The Secret to High Performance and Fulfilment: Psychologist Daniel Goleman Explains the Power of Focus

in Neuroscience, Psychology | October 29th, 2020

“Con­cen­tra­tion is one of the hap­pi­est things in my life,” says nov­el­ist Haru­ki Muraka­mi in a 2011 New York Times Mag­a­zine pro­file. “If you can­not con­cen­trate, you are not so hap­py.” In this, the author of A Wild Sheep Chase sure­ly has the agree­ment of the author of Emo­tion­al Intel­li­gence, the psy­chol­o­gist and writer Daniel Gole­man. But Gole­man express­es it a bit dif­fer­ent­ly, as you can hear — in detail and at length — in “Focus: The Secret to High Per­for­mance and Ful­fill­ment,” an Intel­li­gence Squared talk based on the book he pub­lished eigh­teen years after the best­selling Emo­tion­al Intel­li­gence, Focus: The Hid­den Dri­ver of Excel­lence.

Atten­tion, Gole­man tells us, is under siege, not least by devices “devised to inter­rupt us, to seduce us, to draw our atten­tion from this to that.” He quotes the famed econ­o­mist, polit­i­cal sci­en­tist, and cog­ni­tive psy­chol­o­gist Her­bert Simon’s obser­va­tion that “infor­ma­tion con­sumes atten­tion. Hence a wealth of infor­ma­tion cre­ates a pover­ty of atten­tion” — but he does­n’t men­tion that Simon made it near­ly fifty years ago, long before the inven­tion of most of what besieges our atten­tion today. (Then again, even medieval monks com­plained of con­stant dis­trac­tion.) Most of us can feel, on some lev­el, that to the extent we have trou­ble focus­ing, we also have trou­ble per­form­ing at the lev­el we’d like to in our pro­fes­sion­al and social life.

What can we do about it? After offer­ing psy­cho­log­i­cal expla­na­tions of what’s going on with our abil­i­ty to focus (or lack there­of), Gole­man sug­gests strate­gies we can use to mas­ter our “emo­tion­al dis­trac­tors” and work out the “men­tal mus­cle” that is our atten­tion. (This anal­o­gy with phys­i­cal exer­cise would get no argu­ment from Muraka­mi, who runs as rig­or­ous­ly as he writes.) Though “mind-wan­der­ing is absolute­ly essen­tial for cre­ative insight,” as we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly dis­cussed here on Open Cul­ture, the crit­i­cal skill is to bring our mind back from its wan­der­ing at will. This we can prac­tice through Bud­dhist-style breath­ing med­i­ta­tion, a sub­ject to which Gole­man has since devot­ed a good deal of research, and just one of the prac­tices that can help us live our lives to the fullest by allow­ing us to see, hear, con­sid­er, and engage with what’s right in front of us.

As Gole­man lays out a suite of atten­tion-build­ing tech­niques and their ben­e­fits, he touch­es on the­o­ries and find­ings from cog­ni­tive psy­chol­o­gy that have by now been pop­u­lar­ized into famil­iar­i­ty: the Stan­ford “marsh­mal­low test,” for exam­ple, which appears to show that chil­dren who can delay grat­i­fi­ca­tion have bet­ter life out­comes than those who can­not. Such out­comes can be ours as well, he argues, if we make a habit of “length­en­ing the gap between impulse and action” in our own habits. “I’m not a fast thinker, but once I am inter­est­ed in some­thing, I am doing it for many years,” as Muraka­mi says. “I’m kind of a big ket­tle. It takes time to get boiled, but then I’m always hot.” As for the rest of us, could­n’t we all stand to become big­ger ket­tles than we are?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How to Focus: Five Talks Reveal the Secrets of Con­cen­tra­tion

How Infor­ma­tion Over­load Robs Us of Our Cre­ativ­i­ty: What the Sci­en­tif­ic Research Shows

The Case for Delet­ing Your Social Media Accounts & Doing Valu­able “Deep Work” Instead, Accord­ing to Prof. Cal New­port

How to Take Advan­tage of Bore­dom, the Secret Ingre­di­ent of Cre­ativ­i­ty

How Med­i­ta­tion Can Change Your Brain: The Neu­ro­science of Bud­dhist Prac­tice

Medieval Monks Com­plained About Con­stant Dis­trac­tions: Learn How They Worked to Over­come Them

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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John Coltrane’s “Giant Steps” & Bach’s “Prelude in C Major” Get Turned into Dazzling Musical Animations by an Artist with Synesthesia

in Film, Music, Neuroscience, Psychology | October 28th, 2020

Colour is the key­board, the eyes are the har­monies, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touch­ing one key or anoth­er, to cause vibra­tions in the soul.

—Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky

We may owe the his­to­ry of mod­ern art to the con­di­tion of synes­the­sia, which caus­es those who have it to hear col­ors, see sounds, taste smells, etc. Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky, who pio­neered abstract expres­sion­ism in the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry, did so “after hav­ing an unusu­al­ly visu­al response to a per­for­mance of Wagner’s com­po­si­tion Lohen­grin at the Bol­shoi The­atre,” the Den­ver Muse­um of Art notes. He was so moved by the moment that he “aban­doned his law career to study paint­ing at the pres­ti­gious Munich Acad­e­my of Fine Arts. He lat­er described the life-chang­ing expe­ri­ence: ‘I saw all my col­ors in spir­it, before my eyes. Wild, almost crazy lines were sketched in front of me.’”

Kandin­sky nev­er heard Coltrane, but if he had, and had access to 3D ren­der­ing soft­ware, he might have made some­thing very much like the short ani­ma­tion above from Israeli artist Michal Levy. “Rough­ly 3 per cent of peo­ple expe­ri­ence synaes­the­sia,” writes Aeon, “a neu­ro­log­i­cal con­di­tion in which peo­ple have a recur­ring sen­so­ry over­lap, such as … envi­sion­ing let­ters and num­bers each with their own inher­ent colour.”

Levy’s con­di­tion is one of the most com­mon forms, like Kandinsky’s: “chro­maes­the­sia, in which sounds and music pro­voke visu­als.” Where the Russ­ian painter saw Wag­n­er in “wild, almost crazy lines,” Levy sees the “rol­lick­ing notes” of Coltrane’s Giant Steps as a “kinet­ic, cas­cad­ing cityscape built from colour­ful blocks of sound.”

After visu­al­iz­ing her expe­ri­ence of Coltrane, Levy cre­at­ed the ani­ma­tion above, Dance of Har­mo­ny, to illus­trate what hap­pens when she hears Bach. Dur­ing a mater­ni­ty leave, work­ing with her friend, ani­ma­tor Hagai Azaz, she set her­self the chal­lenge of show­ing, as she describes it, “the cas­cad­ing flow of emo­tion, to make the feel­ing con­ta­gious, by using only col­or, the basic shape of cir­cles, and min­i­mal­ist motion, assign­ing to each musi­cal chord the visu­al ele­ments that cor­re­spond to it synaes­thet­i­cal­ly.”

It is fas­ci­nat­ing to com­pare Levy’s descrip­tions of her con­di­tion with those of oth­er famous synes­thetes like Vladimir Nabokov and, espe­cial­ly Kandin­sky, who in essence first showed the world what music looks like, there­by giv­ing art a new visu­al lan­guage. Levy calls her synes­the­sia art, an “emo­tion­al voy­age of har­mo­ny,” and includes in her visu­al­iza­tion of Bach’s famous pre­lude an “unex­pect­ed ele­giac side­bar of love and loss,” Maria Popo­va writes. Read Levy’s full descrip­tion of Dance of Har­mo­ny here and learn more about the “extra­or­di­nary sen­so­ry con­di­tion called synes­the­sia” here.

via Aeon

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

An Artist with Synes­the­sia Turns Jazz & Rock Clas­sics Into Col­or­ful Abstract Paint­ings

Jazz Decon­struct­ed: What Makes John Coltrane’s “Giant Steps” So Ground­break­ing and Rad­i­cal?

Decon­struct­ing Bach’s Famous Cel­lo Prelude–the One You’ve Heard in Hun­dreds of TV Shows & Films

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagnes

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Why Do People Join Cults? An Animated Primer Explains

in Psychology | October 7th, 2020

As much as we might like to think we make free choic­es as ratio­nal indi­vid­u­als, we are all more or less sug­gestible and sub­ject to social pres­sures. Social media mar­keters aren’t under any illu­sions about this. Guides for how to exploit psy­cho­log­i­cal vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties and influ­ence behav­ior pro­lif­er­ate. (One of the top-sell­ing busi­ness books on Ama­zon is a man­u­al titled Influ­ence: The Psy­chol­o­gy of Per­sua­sion.) Such tech­niques form the basis of a mas­sive, glob­al ad-based indus­try that also hap­pens to traf­fic in polit­i­cal pro­pa­gan­da and dis­in­for­ma­tion. None of this would be as wild­ly prof­itable and effec­tive as it is if human beings could eas­i­ly resist manip­u­la­tion.

But there are degrees of influ­ence and sus­cep­ti­bil­i­ty. Not every­one who makes an easy mark for adver­tis­ers, for exam­ple, is liable to join a cult or an extrem­ist group. What makes peo­ple sub­ject to the induce­ments of a cult leader? What makes them—in the clichéd phrase cal­lous­ly drawn from the mass sui­cide at Jonestown—“drink the Kool-Aid”? The TED-Ed video above, script­ed by cult expert Dr. Jan­ja Lalich, pro­fes­sor emeri­ta of Soci­ol­o­gy at Cal­i­for­nia State Uni­ver­si­ty, Chico, begins with some basic qual­i­fi­ca­tions.

