“That we should always look on the bright side has gone too far and may be damaging our wellbeing.” This is the opinion expressed by Conor Feehly in “The Happiness Trap” (New Scientist, June 8, 2024).
The problem with repeatedly chanting such mantras as “I am a lovable person” or “Every day in every way I’m getting better and better,” explains Feehly, is that they don’t work. Assertions such as “happiness is a choice” and that “I am in control of my emotions” turn out to be fallacies. “It’s going to be okay” may be false optimism. Devising strategies to avoid negative emotions is what Susan David of the Harvard Medical School calls “the tyranny of positivity”. Psychologists have found that these exercises in self-affirmation are ultimately ineffective primarily because they aren’t believed by those who are reciting them. The long-term effects are really to cause damage because they create a world of illusions, described as “toxic positivism”.
The present status of motions was not particularly important until 1998 with the emergence of the positive psychology movement. But long before this recent trend was the traditional philosophy that humanity was special, and that civilization was an ascending process that would affirm just how amazing humanity was. “Toxic positivity” is the personalization of that philosophy.
Humanity’s unrealistically positive attitude about itself can probably be traced to the ascension of human power that began with the Agricultural Revolution of 12,000 years ago. More recently, it was amplified by the Industrial Revolution and further exaggerated by our current Technological Revolution. But it was aided much earlier by the Greeks who thought of humanity as just one level beneath the gods, by the privileged position given to humanity by Christianity, by the “man the measure” attitude of the Renaissance, and by later biology that has defined Homo sapiens as the pinnacle of evolutionary theory. The “pursuit of happiness”, with its roots in the 17th century became a guiding principle of the 18th century Enlightenment and was even enshrined in the American Constitution as a human right. The dubious validity of this argument is best summarized by a quote attributed to Mark Twain in his Letters to the Earth: “Man is the noblest work of God. Now I wonder who got that idea?”
Studies did find, however, that an optimistic outlook did lead to healthier and longer lives, but both an unrealistic optimism and an unrealistic pessimism had the opposite effect.
But other studies show a broader application of “the happiness trap” is connected to socioeconomic status. People who are poor tend to be blamed for their own poverty, whereas people who are affluent tend to ascribe their prosperity to hard work and good choices. Social blame is not likely to make the poor more positive about their poverty, but the psychology is likely to make the rich feel less guilty about their wealth.
Such psychological dynamics are not going to help us in an environmental crisis where the laws of physics and biology are determining our planet’s changing climate and the resulting ecological impacts. Indeed, this “tyranny of positivity” may ultimately be a facade of denial that is both delusional and dangerous.
The global environmental crisis is an existential one with deep roots in our psychological, philosophical, mythological and religious past, which is why it is so difficult for us to confront and surmount. It questions who we are as a species, and casts into doubt the fundamental opinion we have of ourselves. If we are now capable of destroying the biophysical structure of our entire planet, and perhaps ourselves in the process, then what does this reveal about who we are? Such a looming possibility doesn’t leave much room for positivity. Indeed, the folly of this attitude may be much more toxic than we care to imagine.
Ray Grigg for Sierra Quadra
Top image credit: Smile – Photo by David Mello via Flickr (CC BY-ND 2.0)