The Anti-"Secret"


Barbara Ehrenreich recently appeared on John Stewart, and I felt it worthy of sharing.

The author shares her perspective on the American obsession with being 'positive' and also gives a critique of the New-Age hit The Secret.

John Stewart asks: If it works for someone isn't it ok? She said: "Delusion is never ok."

Does being obsessively positive, as she suggests, indicate an 'empathy deficit" in our culture?

She also attacks the industry of pink everywhere...and as for 'The Secret?' She believes that the rich boomers live in a 'bubble' completely disconnected from reality...

So, what does she suggest? Be grounded and be real. This sounds very...pragmatic, in the common use of the word, but not William James's Pragmatism. I think it would include...a bit of both?

What is an empathic deficit? And is this really part of the problem in America? In China it is almost an unspoken rule: do not mention health problems. So, what kind of empathy deficit is she talking about? She wants to be grumpy during her treatment...or at least feel the freedom not to let other's down. I wonder if other's feel this way too?


Comments

pootacracy said…
Thats a lot of table formatting!! :)
And being grounded is what keeps me safe
and dreaming is what keeps me moving forward and interested in life. A healthy bit of both is in order
October 15, 2009 at 12:08 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Twitter Experiment - Bringing Twitter to the Classroom at UT Dallas

UT Dallas History Professor Dr. Monica Rankin, @monicarankin, wanted to know how she could reach and include more students in the class discussion. She had heard of Twitter... The following is a short video describing her " Twitter Experiment " in the classroom with comments from students about the pros and cons of Twitter in a traditional learning environment. I am Graduate student at UT Dallas pursuing a Masters in Emerging Media and Communication (EMAC) and collaborated with Dr. Rankin to see how Twitter might be used in her US History 2 class. This experiment was both exciting and a bit daunting... The video is one of my projects for a digital video class with Dean Terry, @therefore, and part of a class project in my content creation and collaboration class with Dan Langendorf, @dlangendorf. http://emac.utdallas.edu @kesmit3
Read more

Hillary Clinton's speech on Internet Freedom

Text of Clinton's speech: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/01/21/internet_freedom?print=yes&hidecomments=yes&page=full Part1 Only a week after Google's announcement to the world that it would no longer censor in China, the timing of Clinton's speech likely makes the relationship between Google and the US Government seem closer than it actually is. Not to mention that..historically The Chinese have not taken all to well to direct confrontation or any challenge to their absolute authority and Goggle's move followed by Clinton's speech makes me, as an Emerging Media and Communications Graduate student, a bit uncomfortable. I'm currently living in Beijing and have had an opportunity to ask many locals what they think about the Google 'threat' (as it is now being called). For the the most part, people think Google's decision is entirely motivated by profit. And, quite frankly, those inside China do not have access to blogger.com, so h...
Read more

Youku.com on THIS 中国 SIDE of the Great FireWall...

Image
So, there are advantages to the Great Fire Wall. What are they? Full length movies on Youku... What is Youku.com? Well, it's like YouTube, but... BETTER? (that's what a girl in class told me last week) hmm. The catch? If you try to load it from the USA, you get an error: But if you load it from China? You see the the full-length feature film which looks like this: Yeah for Intellectual Property...
Read more