Not all cults are reli­gious: some are polit­i­cal, ther­a­py-based, focused on self-improve­ment, or oth­er­wise.

Not all new reli­gions are cults.

Lalich defines a cult as a “group or move­ment with a usu­al­ly extreme ide­ol­o­gy, typ­i­cal­ly embod­ied in a charis­mat­ic leader…. Most cults share some basic char­ac­ter­is­tics,” such as a “high-lev­el of com­mit­ment from its mem­bers,” a strict hier­ar­chy, and “claims to pro­vide answers to life’s biggest ques­tions.” Cults have lit­tle tol­er­ance for dis­sent from either the inside or out­side.

The dis­tinc­tions between cults and reli­gions can seem slight, but cults sep­a­rate their mem­bers from the larg­er soci­ety and seek direct and total con­trol over their lives, while most main­stream reli­gions (which may have begun as cults) do not. Reli­gions may pros­e­ly­tize, but cults use meth­ods more akin to pyra­mid schemes to pres­sure recruits into per­son­al­ly iden­ti­fy­ing with the ide­ol­o­gy and spread­ing it. By exploit­ing our desires for con­nec­tion, com­fort, mean­ing, and belong­ing, they cre­ate what the DSM‑V terms “iden­ti­ty dis­tur­bance due to pro­longed and intense coer­cive per­sua­sion.”

Cults “dis­cour­age crit­i­cal think­ing, mak­ing it hard to voice doubts when every­one around you is mod­el­ing absolute faith.” New recruits expe­ri­ence painful cog­ni­tive dis­so­nance that, over time, they try to over­come by strength­en­ing their devo­tion. The sense of sunk cost makes it increas­ing­ly hard for them to admit they have been lied to, manip­u­lat­ed, and used. Cults stunt their mem­bers’ “psy­cho­log­i­cal and emo­tion­al growth,” which is “a par­tic­u­lar prob­lem for chil­dren” who are born or indoc­tri­nat­ed into them. Belief, Lalich’s les­son states, should not force a per­son to sac­ri­fice their fam­i­ly, friends, per­son­al moral­i­ty, and mon­ey to an author­i­tar­i­an leader.

Lalich her­self under­stands cults not only as an aca­d­e­m­ic researcher but as a for­mer mem­ber of a polit­i­cal cult in which, she says, “you weren’t allowed to think for your­self at the same time as you were told to think for your­self.” Which brings us to the burn­ing ques­tion that has been asked so many times over the past four years. Does the absolute, unwa­ver­ing devo­tion to the cur­rent pres­i­dent con­sti­tute cult-like behav­ior? Is “Trump­ism” a cult? An open let­ter on Lalich’s Cult Research site, signed by a num­ber of promi­nent psy­chol­o­gists, psy­chi­a­trists, and oth­er experts, advis­es, “We should look to the evi­dence, and there is evi­dence aplen­ty.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Carl Sagan Pre­dicts the Decline of Amer­i­ca: Unable to Know “What’s True,” We Will Slide, “With­out Notic­ing, Back into Super­sti­tion & Dark­ness” (1995)

Christo­pher Hitchens Dis­miss­es the Cult of Ayn Rand: There’s No “Need to Have Essays Advo­cat­ing Self­ish­ness Among Human Beings; It Requires No Rein­force­ment”

Isaac Asi­mov Laments the “Cult of Igno­rance” in the Unit­ed States (1980)

Umber­to Eco Makes a List of the 14 Com­mon Fea­tures of Fas­cism

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Free Courses to Maintain Mental & Physical Health During a Pandemic

in Health, MOOCs, Psychology | August 20th, 2020

As I write this, the smoke from the numer­ous for­est fires across Cal­i­for­nia are mak­ing the air qual­i­ty ter­ri­ble, so we are being told to stay inside. How­ev­er, the heat­wave is mak­ing it insuf­fer­able to *be* inside. And we also have to be wary of COVID-19 and wear a mask. You could say this is a slight­ly stress­ful sit­u­a­tion. And a lot of us are deal­ing with even more than that–job sta­bil­i­ty, rent, and on and on. Just typ­ing this made me anx­ious!

Dur­ing this time we should try not to neglect our men­tal health. For­tu­nate­ly Cours­era offers free online cours­es about Men­tal Health and Well-Being.

