Alain de Botton on existential maturity and what emotional intelligence means
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Re: Alain de Botton on existential maturity and what emotional intelligence means
#2Alain 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.
Re: Alain de Botton on existential maturity and what emotional intelligence means
#3Alain 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 .
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Re: Alain de Botton on existential maturity and what emotional intelligence means
#4Alain 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 .
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?
Re: Alain de Botton on existential maturity and what emotional intelligence means
#5Alain 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 .
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
Re: Alain de Botton on existential maturity and what emotional intelligence means
#6Alain 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 .
The ones I've seen have all seemed fine to me. It's advice, and advice is not a branch of science.
Re: Alain de Botton on existential maturity and what emotional intelligence means
#7> 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.
Re: Alain de Botton on existential maturity and what emotional intelligence means
#8Alain 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 .
The ones I've seen have all seemed fine to me. It's advice, and advice is not a branch of science.
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...
Re: Alain de Botton on existential maturity and what emotional intelligence means
#9> 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…
Your comment drips with conspiracy, but is hard to trifle with.
Re: Alain de Botton on existential maturity and what emotional intelligence means
#10> 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…
Your comment drips with conspiracy, but is hard to trifle with.
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