Bruce Levine
Leadership Training or Bullshit Training at Harvard? The Price of Pseudo-Certainty in Business, Government, and Medicine
The Harvard Business School (HBS) information session on how to be a good class participant instructs, “Speak with conviction. Even if you believe something only fifty-five percent, say it as if you believe it a hundred percent,” reports Susan Cain in her best-selling book Quiet (2013). At HBS, Cain noticed, “If a student talks often and […]
The Normalization of Greed, Hustle, and Money-Centrism
New York Times “Room for Debate Question”: “Why We Like to Watch Rich People: Why do American television and movie audiences like to watch the antics and questionable behavior of the 1 percent?” The lives of the outlandishly rich are so unreal and so bizarre for most of us that watching their self-indulgence, careless spending, […]
Greed and Hustle Have Become Virtues
New York Times “Room for Debate Question”: “Why We Like to Watch Rich People: Why do American television and movie audiences like to watch the antics and questionable behavior of the 1 percent?” The lives of the outlandishly rich are so unreal and so bizarre for most of us that watching their self-indulgence, careless spending, […]
The Comedy of Professional Training
10 Ways Mental Health Professionals Increase Misery in Suffering People
Decreasing suffering often means “comforting the afflicted, and afflicting the comfortable.” However, AlterNet’s recently republished Psychotherapy Networker article, “The 14 Habits of Highly Miserable People,” authored by psychotherapist Cloe Madanes, instead appears to have afflicted many of the afflicted. Perhaps Madanes was attempting to afflict those comfortable enough to afford her and her professional partner […]
10 Ways Mental Health Professionals Increase Misery in Suffering People
Decreasing suffering often means “comforting the afflicted, and afflicting the comfortable.” However, AlterNet’s recently republished Psychotherapy Networker article, “The 14 Habits of Highly Miserable People,” authored by psychotherapist Cloe Madanes, instead appears to have afflicted many of the afflicted. Perhaps Madanes was attempting to afflict those comfortable enough to afford her and her professional partner […]
William Kurelek’s The Maze
William Kurelek (1927-1977) is one of Canada’s most celebrated artists, and his paintings hang in prestigious museums all over the world. Nick Young and Zack Young’s William Kurelek’s The Maze is a beautiful film about this talented artist, profound thinker, and saintly, sweet soul, who as a young man became disconnected from himself and others, […]
U.S. Renegade History, Psychiatric Survivors, and the Price of Acceptance
The historic divide between the “respectable” vs. the “renegades” is the subject of historian Thaddeus Russell’s A Renegade History of the United States, which argues that when renegade groups gain civil rights and social acceptability, they lose their renegade culture. Many psychiatric survivors, mad priders, and those with lived experience of alternate consciousness question the value of normie culture and see value in their own—this an outlook which puts them in the tradition of Russell’s historic renegades. Has their lack of civil rights and social acceptability enabled them to become America’s last renegades?
America’s Last Renegades?
The historic divide between the “respectable” vs. the “renegades” is the subject of historian Thaddeus Russell’s 2011 book A Renegade History of the United States, which argues that when renegade groups gain civil rights and social acceptability, they lose their renegade culture. At least one group of American outsiders, not discussed by Russell, continues to […]