The Cours­era video above comes from a Face­book live event that fea­tures Yale University’s Lau­rie San­tos, who teach­es Coursera’s Sci­ence of Well-Being course. This 30 minute Q&A dives right in to our cur­rent sit­u­a­tion, with San­tos out­lin­ing a pro­to­col for men­tal health that should be as much a part of your reg­i­men as wear­ing a mask and wash­ing your hands with soap (while singing Hap­py Birth­day to your­self, don’t for­get.)

Here’s a top ten of Cours­er­a’s most pop­u­lar health & well-being cours­es to check out:

  1. Mind Con­trol: Man­ag­ing Your Men­tal Health Dur­ing COVID-19 from Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to
  2. The Sci­ence of Well-Being from Yale Uni­ver­si­ty
  3. Find­ing Pur­pose and Mean­ing In Life: Liv­ing for What Mat­ters Most from Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan
  4. Stan­ford Intro­duc­tion to Food and Health from Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty
  5. A Life of Hap­pi­ness and Ful­fill­ment from Indi­an School of Busi­ness
  6. Pos­i­tive Psy­chi­a­try and Men­tal Health from The Uni­ver­si­ty of Syd­ney
  7. Hack­ing Exer­cise For Health. The sur­pris­ing new sci­ence of fit­ness. from McMas­ter Uni­ver­si­ty
  8. Intro­duc­tion to Self-Deter­mi­na­tion The­o­ry: An approach to moti­va­tion, devel­op­ment and well­ness from Uni­ver­si­ty of Rochester
  9. Bio­hack­ing Your Brain’s Health from Emory Uni­ver­si­ty
  10. Man­ag­ing Your Health: The Role of Phys­i­cal Ther­a­py and Exer­cise from Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to

San­tos answers ques­tions from view­ers, cov­er­ing top­ics like avoid­ing ten­sion and argu­ments with our loved ones, stay­ing informed on the world with­out cre­at­ing more anx­i­ety, how can frontline/healthcare work­ers com­bat anx­i­ety, how to keep your­self pos­i­tive when liv­ing alone with­out fam­i­ly or friends, how to keep pro­duc­tive and healthy at work with the threat of lay­offs, how to look for a new job after being laid off because of COVID, how to help your child who is miss­ing their school friends, how do we cre­ate good expe­ri­ences to cre­ate good mem­o­ries, what we can do about sleep prob­lems, how to care for fam­i­ly mem­bers with COVID while also work­ing a job, and how to show ran­dom acts of kind­ness dur­ing this time (which is what San­tos cov­ers often in her Hap­pi­ness Lab pod­cast).

Over­all, focus on self-com­pas­sion, San­tos says, which has to be the start­ing point for all of this. When you enroll in these cours­es, Cours­era gives you two options. You can enroll as a paid stu­dent and get a cer­tifi­cate at the end. Or choose to “audit” the course (as shown here) and the course is free. Just like in col­lege! All the learn­ing, none of the blue book essays!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Psy­chol­o­gy & Neu­ro­science Cours­es

Cours­era Makes Cours­es & Cer­tifi­cates Free Dur­ing Coro­n­avirus Quar­an­tine: Take Cours­es in Psy­chol­o­gy, Music, Well­ness, Pro­fes­sion­al Devel­op­ment & More Online

1,500 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

Free Cours­es on the Coro­n­avirus: What You Need to Know About the Emerg­ing Pan­dem­ic

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

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Building Your Resilience: Finding Meaning in Adversity–Take a Free & Timely Course Online

in Health, Online Courses, Psychology | May 8th, 2020

The Great Courses has made avail­able a free and rather time­ly course–Build­ing Your Resilience: Find­ing Mean­ing in Adver­si­ty. Divid­ed into 24 lec­tures and taught by Mol­ly Birk­holm, the course gets intro­duced with the fol­low­ing text:

Recent research shows that we grow into our best and most joy­ful selves not when we avoid our prob­lems but when we embrace them, con­fi­dent that we are resilient enough to work through them to an appro­pri­ate res­o­lu­tion. Our prob­lems are an impor­tant part of our path.

Resilience is our abil­i­ty to phys­i­cal­ly, emo­tion­al­ly, and men­tal­ly bounce back from adverse cir­cum­stances. With­out it, we would be down for the count every time we ran into a prob­lem. Stuck in traf­fic and late for a meet­ing? It’s your resilience that allows you to make the nec­es­sary phone calls and keep mov­ing for­ward, con­fi­dent that you can han­dle this stress­ful sit­u­a­tion as it evolves. With­out it, you’d make a U‑turn and give up. Recov­er­ing from the flu or recent surgery? It’s your resilience that helps you take care of your­self appro­pri­ate­ly and look for­ward to a bet­ter future. Our capac­i­ty to thrive in life depends direct­ly on our resilience.

