Women in the 1800s
Look On The Bright Side
By: Patrick Seick “My Mother.” “A dose of morphine is administered.” “They will die anyway.” “She ate her bottom lip off.” “Dying should be a quiet time.” “Why does she have to endure all this?” “Those screams ring loud and clear.”
Every year the National Committee on the Treatment of Intractable Pain receives thousands letters like this one. They concern a pain so extreme that not even the most powerful legal pain reliever, morphine, can fully alleviate it. But hey, just look on the bright side. I mean it’s always darkest before the dawn. If you dream it, you can do it. Watch. No? Oh well. America today is decidedly and unwaveringly optimistic, we are positive thinkers. Positive thinking is defined by one of its leading advocates, Dr. Charlene Proctor as “the process of choosing positive emotions to create an outlook that translates into a new or better-chosen reality.” In short, our thoughts and attitude can affect the course of the outside world, so we should strive to be positive to reap positive outcomes, while stifling negativity for the opposite reason. We praise the optimist while shunning the pessimist. But the question is does every cloud have a silver lining? In order to show positive thinking as the dangerous paradigm that it is we will first examine the causes of positive thinking, move onto its effects, and then finally round out with solutions. The causes of positive thinking can be traced back to the “Age of Downsizing” and the spread of, at best, weak science. The “Age of Downsizing”, which began in the 1980’s and continued through the 90’s, began in an effort from large corporations to increase their bottom lines by decreasing the numbers in their workforces. One of the unfortunate effects of this systematic slicing and dicing of lives is a demoralized workforce. Thus, corporations faced a dilemma: how to keep up the morale of the remaining workers. The answer? Positive thinking. Since the ‘80’s and
By: Patrick Seick “My Mother.” “A dose of morphine is administered.” “They will die anyway.” “She ate her bottom lip off.” “Dying should be a quiet time.” “Why does she have to endure all this?” “Those screams ring loud and clear.”
Every year the National Committee on the Treatment of Intractable Pain receives thousands letters like this one. They concern a pain so extreme that not even the most powerful legal pain reliever, morphine, can fully alleviate it. But hey, just look on the bright side. I mean it’s always darkest before the dawn. If you dream it, you can do it. Watch. No? Oh well. America today is decidedly and unwaveringly optimistic, we are positive thinkers. Positive thinking is defined by one of its leading advocates, Dr. Charlene Proctor as “the process of choosing positive emotions to create an outlook that translates into a new or better-chosen reality.” In short, our thoughts and attitude can affect the course of the outside world, so we should strive to be positive to reap positive outcomes, while stifling negativity for the opposite reason. We praise the optimist while shunning the pessimist. But the question is does every cloud have a silver lining? In order to show positive thinking as the dangerous paradigm that it is we will first examine the causes of positive thinking, move onto its effects, and then finally round out with solutions. The causes of positive thinking can be traced back to the “Age of Downsizing” and the spread of, at best, weak science. The “Age of Downsizing”, which began in the 1980’s and continued through the 90’s, began in an effort from large corporations to increase their bottom lines by decreasing the numbers in their workforces. One of the unfortunate effects of this systematic slicing and dicing of lives is a demoralized workforce. Thus, corporations faced a dilemma: how to keep up the morale of the remaining workers. The answer? Positive thinking. Since the ‘80’s and