Lance's Positive Thinking Voodoo Cult
bartman100
Posts: 544
Forgive the wholesale cut n'paste job. Thought this was spot on. From Ed Smith - New Statesman today
He might be disgraced as a sportsman but his advocacy of relentless willpower has brought hope to millions of cancer sufferers. That is the conventional view of Lance Armstrong. Sadly, the doping case against Armstrong is the least of it. Applied to sport, Armstrong’s deification of the power of positive thinking is mere fantasy. When it is applied to the question of life and death it moves into far more dangerous territory.
Armstrong built a brand in answer to the question, “What made the difference, Lance?” He nourished a narrative that apparently began as a lie and hardened into full-scale fantasy. Not talent (though he possessed plenty of that). Not drugs (though his team-mates now say he was a “pioneer of doping”). No, the difference in Armstrong’s view was his mental ability to eliminate human frailty. Armstrong recovered from testicular cancer; he then won seven yellow jerseys in the Tour de France. Those two processes became blurred in his mind – so much so that when people accused him of doping in cycling he would imply they were belittling those who had recovered from cancer.
Fanatical hatred
Does Armstrong still believe he is a genuine champion, unfairly wronged? Many people accused of doping allow themselves some wriggle room, even before they are caught. Armstrong responded to his accusers with fanatical hatred. They were cynics trying to cheat the world of genuine miracles that he, Armstrong, had made real.
Is lying the appropriate word for such a fantasist? Or do fantasists lose possession of those facts that don’t fit the version of events on which their self-image relies? Armstrong’s racing was informed by a simple mantra: I believe, therefore I will win. Armstrong’s doping denials were similarly straightforward: I believe, therefore it is true. Both sport and life had been reduced to a narrative in which willpower could defy any odds.
Armstrong told us to “believe in miracles”. But if you follow his own logic, believing in miracles doesn’t quite capture it. After all, he believed he had the power to make miracles, not just to benefit from them. He was the agent, not just the recipient. There is a term for those who can will miraculous events: gods. That is how Armstrong viewed himself. The rules that govern normal human beings no longer applied to him.
There are echoes of Tiger Woods, who has long regarded his own humanity as something that needs to be overcome rather than embraced. Feelings, emotions, vulnerabilities: they are problems that need to be ironed out, like flaws in a faulty back-swing.
But compare Armstrong’s alleged deceit with the relatively trifling deception of Woods. Woods pretended to be a family man to make a few extra million dollars in easy sponsorship deals. He was exposed but his achievements on the golf course remain valid. With Armstrong, the deceit seems far deeper and sadder.
Armstrong found many willing allies in the promotion of his myth. The public lapped up the Lance legend with hysterical enthusiasm. He was the perfect hero for our times: an icon of willpower. In sport – and in life – self-belief is now routinely invoked as the explanation for almost everything. Commentators blithely assure us that it is “all about who wants it the most”, as though sporting podiums are arranged exactly according to the amount of willpower that went into the struggle. Bronze: considerable self-belief; silver: still stronger self-belief; gold: self-belief on an epic scale.
This is pure nonsense. Inferring an exact and causal relationship between determination and success is a delusional fantasy of a society obsessed by just deserts. The true differentiating factors in elite sport are far more complex. What goes in to the making a champion? It is the subtle interplay of genes, talent, opportunity, hard work, willpower, pure luck and, in some cases, drugs. Willpower is just one factor. Armstrong’s oversimplification of success becomes even more problematic when it is applied to the question of life and death. The misleading phrase “the battle against cancer” has a lot to answer for. A friend of mine recently died of breast cancer. It would be hard to imagine a braver, stronger-willed woman. But the cancer “won”, as cancers often do. That her death could be interpreted as a failure of willpower or positive thinking is a gross insult.
Modern gods
It is an insult that has been implied by the Armstrong message. The truth about “positive thinking” is much more nuanced. It is often a very good thing. It may even be necessary. But it is never sufficient. The Armstrong philosophy veers dangerously close to the self-help mantra of books such as The Secret. Its author, Rhonda Byrne, mused after the Java tsunami of 2006 that such events only ever afflicted people who were “on the same frequency as the event”. Smile or Die, Barbara Ehrenreich’s exposé of the positive-thinking industry, includes a chilling story from a psychiatrist at a New York cancer clinic: “Patients come in with stories of being told by well-meaning friends, ‘I’ve read all about this – if you got cancer, you must have wanted it.’ ”
Every age has its deities. The medieval mindset placed its blind faith in God. The Enlightenment anointed reason and science. Our own age has indulged a pseudoscientific cult of willpower: the deification of determination. At its best, it is a questionable creed. At its worst, it suggests that all losers must also be weaklings.
