About Doing the Next Right Thing.

"Do the Next Right Thing" is a phrase that has often focused me.  Where did this phrase originate?  The Marginalian explains that on December 15, 1933, Carl Jung responded to a woman who had asked his guidance on how to live. Jung wrote:

Dear Frau V.,

Your questions are unanswerable because you want to know how one ought to live. One lives as one can. There is no single, definite way for the individual which is prescribed for him or would be the proper one. If that’s what you want you had best join the Catholic Church, where they tell you what’s what. Moreover this way fits in with the average way of mankind in general. But if you want to go your individual way, it is the way you make for yourself, which is never prescribed, which you do not know in advance, and which simply comes into being of itself when you put one foot in front of the other. If you always do the next thing that needs to be done, you will go most safely and sure-footedly along the path prescribed by your unconscious. Then it is naturally no help at all to speculate about how you ought to live. And then you know, too, that you cannot know it, but quietly do the next and most necessary thing. So long as you think you don’t yet know what this is, you still have too much money to spend in useless speculation. But if you do with conviction the next and most necessary thing, you are always doing something meaningful and intended by fate. With kind regards and wishes,

Yours sincerely,

C.G. Jung

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New Trend in Psychotherapy: Encouraging Learned Helplessness

A New Trend in Psychotherapy: Encouraging Learned Helplessness. In this video by FAIR, Christine Sefein, a professor of clinical psychology discusses her resignation from Antioch College. She could no longer thrive in a department that now seeks to validate its patients' claims of learned helplessness and identitarian blaming. The new approach also intentionally overlooks maladaptive behaviors. According to Sefein, this new approach destructively locks people into a belief that they are powerless. This new approach endangers patients who are feeling desperate.

This new affirmation therapy taught by Antioch is a major change from traditional approaches to psychotherapy, which properly emphasized empowering therapy, adaptive coping skills, strong social support system, exercise, meditation and, when needed, medication.  

Making this situation all-the-worse is the well documented rise in anxiety depression and self-harm among young adults.  

For more on FAIR (Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism) visit FAIR's extensive website and videos. 

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The Long Tradition of Dividing People Into Good People and Bad People

Matt Taibbi, writing about Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States:

No matter how interesting a book he or she is able to write, any author who admits to looking out at the world and seeing only “victims and executioners” needs psychological help. Unfortunately, Zinn in this respect turned out to be a pioneer, presaging a generation of comic-book thinkers who understand things in binary terms, forever preoccupied with cramming people in neat categories of oppressors and oppressed.

Such mental habits are the fashion now and will definitely put you in a bind on Thanksgiving. How can I eat turkey and stuffing with a smile, when Columbus massacred the Arawaks? When the English forced the Wampanoags off their land and made many convert to Christianity? When Lincoln told Horace Greeley, “If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it”?

How? Maybe because you’re more than three years old, and don’t need fairy tales to be real in order to enjoy dinner with family and a football game?

Taibbi's article is "Thanksgiving is Awesome: In reply to the haters. Happy holiday, everyone."

On a more serious note, I read Zinn's book when I was a teenager and it was a much needed shock to my system, given that I had, to that point, been exposed to a steady stream of textbooks and teachers who argued American Exceptionalism. I agree with Taibbi that both of these approaches are simplistic.

Continue ReadingThe Long Tradition of Dividing People Into Good People and Bad People

The Political Left Needs to Start Judging More Wisely

I saw this Rogan interview with Krystal and Saagar. I've watched a lot of Joe Rogan for the past two years. He leans far left on most issues he discusses, but that's not good enough for most people and news media on the political left, who seek to purification, not nuanced discussion. Many of them have no idea what to do with people like Rogan, who hold heterodox opinions. They reject the idea of human complexity and they are increasibly thinking in cartoons. That is the subject of Krystal Ball's 7-minute commentary. It was spot on. I've seen this rejection of the "impure" on FB over and over. IMO, this is ruining the political left and sending many voters over to the political right, which is morally bankrupt.

My advice to people on the political left: Quit demonizing people who are not aligned with your views. Quit writing off everyone who voted differently than you. Engage openly and respectfully with your family, neighbors and friends who think differently than you. I'm an atheist, but Jesus had it right when he gave the Sermon on the Mount: "Love your enemies." I give thanks today that we don't all think alike. And I give thanks for the wisdom of John Stuart Mill. And I give thanks for the courage and soaring inspirational thoughts of Martin Luther King: Hate cannot drive out hate and we should judge each other only by the content of our character. Let's start judging each other more wisely starting today.

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We Know We are not Infallible, but We Don’t Know What We are Infalliable About.

Jonathan Haidt, Robert George, Steven Pinker, and Leda Cosmides discuss human biases and why we need healthy institutions and viewpoint diversity to counteract them.

One important change could restore vibrancy to our universities: a renewed celebration of viewpoint diversity.

The university is meant to be a sacred space where we can test novel ideas and engage in thoughtful dialogue without fear of repercussions. When these ideals are no longer prioritized, the culture of open inquiry and truth-seeking dissipates.

Listen to Jonathan Haidt, Steven Pinker, Leda Cosmides, and Robert George discuss how to overcome our biases and foster a healthy academic culture.

Continue ReadingWe Know We are not Infallible, but We Don’t Know What We are Infalliable About.