Shar­ing her own fas­ci­nat­ing jour­ney, as well as the lat­est research by neu­rol­o­gists and psy­chol­o­gists, trau­ma spe­cial­ist Mol­ly Birk­holm shows us how to gauge our cur­rent lev­el of resilience and improve from there. In Build­ing Your Resilience: Find­ing Mean­ing in Adver­si­ty, you’ll learn how all of our challenges—from every­day stress­es to life-alter­ing traumas—can bring wis­dom and growth. In 17 fas­ci­nat­ing class­es and 7 “hands-on” prac­tice ses­sions, you’ll learn about and expe­ri­ence the process of build­ing the inner calm and clar­i­ty of mind that cre­ate greater resilience. With Ms. Birkholm’s warm and opti­mistic demeanor, you’ll feel her encour­age­ment every step of the way as you move toward build­ing your best and most ful­fill­ing life.

Watch all 24 lec­tures above, or over on YouTube. Build­ing Your Resilience: Find­ing Mean­ing in Adver­si­ty will be added to our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Find more cours­es in The Great Courses cat­a­logue here.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Bud­dhism & Neu­ro­science Can Help You Change How Your Mind Works: A New Course by Best­selling Author Robert Wright

Pos­i­tive Psy­chol­o­gy: A Free Course from Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty 

What Are the Keys to Hap­pi­ness?: Take “The Sci­ence of Well-Being,” a Free Online Ver­sion of Yale’s Most Pop­u­lar Course

How to Find Emo­tion­al Strength & Resilience Dur­ing COVID-19: Advice from Eliz­a­beth Gilbert, Jack Korn­field, Susan David & Oth­er Experts

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How to Find Emotional Strength & Resilience During COVID-19: Advice from Elizabeth Gilbert, Jack Kornfield, Susan David & Other Experts

in Current Affairs, Health, Life, Psychology, TED Talks | April 23rd, 2020

There are many roads through the coro­n­avirus cri­sis. One is denial, which only makes things worse. Anoth­er is ser­vice and self-sac­ri­fice, a choice we hon­or in the med­ical pro­fes­sion­als putting their lives at risk every day. For most of us, how­ev­er, the best course of action is non-action—staying home and iso­lat­ing our­selves from oth­ers. Days bleed into weeks, weeks into months. It can seem like life has come to a com­plete halt. It hasn’t, of course. All sorts of things are hap­pen­ing inside us. We don’t know how long this will last; cur­rent cours­es of action don’t bode well. What do we do with the fear, anger, lone­li­ness, grief, and buzzing, ever-present anx­i­ety?

Maybe the first thing to do is to accept that we have those feel­ings and feel them, instead of stuff­ing them down, cov­er­ing them up, or push­ing them onto some­one else. Then we can rec­og­nize we aren’t by any means alone. That’s eas­i­er said than done in quar­an­tine, but psy­chol­o­gists and inspi­ra­tional writ­ers and speak­ers like Eliz­a­beth Gilbert have come togeth­er under the aus­pices of the TED Con­nect series, host­ed by the head of TED Chris Ander­son, to help.

TED, known for show­cas­ing “thinkers and doers [giv­ing] the talk of their lives in 18 min­utes (or less),” has wise­ly rec­og­nized the need to dig much deep­er. Ander­son and head of cura­tion Helen Wal­ters’ con­ver­sa­tion with Gilbert, above, runs a lit­tle over an hour.

As for that cease­less anx­i­ety, Gilbert sug­gests we should all give our­selves “a mea­sure of mer­cy and com­pas­sion.” We might feel like we need per­mis­sion to do so in soci­eties that demand we con­stant­ly jus­ti­fy our exis­tence. But admit­ting vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty is the begin­ning of strength. Then we find con­struc­tive ways for­ward. The kind of resilience we can build in iso­la­tion is the kind that can out­last a cri­sis. Still, it is hard won. As Ander­son says above, in addi­tion to the exter­nal bat­tle we must fight with the virus and our own gov­ern­ments, “there’s this oth­er bat­tle as well, that is prob­a­bly equal­ly as con­se­quen­tial. It’s a bat­tle that’s going on right inside our minds.”

Rather than killing time wait­ing fit­ful­ly for some accept­able form of nor­mal to return, we can build what psy­chol­o­gist Susan David calls “emo­tion­al courage.” In con­ver­sa­tion with TED’s Whit­ney Pen­ning­ton Rogers, above, David reveals that she her­self has good rea­son to fear: her hus­band is a physi­cian. She also under­stands the con­se­quences of a col­lec­tive denial of suf­fer­ing and death. “The cir­cum­stance that we are in now is not some­thing that we asked for, but life is call­ing on every sin­gle one of us to move into the place of wis­dom in our­selves… into the space of wis­dom and for­ti­tude, sol­i­dar­i­ty, com­mu­ni­ty, courage.” We move into that space by rec­og­niz­ing that “life’s beau­ty is insep­a­ra­ble from its fragili­ty.”

