Far From Perfect

‘The Bonfire of the Vanities,’ by Tom Wolfe: Stephen L. Carter, James Collins, Joyce Purnick and Katy Roberts discuss the classic New York novel.

‘August: Osage County,’ by Tracy Letts: Eliza Minot, Marsha Norman, Frank Rich and the Book Review’s Blake Wilson discuss the new play.

‘The Moviegoer,’ by Walker Percy: Dean Baquet, Jonathan Galassi, Julia Reed and the Book Review’s Steve Coates discussed the 1962 National Book Award-winning novel.

‘The Education of Henry Adams’: Jill Abramson, Gary Hart, Thomas Mallon and the Book Review’s Jennifer Schuessler discussed ‘The Education of Henry Adams.’

‘War and Peace’: A month-long discussion of Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky’s translation of Leo Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” with Bill Keller, Stephen Kotkin, Francine Prose, Liesl Schillinger and Sam Tanenhaus, the editor of the Book Review.

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Why Occupy Wall Street? The Movement is the Point

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By Dr George Simon, PhD | 12 December 2011

The Occupy movement is causing us to confront our denial head-on. People are finally talking about — and in some cases, even taking action to remedy — injustices that have been with us for far too long.

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By now almost everyone is familiar with the phenomenon commonly termed the “Occupy movement.” There are various groups of protesters, often called “the 99ers” because they claim to represent the 99 percent of persons adversely affected by the policies and practices of the one percent among us who control the vast majority of the world’s wealth and wield the most political power and influence. They have “occupied” downtown Manhattan’s Wall Street, various major cities, and public places adjacent to major corporations. Social commentators have taken note of how aimless some of these protests appear to be and fault the leaders of the movement for their lack of a clear message, definitive purpose, and coherent strategy. While such criticisms have some merit, perhaps the most overlooked aspect of this movement is the fact that it is occurring at all. Given the economic and political circumstances that have festered for years and eventually prompted the dissatisfaction leading to the movement, and given the public’s longstanding blindness concerning the nature and extent of the problems plaguing us, the mere emergence of the Occupy movement represents a triumph of sorts with respect to overcoming our massive and wide-reaching state of denial.

Denial is one of the most primitive of defense mechanisms. And sometimes it’s essential to emotional self-preservation. But at other times, it’s possibly one of the most self-defeating defenses. When we have our eyes and ears closed it’s hard to navigate clearly, or to overcome a problem we simply refuse to admit exists. For years, many in the industrialized world have simply chosen not to reckon with skyrocketing debts, the consolidation of wealth and power, a dangerously widening economic disparity between social classes, and the ever-increasing burden thrust upon those doing their best to honor their civic duties and provide for their families. But now a movement is afoot that causes us to confront our denial head-on. And what the movement might lack in the way of specific goals and objectives it certainly possesses in stamina and resolve. As a result, people are finally talking about — and in some cases, even taking action to remedy — injustices that have been with us for far too long.

The Occupy movement is perhaps just one manifestation of a much larger world-wide awakening of consciousness. The disenfranchised are speaking up everywhere about the lack of voice they’ve had in the management of their affairs and the abuse and neglect they’ve endured at the hands of those who have too long held a stranglehold on power. And while there is no doubt a danger posed in the methods by which power might be transferred as well as the uncertainty about to whom power might eventually be entrusted, it is clear that the status quo simply cannot be maintained and that change is inevitable.

Overcoming denial is never an easy task. And the consciousness-raising task to which we’ve all been challenged could not possibly be more daunting. But we simply have to face an increasingly apparent reality: ours is a truly global society and we are becoming increasingly and intricately interdependent. As a result, none of us really does well when any of us is left too far behind. So it’s incumbent upon us all to do what we can to build an economically fairer and socially more equitable world. Although we’ve tended to deny it in the past, the fact is that when the least among us prosper, everyone gains. It’s that simple. Even the wealthiest do best when there is a robust ‘lower’ and ‘middle’ class. But just because these facts are simple and straightforward doesn’t mean they’ll be readily accepted. That’s because changing our hearts, minds, and attitudes will require pain and sacrifice. And the land of denial is often the place to which we go when we want to avoid pain. So there will undoubtedly be those who turn a blind eye to the issues, reinforce their “every man for himself” perspective, and dismiss the Occupy movement as just another aimless cause orchestrated by misguided, self-indulgent malcontents.

The Occupy movement’s real value lies not so much in what it is or what its aims are, but in what it has done to raise our awareness. True, there may be ’60s-like lost souls and anarchists among the crowds of occupiers. There may also be those who seek to replace the existing power structure with something much worse. So, as is the case with any movement, one has to exercise some very cautious judgement. And because of its shaky organization and lack of a clear agenda, this movement definitely runs the risk of simply burning out or fading away. But if it has done nothing else, the Occupy movement has directed our attention to social injustices that have been with us for far too long and which we can no longer afford to deny. And as some within the movement might well tell you, that’s exactly the point.

