One of the world's neoliberal capitalist thinkers, Oprah Winfrey, no doubt captured our hearts, but mostly the upper and middle-class young white women who for some valid or invalid reasons have problems about themselves. There is already an endless supply of self-love gurus ready to inform you that what you are doing is totally wrong. Correct me if I'm wrong, 'the real minority' of people on this planet might have been running out of legitimate issues, so the positive-thinking movement focused on the 'self' or individual to further move them away from the reality, and for the profit of course. I mean how much are those life-changing books and how many people are hopelessly dying to get out of their depressing situations?
However, just as positive thinking may be damaging or useless, incessantly ranting about the state of the system is unlikely to change your situation and the world either. There is the clash between the altruists out-there and the in-here western individualism. 'Do the change' or 'be the change'. The battle between structural and personal transformation and those simply lacking any of those.
I turned to Oprah, self-help, religion, Hare Krishna, new age nonsense, secular spirituality, you name it, years back when I was unemployed, desperate and overall feeling crap about my situation. I was an idiot believing that changing myself and feeling good would change my situation and the world. And that I do have a choice.
For those who have never experienced in their sheltered molly-coddled privileged lives that in-your-face borderline poverty and parental neglect, for your information, the current world issues and circumstances have been deliberately brought into people's lives. And no amount of self-love can dismantle the structural injustice, soul-crushing effects of colonization, racial inequality and unsustainable economic model that continue to oppress the working-class, the vulnerable and 'the real majority' of the world.
I simply cannot just transform the world by thinking positively nor can I fix my bad day by radiating negative vibes. My mindset and attitude do matter for sure. If you think that people don't have the power in making your life a heaven or a hell, then try to work in a toxic work environment with rampant sexism and racism, and with an abusive power-tripping boss day in and day out. Live with an abusive partner, or deal with those who are in authority who are abusing their power to insist what they want at the expense of others. There's no amount of quick web search about mindfulness and sleepless nights of ranting inside your head can simply do the trick.
Oprah and other western Gandhi quoters continue to reinforce the focus on 'the individual' hiding the role of socio-economic and political structure in our lives. They made you believe that 'it gets better' if you just sit there, breathe and be the change. Meanwhile, corporations and institutions engaged in unethical practices and are insensitive to the caring of their own people, now take advantage of this 'look good' humanitarian projects and other forms of pathological altruism paraded on the office walls.
But just as the spread of the 'be the change' evangelists is becoming alarming, it does not mean you let yourself be occupied by the stream of trolls and negative thinkers to balance things out. If the positive-thinking feel-good people cannot change the world, then the toxic cynical people won't be able to either. Perhaps 'doing' and 'being' don't have to be mutually exclusive, and personal wellbeing is not left to isolation and total blindness to the realities of the outside world. I don't know anymore. If only there's such a thing as balance or the possibility of going in between, but given the nature of humans and their perpetual obsession with the extreme side of things, where do we go now?