Psyberspace

village voice > people > The Interview by Rachel Aviv

Many of your books include charts, questionnaires and equations, which show readers how to more efficiently deal with their unhappiness. Are there dangers in seeing deep mental processes as a formula?
It’s not a formula. It’s several different formulas. I encourage USA, Unconditional Self Acceptance. I accept me, myself, my personality, whether or not I do well. I prefer to do well, but I don’t put my worth on the line. And I accept you—with your [cough attack] stupidity and failings—whether or not you do well. And I accept life, which is bad, without demanding that it be exactly the way I want it to be. I avoid the words ‘should,’ ‘ought’ and ‘must.

As much as I think that CBT, RET or whatever they call it these days is the enemy of the soul and healing (even though “research” shows it is “effective”), my heart goes out to this old bugger. No doubt he is a spunky genius! I like this interview and saved a copy to txt.

Got this here. It should now apprear somewhere on the right as My Del.icio.us

Flickr: Explore interesting photos from 6th of March 2005

Upton Sinclair – Books and Biography:

Sinclair’s friend George D. Herron
pops up in BETWEEN THE TWO WORLDS (1941), in which Lanny interviews Mussolini and reads such Communist literature as Lenin’s The State and Revolution.

He also pops up in the first book. He has an interesting article in the Anarchist Archives
tags: history book uptonsinclair waltzzz

amazon The Return of Lanny Budd I (World’s End), This link to Amazon has a review by Tom Range, Sr. with excellent summary of the series and also of the last book.

Good page on Upton Sinclair, gives an insight into his own politics. Which is a bit different from what I imagined.

tags: history book uptonsinclair waltzzz

Biography of Woodrow Wilson Info from the Whitehouse no less.

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862):
A Bio Page for students, with some nice quotes

Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise to noon, rapt in revery, amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs, while the birds sang or flitted noiseless through the house until by sun falling in at my west window, or the noise of some traveller’ s wagon on the distant highway, I was reminded of the lapse of time. I grew in those seasons like corn in the night, and they were far better than any of the work of the hands would have been. They were not time subtracted from my life, but so much over and above my usual allowance. I realized what the Orientals mean by contemplation and the forsaking of works.’ – ‘Sounds,’ Walden

I notced the link and was drawn to it as I am reading “World’s End” – The Lanny Budd series by Upton Sinclair. (see next entry) People like Thoreau come up and hundreds of others. It’s is history in easy doses. I will keep linking various people as I read, we will get through the whole of the last century that way.

tags: history Thoreau uptonsinclair waltzzz

Many-to-Many: Understanding true decentralisation – the microformat model: Lots of good discussion here and so I am trying some things out. Will this post be scraped by Technorati like my other links? Here is a link to my home page with a tag called psychotherapy.

Later: I doubt if that works, it needs to end in the same word: Kate

Why Wikipedia Must Jettison Its Anti-Elitism Having started to contribute – immediately I have a nose for the meta discussion – and here is one excellent article. It all makes sense and having a peer-reviewed section on Wikipedia makes sense to me but hell! What is a peer? A reputation system might be one way – but there is the problem with popularity based systems. There is a complex reputation system inherent in academia – but it is also fraught. A combination might be good. Accredited university tenure might contribute to the whuffie but not contribute it all. Identity management must be in place first… I wonder how close that is?

I will learn more about this I am sure if I pursue my participation – which I am intending to do – and will though it may take me years to do a little.

Later: This is a good link to more of the same memoir from Larry Sanger.

tags: psyber larrysangler management wikipedia waltzzz collaboration whuffie identity