Overseen by an international advisory board of distinguished academic faculty and mental health professionals with decades of clinical and research experience in the US, UK and Europe, CounsellingResource.com provides peer-reviewed mental health information you can trust. Our material is not intended as a substitute for direct consultation with a qualified mental health professional. Accredited by the Health on the Net Foundation.

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Think Smarter: Think Less

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By Gordon Shippey | 16 November 2011

Our modern culture’s attachment to excess is easy to see in the material realm: bigger homes, bigger cars, and bigger paychecks. The simplicity movement has done well pointing out the downsides of the “bigger is better” aesthetic. However, a predisposition to excess can also infest our minds. Sometimes the smartest thing to do is to think less.

Sit with a person suffering from depression or anxiety, and many times you learn that their problem involves overthinking. Maybe they’re stuck reliving a past argument with their partner or anticipating a stressful situation at work, or some other distressing aspect of their life. What separates overthinking from ‘ordinary’ thinking is that the thoughts are repetitive, troubling, and do not bring the thinker any closer to a solution. In psychotherapy, we might call these thoughts rumination. In other circles, we’d simply say that the thinker is spinning his or her wheels.

Even for those without a diagnosable mental illness, overthinking frequently gets in the way of effective action. How often do we know what we want, and how we’re going to get it, then change our minds at the last minute? Maybe you planned to go to the gym after work, but decided you were too tired as you left the office, or that you’d order a salad, but the burger seemed like a better idea when you picked up the menu. We made the decision, but then re-made it later.

And plenty of people will break their agreements with themselves when they’d never break them with other people. The difference is that you are always available to yourself for renegotiation and you are always so accommodating!

When people break (or perhaps they ‘renegotiate’) their commitments to themselves, it may be because they’re trying to think and act at the same time. All but the simplest plans require some level of thinking and planning. When that planning and clarification is left undone, planning and doing compete for head-space. The predictable result is confusion and overwhelm. It’s no surprise, then, that when people set themselves up to plan and act all at once, they either don’t start, or give up when the going gets tough.

The remedy to this two-pronged mental overload is to get the clarification and planning out of the way in advance of the actual doing. Strangely, people do not seem to have an intuitive grasp of when a task is clarified enough. Consider the task buy groceries. Is having a grocery list like “milk, bread, eggs…” clear enough? Maybe, but maybe not. Should you buy two percent or skim milk? How many loaves of bread? Which store or stores should you shop at? If you’ve ever been sent to the store by someone else only to pull out your cell phone for clarifications, you’ve experienced a plan that wasn’t fully clarified.

This grocery store example points directly to a way to know if your plans are fully clarified: if you could take your description of the task or plan, write it on a slip of paper, hand it off to a personal assistant, and reasonably expect good results, then the plan is clear enough. Giving yourself the same level of clarity in plans you intend for yourself frees you from having to figure things out in the heat of the battle, raises motivation, and frees up mental resources for use when you run into unforeseen circumstances along the way.

Every January 1st, many people are predisposed to drafting audacious goals and plans in the form of New Year’s Resolutions. Whether or not they are fully clarified plans, as described above, they often don’t survive past February. As any serious gym devotee knows, gyms get very, very busy around the first of the year, then quickly reduce to pre-resolution levels in the following weeks.

The problem, as I mentioned earlier, is that many of us feel entitled to renegotiate our agreements with ourselves in a way completely different from our agreements with others. The simplest fix for this problem is simply to promise ourselves we won’t reconsider our decision. This is a weak solution in that we could then just reconsider the decision not to reconsider, and we are back at square one. A slightly stronger solution involves naming the reasons for renegotiation and explicitly deciding these reasons aren’t valid. For instance, if I predict I might avoid the gym because I’m tired after work, I might decide that I’ll go to the gym no matter how tired I feel, reminding myself that once I get moving, that tired feeling quickly lifts.

An even stronger way to avoid re-thinking the agreements you make with yourself is to take the decision outside of yourself. Returning to our fitness example, if you find yourself deciding between watching TV at home or going to the gym, take away that decision by cancelling cable and getting your TV fix while on the treadmill at the gym. Less extreme ways to change your decisions by changing your environment take the form of making positive decisions easy and negative decisions hard. Putting healthy snack food in the middle of the dinner table and the cookies in the far recesses of the pantry is a more subtle way of directing decisions.

Another way to use the environment to reduce thinking is to bring other people into the equation. If you want to be sure to stick to your gym regimen, hire a trainer or enlist a reliable gym buddy you won’t want to let down. If you value frugality, pay your gym membership in advance. That way you won’t have to decide whether to renew or not.

Given whatever task, goal, or plan you might be facing, see if you can adapt some of these ideas to ruminate less, clarify more, and use your environment to make better decisions with less willpower and less rethinking.

