A Nation Awash In Empty-Headed Foolishness

"Self-help is not benign. The $11 billion industry can hurt you psychologically, it can hurt you financially and, as we see, it can hurt you physically. It can hurt your family and friends too.

Consider that today's increasingly popular 'large group awareness training' (LGAT) incorporates tactics more commonly identified with psychological warfare. Facilitators bully attendees verbally and sometimes physically, call upon them to relive their worst experiences in humiliating detail in front of strangers, deprive them of sleep and even bathroom privileges—all in the name of self-actualization. In expert testimony in a 1992 lawsuit against the best-known of these LGATs, Landmark Forum (long a favored choice for corporate retreats), the clinical psychologist Margaret Singer observed that Forum 'applies a number of powerful and psychologically disturbing, emotionally arousing and defense destabilizing techniques to large groups of people, in an intense, marathon-like period.' How can this not have a catastrophic effect on people in a fragile emotional state—which is surely the case with a sizable contingent of those who seek out these 'transformational' courses to begin with?

Other offerings, bracketed as 'relationships therapy' or 'assertiveness training,' can wreak havoc on existing interpersonal bonds. Stories abound of couples whose marriages fell victim to gurus who celebrated promiscuity and 'personal morality,' or who chastised participants for their codependent (that is, caring and empathetic) ways.

Apologists argue that there are bad outcomes in any endeavor, that it's unfair to single out self-help when, say, conventional medicine kills thousands each year. The difference is that in medicine, practitioners share demonstrated expertise in methods that evolved over time and have been tested and retested for efficacy. A bad outcome in a field with proven benefits is unfortunate. A bad outcome in a field with little basis for existing in the first place is unforgivable. As noted psychologist Michael Hurd told me, 'Gurus encourage these poor, already troubled souls to literally take leave of their senses, as if departing reason will somehow liberate you.'"

-- Steve Salerno, apparently unaware insanity on a mass scale is now accepted as normal - as long as enough people share in some aspect of it - and enough people share in some aspect of it, not to read The Wall Street Journal.

The Complete Package

I gotta get Barbara Ehrenreich's Bright-Sided: How The Relentless Promotion Of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America, if only to bookend Steve Salerno's SHAM: How The Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless. Both, though only looking at isolated aspects of the problem, are still acknowledging NewAge culture as causing harm to our country, right under our noses, and even to our applause.

Ehrenreich's title even mentions "The Relentless Promotion" of NewAge; the inescapable indoctrination producing this profoundly evangelical fanaticism for nonsense, so ingrained, many Americans aren't capable of grasping the concept of (much less seriously considering it's) NewAge that's driving the country off the rails. NewAge is seen as so flakey - even as more and more are so shamelessly drawn into it that it starts to define our nation - it's just gotta be something else that's messing things up, right? By my estimation that's highly unlikely, and Ehrenreich seems to have gotten a similar big-picture outlook into the head of Reason Magazine's Kerry Howley, found pontificating on the blog Double X:

"If we fail to see positive thinking as part of a unified belief system, we run the risk of passively absorbing these ideas as they seep into our lives, gently diminishing the sense that some circumstances really are beyond our control.

Ehrenreich is a great believer in community activism, so I hope her book starts a movement among the Debbie Downers of the world. Call it pessimist pride. There’ll be placards, parades, manifestos, a Bill of Realist Rights. We can all meet up and talk up about how our respective attitudes, positive or otherwise, have nothing at all to do with nuclear armament in Iran. With any luck, we can expose smile-pushers for what they really are—not villains or warmongers, just smirking bullies long overdue for a smackdown."

O.K. - what NewAgers are, exactly, she still needs some work on - but Howley's solution to those with this "unified belief system" ("smirking bullies long overdue for a smackdown") is as clear an endorsement of The Macho Response as it's gonna get from outside my drum circle. Barbara Ehrenreich's doing something right: I'm buying her book.

