How has this emphasis on positive thinking changed workers daily lives?
It means artificial smiling and artificial cheer. It’s a strain on people emotionally; the effort of managing the appearance of one’s emotions is work. It means not asking the hard questions you think about asking. When people have been criticized for being negative at work, very often what that means is that they asked too many questions. I always thought asking questions was a good thing. How do you imagine people’s work life will look after this great recession? It’s really hard to say if we are going to be working for large organizations in the future or whether we will be freelancers or people who start their own businesses. The overall trend has been for employers to take less and less responsibility for their employees. We’ve seen the collapse of the corporate welfare state that guarantees your pension and health insurance. Now you assume all of the risk. The insecurity is the terrible part. I’ve been pretty lucky as a freelancer in that I got into freelance writing when people
