I am listening to Barbara Ehrenreich's "Brightsided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America". The author is rather relentless herself in trying to document over-extremes of positive thinking, such as punishing employees who are not cheerful enough. That reminds me of the book "The Managed Heart" by Hochschild. I have been meaning to look at that book. I picked up the idea that it discusses required smiling and cheerfulness for airplane stewardesses and such mandatory cheerfulness. I imagine that over time there have been many such rules, especially for women.
I think Ehrenreich is a pretty good critic and representative of the opposition and counter-argument but she seems to be a little more eager than validated in places. She and others have documented the idea that being happy seems better than not being, if one has a choice. I am confident that one often does.
In the 70's and 80's, two friends and I taught a course called "Futures" which tried to look at likely future developments in all fields. We were inspired by the rather negative picture in the book "Limits to Growth". That picture posited very negative conditions for humans by 2025. The book was published in 1972 and used data and computer models to predict water shortages, air pollution, over-crowding and other ills.
These and other dangers and negatives are definitely on the increase, especially in some spots. But there are other factors at work, too. Authors who explain some of the more positive news and developments include (1) Hans Rosling, now deceased Swedish professor of public health, (2) Stephen Pinker, psychologist, and (3) the earlier author Ben J. Wattenburg, and his several books and articles on the actual complex reality of the US and its people. A related author is (4) Yuval Harari, whose books "Sapiens", "Homo Deus" [Man, the God] and "21 Lessons for the 21st Century" are making a big and positive impression.
Sometimes, it is said to be a goal of a few to "make death optional." Personally, I don't think we are there yet and it might not be a good idea, anyhow. Still, to some extent, we have already done that. Take the case of Hans Rosling (1), mentioned above. He died about a year and a half ago. However, his succinct and helpful book "Factfulness" is quite clear that many adults alive now have pictures of the world that are quite out of date. His TED talks and those of his son Ola and his daughter Anna Rosling Ronnlund continue to inform and actually delight, despite the fact that they are about world statistics, not a subject that typically delights.
The Roslings and the Karolinska Institute of Sweden have created the Gapminder website
where you can see the things shown in Rosling TED talks and additional later information. See between his videos, books and websites, he is still here, even though he is dead.