It's A SHAM - I Mean Shame (I Meant Shame)

Well, well, well,...this is interesting:

Steve Salerno, author of SHAM: How the Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless, and his own Shamblog, has been banned from Rick Ross' anti-cult message board.

How funny.

And it's ironic, since I called Rick Ross as soon as I discovered my ex-wife was in a cult. The man's serious business, and I'll always appreciate that he was willing to fly in and help where everyone else gave me feminist-inspired excuses. But, unfortunately, it was too late: My ex had flew away to France before Mr. Ross could do anything, only to later kill two innocent people.

If Rick Ross' folks have banned Steve Salerno, it's no fluke. I've thought for a long time, as James Randi said when he discovered he couldn't reason with Andrew Weil about the "powers" of Uri Geller, Steve "could have been an ally — but we lost him."

See, I was banned from Steve's site a long time ago - right around the time he joined The Cult of Obama and seriously asked me (in a private e-mail) if I was taking my anti-Obama stance because I hated my own skin and people. I knew then the guy had seriously lost it and said so.

Cultism is this bizarre phenomena that get's people to thinking and saying such wild, twisted, shit:

Sure, I become the self-loathing nutcase because Steve Salerno, this former conservative and Wall Street Journal writer, had been guilt-tripped into joining up with "hope" and "change" liberals while I was determined to stay an MKL-inspired black conservative, right? Thinking for myself and not as one with "my people" (and staying true to what Steve, and I, had agreed was the right position to take, now, on the race issue) was simply out of the question - even though it was he who had written screed after beautifully-American screed about how simple-minded and useless the whole race thing is - not me.

No, Mr. Race Doesn't Matter, all of a sudden, had to have this arrogant prick for A Black President. For the sake of the country, for payback for slavery, for "healing", for some other imaginary reason. The fact that Obama had no real qualifications and, more importantly, was stumping with that crazy woman, Oprah, be damned: all of a sudden Steve Salerno was a shruggie when it came to race, cultism and Oprah's role in American life, and he demanded I not notice or call him on it.

These days, I wonder why he does the Shamblog because it stopped making any sense right then. To me, Steve Salerno has no integrity left.

I mean, how can he diss Oprah - and keep a spot on his blog for following her activities - and then vote for the candidate she was personally stumping for? Why, I wouldn't be surprised if, pretty soon, he's telling us Eckhard Tolle and Tom Cruise are geniuses.

Really, Steve Salerno's ever-widening lunacy since Obama ran for office has been breathtaking - and this is from someone who, once, truly admired him. But I'm sorry, as his mental framework came apart before my eyes, I saw the man become as intolerant of rational thought - and even his own book's positions - as the weirdest NewAger:

Trying to convince me that Bill Ayers' current lies and 60's terrorism were no big deal - and, he once said, maybe justified.

Recently devising an "open-minded" defense of pedophilia (I shit you not). Word to Steve: Not only won't I have an "open-minded" day about such things, but I'll never adopt NewAge/Shamland language, either. That's, partially, why I swear: No one's ever going to confuse me for one of them.

Steve also swears when he wants to, but demands nobody else does, because he claims to find it idiotic (When he's doing it, of course, it's a legitimate means of expressing oneself). The fact that's a obviously hypocritical stance - especially in a country defined by Freedom of Speech - is ignored by the former english professor.

Even worse, as he continued to slip the bonds of reason, he gave me the ol' "Keep my name out of your mouth!" business - demanding I don't write about him - when he writes willy-nilly about whatever he wants. Yea, he must have known that was going to work. Idiot.

And, now, an entire group of equally-determined anti-cult folks (who apparently like me) have discovered they can't stomach him. Somebody's, quite obviously, on the wrong side of some very-important issues.

Steve's now written three different posts trying to explain himself to the Ross folks - while also attacking them as intolerant (like this anti-cult business requires an "open-minded" attitude, instead of The Macho Response) but Steve, of all people, should know there's no explanation for what he's been up to.