Overseen by an international advisory board of distinguished academic faculty and mental health professionals with decades of clinical and research experience in the US, UK and Europe, CounsellingResource.com provides peer-reviewed mental health information you can trust. Our material is not intended as a substitute for direct consultation with a qualified mental health professional. Accredited by the Health on the Net Foundation.

Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Copyright © 2002-2011. All Rights Reserved.

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The High Cost of Character Disturbance

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By Dr George Simon, PhD | 5 December 2011

When people fail to take responsibility for their choices and actions — when they behave with a sense of entitlement and irresponsibility — it costs our whole society dearly. To remedy this social ill we need to acknowledge the issues and deal with them, otherwise our precious freedom will be eroded.

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On November 29, Dr Conrad Murray, who was convicted several weeks earlier of involuntary manslaughter in the death of pop icon Michael Jackson, was given the maximum sentence by the judge overseeing the case. Now that the conviction and sentence are a matter of public record, I can speak a bit more freely about the relevant issues I think this case brings to the fore than I did in a prior article (see: “Are We Tired of Character and Ethics Scandals Yet?”). For some, Dr Murray’s conviction and sentence mean that justice has finally been served. But if that’s the case, it certainly came at a tremendous cost — a cost that might well have been avoided were it not for a circumstance at least as tragic, if not more tragic, than a famous entertainer’s untimely passing.

I have written extensively and posted many articles on the character crisis the industrialized world has faced for several decades now. And I have dared to assert that there’s hardly a social ill one can think of that isn’t directly linked to this crucial “phenomenon of our age.” The overall cost of this crisis to society on almost any dimension conceivable is staggering. And what most advanced cultures are doing in their attempts to deal with the problem (generally, passing more and stricter laws and penalties) has done little to stem the tide and has resulted in an unprecedented loss of freedom. But perhaps no real life testament to the truth of my assertions is better than the case of Dr Murray.

From the outset, Dr Murray knew the worst penalty he could possibly have to pay for his negligence. Although he had recklessly sidestepped every reasonable guideline and standard of care for the sake of a huge paycheck and considerable prestige, and in the process caused the death of a human being, the worst that could be demanded of him as a recompense would be the surrendering of his medical license and the loss of his freedom for a maximum of 4 years. Given that he had no prior record, and given the fact that there is no institutional bed space available (a phenomenon occurring in many places and a further testament to the scope of the character crisis), he would probably serve less than half that time and in a county facility under relatively benign conditions. This is, by any standard, a relatively small price to pay for the egregious conduct of which the doctor is guilty. And the likelihood is that had Dr Murray simply pleaded guilty to a lesser charge, the penalty he would have had to pay would have been even less. Yet Dr Murray was not willing to pay anything for his misconduct, and right up until the end (a fact that the judge took into consideration) he acknowledged no culpability and expressed no genuine regret or remorse for his actions. As a result, the cost to society was substantial: the devastating loss of a remarkable human being, the loss inflicted on the children, and the cost of the legal proceedings. In this case, we have a glaring example of what it can cost a society when just one individual refuses to hold himself accountable for his choices and actions.

In my book Character Disturbance [Amazon-US | Amazon-UK], I argue that as long as we fail to address the institutional and cultural factors that promote the sense of entitlement and rampant irresponsibility evident in so many, we will continue to pay a very dear price. And if we persist in trying to remedy the situation solely by passing more and stricter laws, we will only succeed in eroding precious freedom and further burdening the already overburdened and responsible folks among us. To really address and solve a problem, you first have to acknowledge what the issue really is as well as the factors responsible for it. Then you have to confront the real problem head-on. It’s the ultimate cop-out to say there’s nothing we can do. We haven’t really called out or targeted at the core what we all recognize is the problem. And we won’t ever know what we can do about it until we actually try.

The case of Dr Murray, as tragic as it is, teaches us a great lesson about the high cost of character deficiency. Perhaps when the cost finally becomes great enough to break the backbone of society, we’ll find the motivation to confront the problem directly and do the things we really need to do to resolve it.

Overseen by an international advisory board of distinguished academic faculty and mental health professionals with decades of clinical and research experience in the US, UK and Europe, CounsellingResource.com provides peer-reviewed mental health information you can trust. Our material is not intended as a substitute for direct consultation with a qualified mental health professional. Accredited by the Health on the Net Foundation.

Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Copyright © 2002-2011. All Rights Reserved.

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Do not underestimate the power of focus

Hi there, recently I attended a workshop and learnt to shut out distractions and train the mind to focus on bending a metal tablespoon and I did it, with an artistic finish to it. Sadly, it will no longer be able perform its primary function. However, aesthetically it looks pleasing. I wonder how many of you, my friends, have similar encounters whereby your personal experience have allowed you to gain a deeper understanding and made you more at peace with yourselves?