How We Got to Be So Self-Absorbed: The Long Story
"There was always a dark side to the Human Potential Movement. If a positive attitude and a sense of self-worth are what matters for success, then failure is always your own fault."<p>I always thought my alma mater, Stanford, was backwards about students suffering from depression for exactly that reason. Promoting positivity is great, unless it means ostracizing and shaming people who are already suffering. It was hard to be there because the highest ideals were positivity and productivity, and if you're depressed you're neither.<p>As I get older I realize more and more what a complex organism a human society is. If you change one factor, you can easily change other ones without meaning to.