course, in terms of what I myself believe is real, I think I did turn from optimism (God exists and will take care of the righteous, who will live forever in heaven, their young, sexy bodies restored) to realism (we’re all alone here, bud, the atoms in our bodies will be recycled, and our spirits evaporate with them). Of course, many people shudder violently at that view; to them it’s the rankest pessimism. They cling to their magical optimism.
| Copyright © 2018 by Moristotle |
I always hope for the best but keep a plan "B" handy.
ReplyDeleteThe habits of a scientist: any approach other than careful realism seems to me to be perfectly mad.
ReplyDeleteAmen to that.
DeleteHaving, like yourself, lost my belief in tha anthropomorphic God we have created for ourselves, I have not lost the deep conviction that we are NOT alone; even the Bible speaks of gods, devils, angels, powers and principalities, and only enjoins us not to seek spiritual guidance from any but the prescribed ones-God, Jesus, the saints, Mary, ad infinitum. Our good friend Bob Boldt is only one of many who have said to me of certain practices and religions, "I saw things I could not explain." Not, of course, with the linear, materialistic monoism we have had beaten into us. The scientific method will only take us so far; in order to perceive non-scientific phenomena we just need to understand that "there are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy..."
ReplyDeleteRoger, I would really like to pursue this, and perhaps Bob and others who have commented on such matters over the years (including Chuck Smythe, Ed Rogers, Paul Clark [motomynd], and Vic Midyett) would join in.
DeleteBut first, what do you mean by “monoism” in “...the linear, materialistic monoism we have had beaten into us...”?
Monism, perhaps?: “(1) a theory or doctrine that denies the existence of a distinction or duality in some sphere, such as that between matter and mind, or God and the world, or (2) the doctrine that only one supreme being exists.”
And please clarify “non-scientific phenomena.” “Beaten into us”?
Thanks!
As for our further pursuit, submitted articles, from our various perspectives, would serve the weblog well.