[HN Gopher] Alain de Botton on Existential Maturity and What Emo...
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Alain de Botton on Existential Maturity and What Emotional
Intelligence Means
Author : OrderOfChaos
Score : 14 points
Date : 2022-07-06 21:30 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.themarginalian.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.themarginalian.org)
| PotatoPancakes wrote:
| Alain de Botton's School of life is... honestly weird. It's
| really confident and tries to give good advice; but so much of
| that advice is quite bad, and the channel might overall do more
| harm than good (for more people than fewer).
|
| YouTuber Big Joel has done two breakdowns of it that are worth
| watching: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlkJJygIoVU and
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VZ30qL7j3Q.
| balsam wrote:
| Alluded in the article: his stuff is categorized as "self-
| help". As a social phenomenon, "self-help" is believers-only.
| Since de Botton's academically inclined, it's probably the best
| of a horrid torrid bunch?
| tablespoon wrote:
| > YouTuber Big Joel has done two breakdowns of it that are
| worth watching
|
| Honest question: why is "YouTuber Big Joel" someone I should
| spend an hour listening to?
| switchbak wrote:
| I'm a few minutes into Big Joel's takedown and ... it's pretty
| unimpressive. He's moreso complaining that psychology isn't a
| hard science, and that it's hard to make objectively proven
| statements about things like attachment theory as it relates
| early childhood development to later relationships.
|
| Well, yes, and this is more or less where we're at with
| Psychology (as I understand it, I'm definitely a lay person):
| it's hard to make a concrete proof with something as complex as
| a human.
|
| And Alain's ideas as expressed are certainly not purely his
| invention - this is pretty mainstream Psychology / Therapy, and
| borrows a lot from ancient philosophy (with even a dash of
| Buddhist psychology thrown in).
|
| Specific to this issue: Alain is saying that many times
| underlying frustrations are not so much about the here and now,
| but can be related to one's early upbringing and point to
| frustrations - especially attachment frustrations - from that
| age. I find that an interesting idea, but it's certainly not
| ground truth. Nor does it mean that you can't be frustrated
| with a partner for valid reasons in the present moment. The
| kind of takedown that Joel makes ("reductive nonsense") is
| unsophisticated and frankly immature, and certainly not worthy
| of any more investment of my time.
|
| Edit: typo
| karaterobot wrote:
| The ones I've seen have all seemed fine to me. It's advice, and
| advice is not a branch of science.
| engineer_22 wrote:
| You know what they say... opinions are like **holes, everyone
| has one and they all stink... wait wrong aphorism.
|
| ... OK I've got it: Advice is only worth what you pay for it.
|
| I guess either one works here...
| w-j-w wrote:
| mjfl wrote:
| It's not proven bad advice, that's just your opinion.
| cataphract wrote:
| Saw a bit of the first video. I really have no clue about the
| literature of the impact of childhood experiences in adult
| relationships, and for his complaint about the lack of
| references, he provides none either.
|
| Then he moves to the friendship video. His complaint seems to
| be that the videos simplify and overstate their claims. Which
| is true. But he doesn't really refute the main point to the
| video, which is that friendships, by having lower expectations,
| suffer less (though definitely not always, we all know about
| toxic friendships) from the more complicated dynamics of
| romantic relationships. It sounds more like nitpicking. Then he
| changes from the descriptive presentation of relationships to a
| normative one (romantic relationships should be "nice"), which
| misses the point entirely. (Plus the ideia that relationships
| should be "fun" and "nice" and not _also_ a space for emotional
| growth where shit comes to top tells me he probably didn 't
| have really intimate relationships).
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| > exponential progress in the material and technological fields
| combined with perplexing stasis in the psychological one.
|
| That's not an accident. Nor a failing in the many timeless tools
| of emotional education - literature, drama and other arts. It's
| deliberate and systematic. Ever since Edward Bernays the power of
| Wall Street has been directed at stripping our emotional centres
| of everything but blind selfish desire. Late capitalism depends
| on arrested emotional development. Indeed, I think it was Adam
| Phillips who said "Capitalism is for children". The object of a
| consumer culture is psychoanalysis in reverse, to make the
| conscious unconscious and to celebrate and harness the irrational
| impulses of fear, shame, greed and so on. That's what sells
| stuff.
| engineer_22 wrote:
| Your comment drips with conspiracy, but is hard to trifle with.
| [deleted]
| switchbak wrote:
| When I spy on folks that buy the truly insanely expensive but
| useless gadgets/fashion, I really start to agree with
| sentiments like yours.
|
| There's few things quite as profitable as an endless black pit
| of despair within yourself. Well that, and war.
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