Themes of courage and con­nec­tion come up again and again in oth­er TED Con­nects inter­views, such as that above with Rab­bi Lord Jonathan Sacks and below with author Priya Park­er. Else­where on the inter­net, you’ll find sim­i­lar kinds of advice.

On the Tim Fer­ris show, you can hear inter­views with Jack Korn­field on find­ing peace in the pan­dem­ic, Esther Per­el on nav­i­gat­ing rela­tion­ships in quar­an­tine, and Ryan Hol­i­day on using Sto­icism to choose “alive time over dead time.”

Sto­icism has gath­ered a par­tic­u­lar­ly rich store of wis­dom about how to live in cri­sis. In his own med­i­ta­tion on iso­la­tion, Michel de Mon­taigne drew on the Sto­ics in advis­ing read­ers to “reserve a back­shop, whol­ly our own and entire­ly free, where­in to set­tle our true lib­er­ty, our prin­ci­ple soli­tude and retreat…. We have a mind pli­able in itself, that will be com­pa­ny; that has where­with­al to attack and to defend, to receive and to give: let us not then fear in this soli­tude to lan­guish under an uncom­fort­able vacu­ity.” In oth­er words, the road through iso­la­tion, though fraught with painful emo­tions and uncer­tain­ties, can be, if we choose, one of sig­nif­i­cant per­son­al and col­lec­tive growth.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Cours­es on the Coro­n­avirus: What You Need to Know About the Emerg­ing Pan­dem­ic

How Stress Can Change Your Brain: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Sto­icism, the Ancient Greek Phi­los­o­phy That Lets You Lead a Hap­py, Ful­fill­ing Life

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Watch Footage from the Psychology Experiment That Shocked the World: Milgram’s Obedience Study (1961)

in Psychology | February 13th, 2020

For decades fol­low­ing World War II,  the world was left won­der­ing how the atroc­i­ties of the Holo­caust could have been per­pe­trat­ed in the midst of—and, most hor­rif­i­cal­ly, by—a mod­ern and civ­i­lized soci­ety. How did peo­ple come to engage in a will­ing and sys­tem­at­ic exter­mi­na­tion of their neigh­bors? Psy­chol­o­gists, whose field had grown into a grudg­ing­ly respect­ed sci­ence by the mid­point of the 20th cen­tu­ry, were eager to tack­le the ques­tion.

In 1961, Yale University’s Stan­ley Mil­gram began a series of infa­mous obe­di­ence exper­i­ments. While Adolf Eichmann’s tri­al was under­way in Jerusalem (result­ing in Han­nah Arendt’s five-piece reportage, which became one of The New York­er magazine’s most dra­mat­ic and con­tro­ver­sial arti­cle series), Mil­gram began to sus­pect that human nature was more straight­for­ward than ear­li­er the­o­rists had imag­ined; he won­dered, as he lat­er wrote, “Could it be that Eich­mann and his mil­lion accom­plices in the Holo­caust were just fol­low­ing orders? Could we call them all accom­plices?”

In the most famous his exper­i­ments, Mil­gram osten­si­bly recruit­ed par­tic­i­pants to take part in a study assess­ing the effects of pain on learn­ing. In real­i­ty, he want­ed to see how far he could push the aver­age Amer­i­can to admin­is­ter painful elec­tric shocks to a fel­low human being.

When par­tic­i­pants arrived at his lab, Milgram’s assis­tant would ask them, as well as a sec­ond man, to draw slips of paper to receive their roles for the exper­i­ment. In fact, the sec­ond man was a con­fed­er­ate; the par­tic­i­pant would always draw the role of “teacher,” and the sec­ond man would invari­ably be made the “learn­er.”


The par­tic­i­pants received instruc­tions to teach pairs of words to the con­fed­er­ate. After they had read the list of words once, the teach­ers were to test the learner’s recall by read­ing one word, and ask­ing the learn­er to name one of the four words asso­ci­at­ed with it. The exper­i­menter told the par­tic­i­pants to pun­ish any learn­er mis­takes by push­ing a but­ton and admin­is­ter­ing an elec­tric shock; while they could not see the learn­er, par­tic­i­pants could hear his screams. The con­fed­er­ate, of course, remained unharmed, and mere­ly act­ed out in pain, with each mis­take cost­ing him an addi­tion­al 15 volts of pun­ish­ment. In case par­tic­i­pants fal­tered in their sci­en­tif­ic resolve, the exper­i­menter was near­by to urge them, using four author­i­ta­tive state­ments:

Please con­tin­ue.

