“Those who fail to exhibit positive attitudes, no matter the external reality, are seen as maladjusted and in need of assistance. Their attitudes need correction. Once we adopt an upbeat vision of reality, positive things will happen. This belief encourages us to flee from reality when reality does not elicit positive feelings. These specialists in "happiness" have formulated something they call the "Law of Attraction." It argues that we attract those things in life, whether it is money, relationships or employment, which we focus on. Suddenly, abused and battered wives or children, the unemployed, the depressed and mentally ill, the illiterate, the lonely, those grieving for lost loved ones, those crushed by poverty, the terminally ill, those fighting with addictions, those suffering from trauma, those trapped in menial and poorly paid jobs, those whose homes are in foreclosure or who are filing for bankruptcy because they cannot pay their medical bills, are to blame for their negativity. The ideology justifies the cruelty of unfettered capitalism, shifting the blame from the power elite to those they oppress. And many of us have internalized this pernicious message, which in times of difficulty leads to personal despair, passivity and disillusionment.”

Chris Hedges

Chris Hedges - “Those who fail to exhibit positive...” 1

Similar quotes

“The greatest disease of mankind is a lack of love for children, leading to their psychological and sometimes even physical abuse, which predisposes those children to a hopeless-helpless attitude and to disease later in life. We cannot keep blaming physical poisons or genetic defects for every disease. We have to realize that there are social and psychosocial poisons in our own homes that predispose us to disease by creating certain attitudes and feelings within us.”

Bernie Seigel
Read more

“The most attractive are not those who allow us to kiss them at once [we soon feel ungrateful] or those who never allow us to kiss them [we soon forget them], but those who coyly lead us between the two extremes.”

Alain De Botton
Read more

“Those people who recognise that imagination is reality's master, we call sages, and those who act upon it, we call artists.”

Tom Robbins
Read more

“From love arises hatred of those things which are contrary to what we love, or which oppose and thwart us in those things that we delight in.”

Jonathan Edwards
Read more

“Memories have ways of becoming independent of the reality they evoke. They can soften us against those we were deeply hurt by or they can make us resent those we once accepted and loved unconditionally.”

Azar Nafisi
Read more