With luck, Armstrong’s career – and the legend that surrounded it –will one day be seen as the high-water mark of the voodoo cult of willpower. Paradoxically, Armstrong’s downfall may do more long-term good than his ascent. We now know that pure willpower was only one strand of Armstrong’s career. That corrective applies to all success and, by extension, to all failure. Armstrong spent his career trying to prove that willpower is the whole story. Instead, he has demonstrated that life is always far more complicated than that.
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Comments
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interesting, thanks for sharing0
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eh, is this real
lance is a cult because no matter what happens to him people will still follow him and be blind to the truth
and he has made a lot of money from these people, maybe he should become a scientologist........... true profiteering from vulnerable people
why cheats get this sort of coverage is beyond me....0 -
estampida wrote:eh, is this real
lance is a cult because no matter what happens to him people will still follow him and be blind to the truth
and he has made a lot of money from these people, maybe he should become a scientologist........... true profiteering from vulnerable people
why cheats get this sort of coverage is beyond me....
It's not really about LA at all. It's about one of the messages he sells, which isn't far off what lots of other people are selling. It also fits perfectly with "The American Dream" - if you work for it you can get it.
I seem to vaguely remember some research that suggested that self-help books encouraging positive thinking often did more harm than good. The basic conclusion was that if you were strong and successful the positive thinking was reinforced by the success you enjoyed anyway, whereas if you weren't then positive thinking encouraged setting unattainable goals, failing to achieve them and feeling crap about it.Warning No formatter is installed for the format0 -
No tA Doctor wrote:The basic conclusion was that if you were strong and successful the positive thinking was reinforced by the success you enjoyed anyway, whereas if you weren't then positive thinking encouraged setting unattainable goals, failing to achieve them and feeling crap about it.
... Also, possibly a scenario applicable to the class system and socia/political/economic privilege. Might we be veering towards some Universal Truths here?
Right on, Comrade.0 -
Some attitudes in the text above (e.g. the “tsunami of 2006 … only ever afflicted people who were on the same frequency as the event” and “if you got cancer, you must have wanted it”) are disturbingly not that far removed from some of the false attitudes which have now emerged about the Hillsborough tragedy - the opinion that those fans who died in a way caused their own death.
By objecting to such, I’m not saying there shouldn’t be a degree of self-responsibility, and I think Brits are sometimes a bit lax in recognising this. But to turn things 180 degrees, as Americans seemingly often do (from their own inclination/upbringing), I think also wrong, especially when some analysts apparently justify subsequent developments only on one’s psyche.
I'm not sure voodoo is the right term for this thread, but in case it is, in order to help try rectify matters, I’ve stuck two drawing pins in a photo of LA on front page of a copy of Cycling Weekly from 2002 which I found recently in the cellar. It made me happy!0 -
OCDuPalais wrote:No tA Doctor wrote:The basic conclusion was that if you were strong and successful the positive thinking was reinforced by the success you enjoyed anyway, whereas if you weren't then positive thinking encouraged setting unattainable goals, failing to achieve them and feeling crap about it.
... Also, possibly a scenario applicable to the class system and socia/political/economic privilege. Might we be veering towards some Universal Truths here?
Right on, Comrade.
You're thinking of the "I worked my way to the top" line, that forgets that for a top to exist there has to be a huge mound of bottom to climb? And that's without mentioning those that were born at Everest Camp 3...
The only reason I'm not a proper revolutionary is that I can't work out which of the long list of bastards should be up against the wall first when the revolution comes ;-)Warning No formatter is installed for the format0 -
There's nothing more odious than the conviction of rich people that the reason they are rich is because they really really deserve it. [c.f. Blair's interpretation of meritocracy]0
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True, but the conviction of poor people that they are poor because they're hard done by is not always accurate either :twisted:GeorgeShaw wrote:There's nothing more odious than the conviction of rich people that the reason they are rich is because they really really deserve it. [c.f. Blair's interpretation of meritocracy]0 -
estampida wrote:eh, is this real
lance is a cult because no matter what happens to him people will still follow him and be blind to the truth
and he has made a lot of money from these people, maybe he should become a scientologist........... true profiteering from vulnerable people
why cheats get this sort of coverage is beyond me....
Teflon coated0 -
bompington wrote:
True, but the conviction of poor people that they are poor because they're hard done by is not always accurate either :twisted:GeorgeShaw wrote:There's nothing more odious than the conviction of rich people that the reason they are rich is because they really really deserve it. [c.f. Blair's interpretation of meritocracy]
True, but then one category gets the compensation of a somewhat easier life.0 -
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