The self-help industry is a way to brain wash people.

A few days ago I wrote a blog post in which I proved that the self-help industry is useless. (Essentially I said if it worked, there wouldn't be any need for an industry.)

Yesterday I ordered Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America by Barbara Ehrenreich from the library. Apparently she argues that the "positive thinking movement" is a way that rich, wealthy, powerful people brainwash us.

I had never thought about it that way. If we're constantly told to stay positive and look at the bright side of things, then when we're let down or fired or abused or taken advantage of, we're not allowed to be upset.

It's the perfect scam! A corporation lays off all it's employees and says, "Don't worry, we're hiring a motivational speaker!"

The company says, "You have to stay positive! Things are going great for you! Look at the bright side!"

Positive thinking is hardly every questioned in our culture. It's just assumed that you should be doing it and you should be doing a lot of it.

If we are taught that "it's all in our mind, everything happens for a reason, you control your destiny, look on the bright side", we're taught to accept negativity and abuse.

Maybe people need to be pessimistic and angry. Maybe that will change things.

We want to be afraid of things.

You know how sometimes you want to go see a scary movie? You get in the safe theatre and eat your safe popcorn, and then you watch this terrifying movie? And even though it's terrifying it's also kind of fun and exciting?

That's how we want it to be all the time. We want to be scared, but safely scared. We want to be scared for other people. We want to be told what to do by experts to lessen our fear.

The media has realized this and tries to make us as scared as possible. The media tries to satisfy our needs. Newspapers or movies or TV shows or news shows that scare you are rewarded more through attention, ratings, gossip and ultimately money.

The government is happy! It knows that we want to be scared so they gladly oblige. They pass laws and spend our money to protect us. This gives them more power.

Corporations are happy to scare us as well. They can sell more products and services if we're scared.

So it's pluses all around. We want to be scared and we ask the media, government and business world to scare us. The media, government and corporations try their best to scare us and, in turn, benefit through more attention, power or money.

That's why today there are murderers everywhere, wars, impending natural disasters, pandemics, terrorists, rapists, corrupt governments and a million other things that will ruin our lives forever.