News from the corporate world #3: Doubleplusungood
While it can often be difficult to be certain with these things, I'm pretty sure that there actually is a real, not parody, corporate "inspirational" speaker whose website is located at www.goodthink.com. I'm not even kidding.
What's so hard to believe about this guy? This shit's been around since the 80s. Is that what it is? That it seems retro? I used to work in a bank and they brought dudes like this in for the managers. And they'd eat this shit right up. I was too low on the food chain to attend, but these gatherings sounded like revival meetings.
This dude's Manifesto is a fairly neat summary of the mumbo jumbo believed by the managing classes these days, especially all the new age hocus pocus. The tendency toward this crap among folks who consider themselves too smart, modern and classy for Christianity is rather large. When people think about the religious trends in America, the tend to think of the trend toward evangelical Christianity. But this new age shit is very big too. My family is just full of it. The thing that irritates me the most about it is how dogmatically anti-rational it is and also its resistance to anything 'negative. Critical thinking is to be scoffed at in this realm, especially if it makes you feel bad. I believe it has a very negative influence on politics and culture.
miguel, a big "yup" to your whole post, but especially to The tendency toward this crap among folks who consider themselves too smart, modern and classy for Christianity is rather large. I will say that I have a fondness for irrational, mystical thinking, but not at the expense of other forms.
As far as what's so hard to believe, it's not so much anything about him as the URL he chose, apparently unironically. My comment about it being hard to tell if it's real or a parody was simply to say a) considering the URL, I sure hope it's a parody (as David says), and b) these people are so ludicrous to begin with that it's hard to imagine what a parody could do to push it farther.
Randal, you're lucky.
Jack, weird!!! I'm actually not sure what to make of the "junk check" incident. Up until the part where he gives the money back it seemed like he was en route to becoming my hero.
The tendency toward this crap among folks who consider themselves too smart, modern and classy for Christianity is rather large.
Ayup.
Not only are they too "grown-up" for Xtianity, they are "post-religion" and make serious efforts to denigrate religion as a whole, as a category. Meanwhile, they have their own religion, though it's not formally recognized as such with a widely-acknowledged church, synagogue or temple. Their religion uses different symbols and the church, it is City Hall, it is the Hoover FBI building, it is the White House.
Ethan's working through his music collection in alphabetical order
The next five artists he'll be listening to:
The Clash The Clientele Jimmy Cliff Patsy Cline Clinic
(Project began May 29, 2010. Finished through the letter B on April 1, 2011 with 460 items catalogued on Rate Your Music.)
Ethan's reading
Samuel R. Delany Triton aka Trouble on Triton: An Ambiguous Heterotopia
Thoughts that aren't getting whole posts
- I just caught my cat licking one of my dirty shirts. When he saw I was watching, he pretended he'd been cleaning himself all along. -ethan 9/23/11
- I didn't know The Pixies covered "I've Been Waiting for You"! So on Heathen, David Bowie covered The Pixies AND a song they covered? Weird. -ethan 9/21/11
- Dangerous Visions is so goddamn macho. And like half the writers are military or "intelligence" or government or advertising dudes. It largely bites. -ethan 9/10/11
- I wish people would figure out that "HD" is not even close to "like you're actually there"--it's completely different from how we really see things. If they figured that out, maybe it would occasionally be used interestingly. -ethan 9/9/11
- Robinson Crusoe on Mars has its major problems, but it looks like a series of living Nicholas Roerich paintings. -ethan 9/3/11
- I just plain don't like Brian Aldiss. -ethan 8/31/11
- Here, at least, it was a good hurricane. I'm embarrassed by how happy I was when the electricity came back on. -ethan 8/28/11
- Is it my imagination or is IOZ way more open about genuinely caring about things since his return? -ethan 8/26/11
- Does Firefox constantly tell British people that they're spelling labour and programme and theatre wrong? -ethan 8/25/11
- There is a huge (and hugely important) difference between knowing that events a, b, and c happened between years x and y, and understanding that they were happening at the same time. -ethan 8/24/11
- Among the many things bugging me about the crappy novel I'm reading is that it keeps referring to a woman whose "late teens" were "forty years ago" as a "little old lady." Come on now, she's 59 at the oldest. -ethan 8/22/11
- Spending a day in the woods is the best thing in the world. -ethan 8/21/11
- Maria Mies: "Powerless groups, particularly if they are totally integrated within a system of power and exploitation, find it difficult to define reality differently from the powerful." -ethan 8/20/11
- The funniest sentence in Frankenstein: "I found that I could not compose a female without again devoting several months to profound study and laborious disquisition." -ethan 8/18/11
- Chumbawamba: "Nothing ever burned down by itself/Every fire needs a little bit of help." -ethan 8/18/11
- We'll see if I use this. Idea stolen from Davidly. -ethan 8/18/11
10 comments:
I think he's real,or at least really an actor:
http://listing-index.ebay.com/actors/Patrick_Combs.html
Part of me wants believe that site is satire, another part knows it's not and recoils in fear.
Goodthink won't load. Now how in the hell am I supposed to shift paradigms?
What's so hard to believe about this guy? This shit's been around since the 80s. Is that what it is? That it seems retro? I used to work in a bank and they brought dudes like this in for the managers. And they'd eat this shit right up. I was too low on the food chain to attend, but these gatherings sounded like revival meetings.
This dude's Manifesto is a fairly neat summary of the mumbo jumbo believed by the managing classes these days, especially all the new age hocus pocus. The tendency toward this crap among folks who consider themselves too smart, modern and classy for Christianity is rather large. When people think about the religious trends in America, the tend to think of the trend toward evangelical Christianity. But this new age shit is very big too. My family is just full of it. The thing that irritates me the most about it is how dogmatically anti-rational it is and also its resistance to anything 'negative. Critical thinking is to be scoffed at in this realm, especially if it makes you feel bad. I believe it has a very negative influence on politics and culture.
miguel, a big "yup" to your whole post, but especially to The tendency toward this crap among folks who consider themselves too smart, modern and classy for Christianity is rather large. I will say that I have a fondness for irrational, mystical thinking, but not at the expense of other forms.
As far as what's so hard to believe, it's not so much anything about him as the URL he chose, apparently unironically. My comment about it being hard to tell if it's real or a parody was simply to say a) considering the URL, I sure hope it's a parody (as David says), and b) these people are so ludicrous to begin with that it's hard to imagine what a parody could do to push it farther.
Randal, you're lucky.
Jack, weird!!! I'm actually not sure what to make of the "junk check" incident. Up until the part where he gives the money back it seemed like he was en route to becoming my hero.
miguel says:
The tendency toward this crap among folks who consider themselves too smart, modern and classy for Christianity is rather large.
Ayup.
Not only are they too "grown-up" for Xtianity, they are "post-religion" and make serious efforts to denigrate religion as a whole, as a category. Meanwhile, they have their own religion, though it's not formally recognized as such with a widely-acknowledged church, synagogue or temple. Their religion uses different symbols and the church, it is City Hall, it is the Hoover FBI building, it is the White House.
Yeah, Ethan - I was rooting for him all along, in the story.
Until he caved.
Their religion uses different symbols and the church, it is City Hall, it is the Hoover FBI building, it is the White House.
This remark put me in mind of this from Mark Morford a columnist who odiously embodies the worst of these tendencies.
Is Obama an enlightened being?
http://www.goodthink.com/store/stuff.cfm?stuff_id=25
¯\(°_0)/¯
That is too funny. It really does seem like a put-on. How can there be satire in a world like this?
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