Well, there is - he's become part of Obama's "open" NewAge political cult - but he ain't gonna cop to that: He still fancies himself a journalist. It doesn't matter that everyone who's still sane is saying journalism's become a cabal of Obama-sucking pod people; he'll hide his madness behind that title as tightly as Jon Stewart hides his liberalism behind "comedian". He probably thinks appearing in Michael Shermer's Skeptic Magazine is a good cover, too, but - another word to Steve - there is no cover for cultism. You're either out or you're in, and blatant hypocrisy - followed by lots of angry excuses - is one pretty good sign that someone's in it. You've gone loopy, dude.

Look, I'm no journalist, but I like SHAM. It practically saved my life and has a prominent place in my library of anti-cult lit. I also have a library of cult lit, and would seriously hate to have to put it in there, so I'm going to give Steve-O (who I used to think of as an online friend) some advice in the TMR style - and, if he's smart, his dumb ass will take it:

Dude, Man Up. Don't be like my ex-wife, who, after declaring she could walk through walls, started hating on me for pointing out that isn't so. You've drank the Kool-Aid so just admit it. Take your head out of your ass and say you were wrong - and apologize, openly, for disappointing people who put their trust in you. All the folks at Rick Ross wanted was for you to further expose Byron Katie because, supposedly, you might be good at it. As far as I'm concerned, you're a dick for not doing it:

Katie deserves it.

Otherwise, go play baseball, or sit quietly with your wife, listening to the "inspirational" messages of Joel Orsteen, and just hang up the Shamblog, man, because you've destroyed anything that was "real" about it, just as your chosen leader is trying to destroy what's real about America.

And, nowadays, that's not what "real" men are about - we can see through it all - or haven't you noticed?

Men Don't Sit In The Bitch Seat

"The other day we talked about the Bullshitification of American life. This, to me, represents the Pussification of American life. More pointedly, as I wrote in SHAM*, it is an extension of the attempt to leach male students of their inherent gender nature—which is to say, it's an attempt to suppress if not eliminate any traces of typical male behavior. This is the embodiment of that mindset, oh-so-popular among guidance types and behaviorial psychologists of the late 1980s and early 1990s, which asks, rhetorically: 'Wouldn't it be great if all boys could just be girls?'"

-- Steve Salerno, back to determining how America got to this sorry place in history - while also rediscovering The Macho Response - over at the Shamblog.

Who's "We", Asshole?

“I've been seeing a fair amount of traffic off-blog from folks who seem to think I've popped my cork. Eyebrows remain raised at some of my more recent positions on moral ambiguity and such. The general tenor of the feedback is as follows: "Stevie-baby... Whaddya mean you don't know what's right and what's wrong? Come on, dude. Man up here!"



Let's examine this, then, shall we? First of all, we don't even know if there's a God,...”

-- Steve Salerno, who (it, almost unsurprisingly, appears) has completely lost it over the cultish worshipping of "The One", Barack Obama - this frequent contributer to The Wall Street Journal even lowered himself to trying to defend the sleazy Bill Ayers recently - on his SHAMblog.

Which, at this point, shouldn't even be called SHAMblog, but CULTblog, because that's pretty-much all it is. A bunch of idiots who (with two exceptions I can find, one being me) agree on everything - especially on the wonderfulness of Barack Obama, despite his lies, evasions, lack of experience, etc., which no one will talk about.

SHAMblog's become an interesting case study in cultish thinking - because it's written down. How a really smart guy escapes the bonds of reality (he wrote a book on the NewAge phenomena of Self-Help, and used to rail about Oprah Winfrey, while, still, keeping tabs on her doings - but then gives her even more power than she ever had before by helping to elect her hand-picked candidate?) only to, now, spend his time trying to defend moral relativism because he can't accept he's put blatant hypocrisy where his big-ol' head used to be. It's sad. I really liked the guy.

