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SHAME AND COUNSELING
Mainstream culture is locked and loaded, ready to hunt shame into extinction. This partially explains the stigma surrounding counseling. What is counseling but a festival of shame? Exposure, surrendering trust and control, confronting shortcomings: counseling it has it all. At every second issues of power, vulnerability, and acceptance loom over ( Read more... ) -
ROMANTIC LOVE AND SEX
Self-proclaimed experts dominate the discussion of sex and love, hooking audiences on easy-to-swallow quips, mantras, and clichés. The simplicity of their one-size-fits-all advice makes it seem obvious or profound and therefore true. These “experts” go unchallenged; the real jurisdiction belongs to psychology which, having been pitifully inadequate ( Read more... ) -
POP CULTURE MYTHOLOGY: MARTHA STEWART
Our culture has by and large lost a conventional sense of mythology, though we have not lost our hunger for it. We fill the void with a warped preoccupation of celebrities; we raise them to demigod status then eagerly watch as their Greek-like tragedies unfold in headlines.
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EVIL AND EMPATHY
In tragedies there is a moment called peripeteia, the reversal of fortune. The tragic hero is oblivious to their impending downfall and is devastated by its arrival. Yet without the hardship they would not obtain the insight to transform. Sometimes the peripeteia takes shape in fate induced humility, such as the protagonist ironically ensuring what ( Read more... ) -
SONG ANALYSIS: re: STACKS - BON IVER
“Re” is short for “regarding”, commonly used for a letter or subject line of an email. The title of the song is “re: Stacks”, meaning it is a message to someone specific and that “stacks” is its main focus. As he sings, he alternates between pausing and blurting lines, as if he is struggling to say something but then forces it out:
This my ( Read more... ) -
TRUTH AND SELF-ESTEEM
Our culture has a self-esteem problem. It’s evident by our preoccupation with confidence, our anxiety about almost everything, and our maladaptive responses ( Read more... ) -
POP CULTURE MYTHOLOGY: OPRAH WINFREY
Our culture has by and large lost a conventional sense of mythology, though we have not lost our hunger for it. We fill the void with a warped preoccupation of celebrities; we raise them to demigod status then eagerly watch as their Greek-like tragedies unfold in headlines.
( Read more... ) -
POP CULTURE MYTHOLOGY: KURT COBAIN
Our culture has by and large lost a conventional sense of mythology, though we have not lost our hunger for it. We fill the void with a warped preoccupation of celebrities; we raise them to demigod status then eagerly watch as their Greek-like tragedies unfold in headlines.
( Read more... ) -
SONG ANALYSIS: SOMETHING IN THE WAY - NIRVANA
Nirvana’s song “Something in the Way” depicts many of the symptoms commonly seen in clinical depression. Quite literally, depression depresses cognitive, emotional, and physical functioning. As the systems of the body slow down, there is a looming weight which makes it more difficult to maintain energy or move. The drab, repetitive strumming in the ( Read more... )
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