Reply #80: Ehrenreich had some choice words about Hill, and they weren't glowing.

[Touchdown]

In my experience, the corporate world is exactly the quote you say is nonsense. "Positive thinking" allowed Wall Street to ignore the signs of disaster, because of the belief "that you can create your own destiny". If you think there will never be a crash, then there never will be one. Hogwash!

The problem with this is that the PMA you are talking about is as dead as conservatives. Replaced with reactionary cults who are at best delusional, and since it' so pervasive, it affects the rest of us in the forms of firings, lost friends, and a general denial of reality.

How do you define success? I have to have a baseline of you before I can respond to your comment about happy, successful people who are salesmen.

Depression is a chemical imbalance. It is a medical condition, and it's completely human. To deride it as something that can just be willed away is denying reality. Furthermore, I would ask you to define "Negative Person" as well. To many adherents to this religion, anybody who posesses critical thinking skills, or sees the wrongs in the world we live in, and wishes to do something about it (activism), are considered "negative". Any questioning or criticism, or even calls for clarification is considered "negative" and can be subject to a purge. Bad news from the reality based world is not negative. Denying it because it might de-rail your day is a mental disorder.

If your life is so fragile, and your emotions so volatile that you need a guru/life coach/preacher to tell you to purge other humans from your life, no matter who they are, then it's not your "Negative People" that have the problem. It's your own confidence level that needs constant stroking and an elimination of natural human emotions to function that does. That is the quintessential definition of a phony... which I've met many a salesmen who fit that to a tee.

Lest you think I'm being "negative", I'm not. I'm critical. There is a big difference between the two.