The exper­i­ment requires that you con­tin­ue.

It is absolute­ly essen­tial that you con­tin­ue.

You have no oth­er choice, you must go on.

In a jar­ring set of find­ings, Mil­gram found that 26 of the 40 par­tic­i­pants obeyed instruc­tions, admin­is­ter­ing shocks all the way from “Slight Shock,” to “Dan­ger: Severe Shock.” The final two omi­nous switch­es were sim­ply marked “XXX.” Even when the learn­ers would pound on the walls in agony after seem­ing­ly receiv­ing 300 volts, par­tic­i­pants per­sist­ed. Even­tu­al­ly, the learn­er sim­ply stopped respond­ing.

Although they fol­lowed instruc­tions, par­tic­i­pants repeat­ed­ly expressed their desire to stop the exper­i­ment, and showed clear signs of extreme dis­com­fort:

“I observed a mature and ini­tial­ly poised busi­ness­man enter the lab­o­ra­to­ry smil­ing and con­fi­dent. With­in 20 min­utes he was reduced to a twitch­ing, stut­ter­ing wreck, who was rapid­ly approach­ing a point of ner­vous col­lapse… At one point he pushed his fist into his fore­head and mut­tered: “Oh God, let’s stop it.” And yet he con­tin­ued to respond to every word of the exper­i­menter, and obeyed to the end.” 

Milgram’s study set off a pow­der keg whose impact remains felt to this day. Eth­i­cal­ly, many object­ed to the decep­tion and the lack of ade­quate par­tic­i­pant debrief­ing. Oth­ers claimed that Mil­gram overem­pha­sized human nature’s propen­si­ty for blind obe­di­ence, with the exper­i­menter often urg­ing par­tic­i­pants to con­tin­ue many more times than the four stock phras­es allowed.

In the clip above, you can watch orig­i­nal footage from Milgram’s  exper­i­ment, fright­en­ing in its insid­i­ous sim­plic­i­ty. (See a full doc­u­men­tary on the study below.) The man admin­is­ter­ing the shock grows increas­ing­ly uncom­fort­able with his part in the pro­ceed­ings, and almost walks out, ask­ing “Who’s going to take the respon­si­bil­i­ty for any­thing that hap­pens to that gen­tle­man?” When the exper­i­menter replies, “I’m respon­si­ble,” the man, absolv­ing him­self, con­tin­ues. As the per­son receiv­ing the shocks grows increas­ing­ly pan­icked, com­plain­ing about his heart and ask­ing to be let out, the par­tic­i­pant makes his objec­tions known but appears par­a­lyzed, sheep­ish­ly turn­ing to the exper­i­menter, unable to leave.

Although Milgram’s work has drawn crit­ics, his results endure. While chang­ing the experiment’s pro­ce­dure may alter com­pli­ance (e.g., hav­ing the exper­i­menter speak to par­tic­i­pants over the phone rather than remain in the same room through­out the exper­i­ment decreased obe­di­ence rates), repli­ca­tions have tend­ed to con­firm Milgram’s ini­tial find­ings. Whether one is urged once or a dozen times, peo­ple tend to take on the yoke of author­i­ty as absolute, relin­quish­ing their per­son­al agency in the pain they impart. Human nature, it seems, has no Manichean leanings—merely a pli­ant bent.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in Novem­ber 2013.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Lit­tle Albert Exper­i­ment: The Per­verse 1920 Study That Made a Baby Afraid of San­ta Claus & Bun­nies

The Pow­er of Con­for­mi­ty: 1962 Episode of Can­did Cam­era Reveals the Strange Psy­chol­o­gy of Rid­ing Ele­va­tors

Her­mann Rorschach’s Orig­i­nal Rorschach Test: What Do You See? (1921)

Carl Gus­tav Jung Explains His Ground­break­ing The­o­ries About Psy­chol­o­gy in Rare Inter­view (1957)

Free Online Cours­es Psy­chol­o­gy

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based sci­ence and cul­ture writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman

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The Visionary Mystical Art of Carl Jung: See Illustrated Pages from The Red Book

in Art, Psychology, Religion | January 28th, 2020

Carl Jung’s Liber Novus, bet­ter known as The Red Book, has only recent­ly come to light in a com­plete Eng­lish trans­la­tion, pub­lished by Nor­ton in a 2009 fac­sim­i­le edi­tion and a small­er “reader’s edi­tion” in 2012. The years since have seen sev­er­al exhi­bi­tions of the book, which “could pass for a Bible ren­dered by a medieval monk,” writes art crit­ic Peter Frank, “espe­cial­ly for the care with which Jung entered his writ­ing as ornate Goth­ic script.”