I'll have to go re-read the blog's last year of postings, to see exactly where the break occurred,...stay tuned.

The Lifetime Channel: Television For Twits

"I have recently discovered that, along with the Lifetime Network's ridiculous programs such as "Lisa Willams: Life Among the Dead" and "America's Psychic Challenge," there is a large portion of their website dedicated to astrology, numerology, runes, tea leaves, and feng shui. There is no disclaimer that this is for entertainment purposes only. They seem to fully believe in and endorse it as a legitimate practice. I have emailed them numerous times to get them to pull their endorsement of these silly notions, with no response. Their astrologer, Christopher Renstrom, gives out advice on things such as health problems by explaining that their conditions will get better when their planet starts acting right again."

-- From a letter to the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF)

I've tried to make the case (as has Steve Salerno in his book "SHAM: How the Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless") that women and woo are a real problem. But, unfortunately, any man that says that will be accused - by women - of just being a mean ol' misogynist, so I'll now back away from the female firing squad and just let this incriminating letter, about the intellectually lazy lady's network, stand on it's own.

Self-Help and Actualization Movement (SHAM)

I just found a great interview with my man, Steve Salerno, the author of "SHAM: How the Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless", one of the best books I've read on the subject of Self-Help, NewAge, cultish thinking, and many of the other subjects TMR deals with. But, of course, Steve's a much nicer guy than I am, so it'll probably go down easier. Plus, it's radio! Just click the link, above, put it on in the background, and decide for yourself if I'm a crazy sexist divorced asshole,...or if maybe, just maybe, I might be a crazy sexist divorced asshole who knows a few things you don't.

BTW, Steve also runs SHAMblog, one of my favorite online hang-outs, where he allows other people to discuss whatever may pop into his head. So go over there - yea, pay a visit - and then hurry up and get your skinny butts back over here:

I'm not done with you yet.

Just The Facts, M'am

"According to the U.S. Department of Justice, in a given year there are about 88,000 documented cases of sexual abuse among juveniles. In the roughly 17,500 cases involving children between ages 6 and 11, strangers are the perpetrators just 5 percent of the time — and just 3 percent of the time when the victim is under age 6. (Further, more than a third of such molesters are themselves juveniles, who may not be true “predators” so much as confused or unruly teens.) Overall, the odds that one of America’s 48 million children under age 12 will encounter an adult pedophile at the local park are startlingly remote. The Child Molestation Research & Prevention Institute puts it like so: “Right now, 90 percent of our efforts go toward protecting our children from strangers, when what we need to do is to focus 90 percent of our efforts toward protecting children from the abusers who are not strangers.” That’s a diplomatic way of phrasing the uncomfortable but factually supported truth: that if your child is not molested in your own home — by you, your significant other, or someone else you invited in — chances are your child will never be molested anywhere. Media coverage has precisely inverted both the reality and the risk of child sexual assault. Along the way, it has also inverted the gender of the most tragic victims: Despite the unending parade of young female faces on TV, boys are more likely than girls to be killed in the course of such abuse.

* The current employment rate is 95.3 percent.
* Out of 300 million Americans, roughly 299.999954 million were not murdered today.
* Day after day, some 35,000 commercial flights traverse our skies without incident.
* The vast majority of college students who got drunk last weekend did not rape anyone, or kill themselves or anyone else in a DUI or hazing incident. On Monday, they got up and went to class, bleary-eyed but otherwise okay."

