{"id":10781,"date":"2026-10-24T23:05:29","date_gmt":"2026-10-25T03:05:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/?p=10781"},"modified":"2026-10-24T23:05:29","modified_gmt":"2026-10-25T03:05:29","slug":"toxic-positivity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/?p=10781","title":{"rendered":"Toxic Positivity"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Riley7.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Riley7.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-10782\" srcset=\"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Riley7.jpg 800w, https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Riley7-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Riley7-768x576.jpg 768w, https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Riley7-640x480.jpg 640w, https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Riley7-400x300.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>We will not heal divorced from our emotions.  A spirituality that depends on positivity will lead not only to emotional fallacies but also eventually to delusions of all kinds.  Hundreds of thousands of people can march for miles declaring Black Lives Matter, and you will find it so disruptive to your delusion of positivity that you will not become curious or sensitive.  Instead, you will find yourself defensive of the fallacy.  You can listen to the story of someone&#8217;s depression, and your instinct will be to find silver linings so that you yourself feel some kind of resolve.  People whose faiths are predicated on happiness make for dangerous friends and woefully disconnected fellow humans.<\/p>\n<p>&#8212; Cole Arthur Riley, <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sonderbooks.com\/Nonfiction\/this_here_flesh.html\">This Here Flesh<\/a><\/em>, p. 102<\/p>\n<p>Photo: South Riding, Virginia, October 23, 2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We will not heal divorced from our emotions. A spirituality that depends on positivity will lead not only to emotional fallacies but also eventually to delusions of all kinds. Hundreds of thousands of people can march for miles declaring Black Lives Matter, and you will find it so disruptive to your delusion of positivity that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-healing","category-truth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10781","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10781"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10781\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10783,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10781\/revisions\/10783"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}