Jung “refused to think of him­self as an ‘artist’” but “it’s no acci­dent the Liber Novus has been exhib­it­ed in muse­ums, or func­tioned as the nucle­us of ‘Ency­clo­pe­dic Palace,’ the sur­vey of vision­ary art in the 2013 Venice Bien­nale.” Jung’s elab­o­rate paint­ings show him “every bit the artist the medieval monk or Per­sian courtier was; his art hap­pened to be ded­i­cat­ed not to the glo­ry of God or king, but that of the human race.”

One could more accu­rate­ly say that Jung’s book was ded­i­cat­ed to the mys­ti­cal uncon­scious, a much more neb­u­lous and ocean­ic cat­e­go­ry. The “ocean­ic feeling”—a phrase coined in 1927 by French play­wright Romain Rol­land to describe mys­ti­cal oneness—so annoyed Sig­mund Freud that he dis­missed it as infan­tile regres­sion.

Freud’s antipa­thy to mys­ti­cism, as we know, did not dis­suade Jung, his one­time stu­dent and admir­er, from div­ing in and swim­ming to the deep­est depths. The voy­age began long before he met his famous men­tor. At age 11, Jung lat­er wrote in 1959, “I found that I had been in a mist, not know­ing how to dif­fer­en­ti­ate myself from things; I was just one among many things.”

Jung con­sid­ered his elab­o­rate dream/vision journal—kept from 1913 to 1930, then added to spo­rad­i­cal­ly until 1961—“the cen­tral work in his oeu­vre,” says Jung schol­ar Sonu Sham­dasani in the Rubin Muse­um intro­duc­tion above. “It is lit­er­al­ly his most impor­tant work.”

And yet it took Dr. Sham­dasani “three years to con­vince Jung’s fam­i­ly to bring the book out of hid­ing,” notes NPR. “It took anoth­er 13 years to trans­late it.” Part of the rea­son his heirs left the book hid­den in a Swiss vault for half a cen­tu­ry may be evi­dent in the only por­tion of the Red Book to appear in Jung’s life­time. “The Sev­en Ser­mons of the Dead.”

Jung had this text pri­vate­ly print­ed in 1916 and gave copies to select friends and fam­i­ly mem­bers. He com­posed it in 1913 in a peri­od of Gnos­tic stud­ies, dur­ing which he entered into vision­ary trance states, tran­scrib­ing his visions in note­books called the “Black Books,” which would lat­er be rewrit­ten in The Red Book.

You can see a page of Jung’s metic­u­lous­ly hand-let­tered man­u­script above. The “Ser­mons,” he wrote in a lat­er inter­pre­ta­tion, came to him dur­ing an actu­al haunt­ing:

The atmos­phere was thick, believe me! Then I knew that some­thing had to hap­pen. The whole house was filled as if there were a crowd present, crammed full of spir­its. They were packed deep right up to the door, and the air was so thick it was scarce­ly pos­si­ble to breathe. As for myself, I was all a‑quiver with the ques­tion: “For God’s sake, what in the world is this?” Then they cried out in cho­rus, “We have come back from Jerusalem where we found not what we sought/’ That is the begin­ning of the Septem Ser­mones. 

The strange, short “ser­mons” are dif­fi­cult to cat­e­go­rize. They are awash in Gnos­tic the­ol­o­gy and occult terms like “plero­ma.” The great mys­ti­cal one­ness of ocean­ic feel­ing also took on a very sin­is­ter aspect in the demigod Abraxas, who “beget­teth truth and lying, good and evil, light and dark­ness, in the same word and in the same act. Where­fore is Abraxas ter­ri­ble.”

There are tedious, didac­tic pas­sages, for con­verts only, but much of Jung’s writ­ing in the “Sev­en Ser­mons,” and through­out The Red Book, is filled with strange obscure poet­ry, com­ple­ment­ed by his intense illus­tra­tions. Jung “took on the sim­i­lar­ly styl­ized and beau­ti­ful man­ners of non-west­ern word-image con­fla­tion,” writes Frank, “includ­ing Per­sian minia­ture paint­ing and east Asian cal­lig­ra­phy.”

If The Red Book is, as Sham­dasani claims, Jung’s most impor­tant work—and Jung him­self, though he kept it qui­et, seemed to think it was—then we may in time come to think of him as not only as an inspir­er of eccen­tric artists, but as an eccen­tric artist him­self, on par with the great illu­mi­na­tors and vision­ary mys­tic poet/painters.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Carl Jung: Tarot Cards Pro­vide Door­ways to the Uncon­scious, and Maybe a Way to Pre­dict the Future

The Famous Break Up of Sig­mund Freud & Carl Jung Explained in a New Ani­mat­ed Video

Carl Jung Explains His Ground­break­ing The­o­ries About Psy­chol­o­gy in a Rare Inter­view (1957)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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