- The great Steve Salerno, author of SHAM: How the Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless, showing how far real life differs from the disastrous view delivered in the media

Rockit!: Rap's Got No Rules

I found Steve Salerno (author of SHAM: How The Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless) saluting Herbie hancock for his Best Album Grammy Award, and knew I ought to do the same. Rockit!, of course, is the song that inspired most DJs to think they could go it alone - without Rappers. Just check out what Prefuse 73 does to this guy's flow over a slamming Jazz groove:



Leave it to an old-school Jazz artist, like Herbie, to teach 'em that. Herbie's Jazz was inspired by Rap and, likewise, Jazz has always inspired Rap artists. Honestly, unless they have mental problems, Rappers are inspired by *everything* they come in contact with - even fuckin' Bambi - This shit's hilarious:



Here's another one by Pre, with robots, rockets, and (for some reason) mermaids:



I remember getting into an argument with some jackass Buddhist about Rap music, and (as happens a lot today when I talk to anybody "spiritual" about anything) having to inform him, in a most unpleasant manner, that he didn't understand the depth, or breath, of Rap music at all. He thought because he hears what's on the radio, or on MTV - or what some fucking gangsta's beat out of their rides - that he's heard everything out there, when real heads couldn't give a rat's ass about that shit. Prefuse 73 is a perfect example of how far from the mark simple-minded assholes can be - about everything:





Here's some Beat Jugglin' too (which, contrary to what my Buddhist friend thinks, they don't teach in monasteries):



And, for anyone who would dare say "Rap's not music", Kid Koala ("The nicest guy in Rap") is a fine example of the control that one man and his turntables can demonstrate, making Jazz new and fresh again, for people who probably rarely listen to it:

Read All About It

Knowing about self-help/cult/new wage issues can make reading newspapers a trip! Nowadays, with all the stuff I've learned, cultish thinking just leaps out and frames almost every story. I was reading Wednesday's Wall Street Journal, today, and here's what I found in it:

In a piece on people behaving badly on airplanes - including U.S. Rep. Bob Filner (above) a California Democrat - SHAM (the Self-Help and Actualization Movement) has a whole bunch of "empowered" people running amok, acting like fools. Or, as it's described here, they have an "entitlement mindset". One guy, Bill Horoszko, of Hinckley, Ill., got to the "spiritual" crux of the matter, when he said:

"It's like [passengers] are entitled to be ignorant, rude and arrogant because they purchased a ticket,...People are so full of themselves now it's ungodly."

Now, now, God had nothing to do with it, Bill - God doesn't exist - SHAM does though:

Blame SHAM.

More new wage "empowerment" nonsense is in a story about a bunch of women who worked for a data-storage company where "new sales reps walk across beds of hot coals" (like Bill Clinton's new wage con man pal, Tony Robbins, has people do. It's a really stupid trick.). Anyway, the women think their company's bad because testosterone rules the roost.

But reading the article only reminded me of a story told by Ann Widdecombe (below) England's enemy of "the rights culture, the compensation culture and political correctness." She said:

"When all those ghastly [Tony] Blair babes arrived, one of them actually came up to me and said: 'Isn't it awful how the men are so rude to us?'

"And I said: 'Yes, and isn't it awful how rude they are to each other?' It had never occurred to her that she wasn't being penalised because she was a woman - the truth is that she had been roughed up in the chamber because she was useless."

Now, I ask you, people: Why couldn't I have married Ann Widdecombe?

And finally, it seems the WSJ has found a "connection" between new wage Hillary, the $850,000 she got from Norman Hsu, and the 1969 Woodstock Festival - the Burning Man of it's time - and it all centers around (what else?) a pyramid scheme.

Having financed the famous three-day mud bath through a friend with "a big trust fund" (surprise #1) one of the hippy creators of Woodstock, Joel Rosenman, left all that anti-capitalist nonsense behind him (surprise #2) only to "bring in friends" for the bogus enterprise Norman Hsu was claiming would net everyone a 40% profit. (surprise #3) Can you smell the "peace and love" yet? Let's see:

Hippies; no work - and scamming others for big profits - yep, sounds like a positively, homeopathically, new wage enterprise to me.

So somehow, you know, Hillary Clinton had to be involved.

She just had to, otherwise she'd be showing she possesses: